A friend :dubious: bought Microsoft Windows 7 on eBay. I (I mean my friend) did not buy a box or a CD, instead it was a download link and CD key. This of course raised eyebrows. To ensure it was legitimate, my friend checked the download link. It came from Microsoft.com. So my friend went ahead and bought it deciding that by registering and activating it, he could know for sure if it was real or not and could immediately dispute the PayPal charge on the old credit card.
After buying and immediately installing, my friend registered and activated. No issues. Windows Update and everything else worked great.
Six months have passed and NOW the software says it’s not legitimate. My friend called Microsoft who inform him that it’s fake. When inquiring about “why did you buttheads tell me it was real when I activated it?!” MS says that it’s a test copy meant for developers and that it’s not really ‘real’. It just was ‘real’ at the beginning when you registered it.
So debate: Would you personally just crack it and use it while telling yourself that the morons at MS could have been a little more forthcoming during the registration process? Or would you in fact call yourself a moron for having been suckered at a scam?
It’s not really piracy. You don’t have a Carribean sloop, a crew, probably not even a parrot. It would just be stealing. I know several morons who work for Microsoft, and they have confirmed that forthcoming is not what Microsoft is all about. But that does not change the status of what you are contemplating. Chalk it up to experience.
I’ve never had a problem with “warez” (hacked/cracked software). I figured for the 3 or 4 times a year I might use photoshop, Adobe wasn’t going to miss the revenue (as a purely hypothetical example you understand). But that was mainly before there was so much incredibly good freeware.
I’ve never liked the idea of a hacked OS though because I worry about security issues. For example, with XP, I think you could still get updates with no problem, but I don’t know if that is true with W7.
I find the simplest and cheapest thing to do is get the std. MS Technet subscription which costs $150/year and gives you multiple valid keys for almost every software product MS makes. The problem is that most end users have never even heard of this - otherwise no one in their right mind would spend several hundred bucks for W7 and MS Office. You can compare the different types of subscriptions and what’s included here - Microsoft Learn: Build skills that open doors in your career (since it’s an asp page, you might need to view with IE).
If I cracked it and used it, I wouldn’t kid myself that I was somehow morally justified because Microsoft failed to immediately inform me that it wasn’t legit. Of course, seeing it on eBay, I would never assume it was legit in the first place–of course it’s going to be something like a developer copy or a corporate copy with a volume licence key. If “your friend” thought he was getting a legit copy, he was being wilfully blind.
There are legitimate copies of software on Ebay but they all tend to be at around the same price you could buy them elsewhere and in some cases a great deal more.
Of course, high price does not guarantee legitimacy.
I’d say that if you paid a reasonable price, say > 80% of the price Amazon would charge you shouldn’t have any ethical concerns. You bought something in good faith, Microsoft, the only people qualified to tell you whether what you had was genuine, implicitly told you it was and now are acting like jackasses.
If the software is time limited, or limited in some other way, it should tell you (in the way that, for example, MS Office home and student edition tells you in the window title or beta software has a ‘time to run’ indicator).
If OTOH you paid £20 for Win 7 ultimate then it’s a different matter.
Microsoft is not at blame. The con-artist took advantage of an oversight on MS’s part to steal money from people. If your friend reported the con-artist to the police, they may be able to track the developer account back to the thief, or at least to confirm that your friend was stolen from officially, so that he could ask his credit card company to refund the cash. And of course he should file a report to eBay about the scammer.
Turning around and ripping off Microsoft is entirely unjustifiable, though.
Eventually, your friend will realise that using Microsoft software falls into the too hard to bother category. If he he’s reasonably affluent he will start buying Macs, if not he’ll start using linux. The world will continue to spin, and he will be happy.
For the time being, he may well rationalise that he bought the software and checked it was legitimate and if Microsoft’s licensing is so complicated that he couldn’t tell there was a problem then that’s not his problem. Running hacked Microsoft software is apparently no harder than running unhacked Microsoft software - that is, almost as hard as using linux (but much less rewarding), and much more painful than using a Mac.
Microsoft seems to have a standardized download page. Apparently they just changed it, to look a little bit more pretty, but the general design was and still is:
FULLY IDENTIFYING NAME AND VERSION OF PRODUCT
Description description description description description description description description description description description description description description description description description description description description description description description description description description description description description
[ Download ]
I’d very much doubt that, if it was a developer version, it didn’t say “Windows 7 for Windows Application Developers” or something along those lines, and then go on to explain how it was a version for developing new Windows products on before the true release of Windows 7.
That is clearly labelled. But, just because something is clearly labelled doesn’t mean that the reader understands the ramifications. Your average person sees different versions of Windows like Professional, Students, Enterprise, etc. So far as everyone but an IT guy is concerned, those are basically all the same thing except for the price. If you see a “developers” version, and you aren’t a developer, there’s a decent chance that you’ll think that it’s a version of Windows tweaked for programmers – which doesn’t matter to you so long as it lets you install programs, run IE, and has a Start button.
But he isn’t really ‘turning round’ and ripping off MS.
MS implicitly old him that he had a good product and explicitly cleared it for use (by activating it), thus closing off the path for him to get recompense from the person who sold it to him.
If they have to bear the loss it might encourage them not to dish out false information to people that will result in their facing a loss months down the line when MS eventually get their act together.
When you activate a product it should explicitly tell you about any limitations that are in place so that MS are doing their bit to make life more difficult for the rip-off merchants.
MS didn’t implicitly tell him anything; if he’d have read the product information page, they’d have explicitly told him what the terms of use and limitations are. I’ve never seen a Microsoft page without the accompanying legalese.
False information? Where are you getting that from? It cleared because it was a valid product with a valid purpose - getting W7 out to developers until the final version could go retail and then giving them time to switch products. Just because some scammer switched the labels doesn’t make it MS’ fault.
And MS didn’t get any money in this transaction, so cracking it would be theft.
It’s all very well standing on the ‘letter of the law’ but MS made a big thing about activation being a big step forward in helping people be sure that they were running legitimate copies of MS software. As I said before, but you have ignored, most MS software makes it very clear if it is some for special purpose or time limited. The fact that didn’t make that clear on activation (as they have done on every piece of time limited software I’ve used) is just incompetence of their part.
MS were the ones who left the door open by not taking the perfect opportunity to let the user know he had been sold illegitimate software and morally, if not legally, I feel they should take at least a share of the loss.
Hell, it’s the corporations who get to define ‘stealing’ in this arena anyway. Copyright laws are the way they are because there’s a shitload of money on one side of the scale, and a body politic that mostly doesn’t even think about the issue on the other side. A slam dunk.
OK, I suppose it’s possible that it was made clear and he just didn’t notice or, worse, ignored it, in which case the blame falls completely on his or her own shoulders.
If you think the intent of the Constitution (“limited time”) is not present in the current copyright laws due to such corruption, could you justify civil disobedience?
It was legitimate software. It was a legitimate developer’s test copy and it remained active until it expired. It was not real in the sense that it wasn’t a typical home-users licence, but as far as Microsoft is concerned it was a legitimate developer’s test copy at the time of activation and registration.
That doesn’t address the fact that they took no steps to act in a responsible manner and ensure that the user was made aware of this (assuming that OP did not omit to mention some message to that effect) but effectively aided the scammer by keeping this information from said user until it was too late for him to do anything about it.
Incorrect. Exact terms of use are spelled out in the End User License Agreement (EULA). You have to click on the box saying that you have read and understood the EULA before activation takes place. Whether the user ignores it is the users fault just like with any other legal contract.
Yes, agreed it would be nice if at activation the user gets a personalized message detailing the activation terms. There are a lot of different ones like the developer edition, license allows for 2 home use, can make a backup, has upgrade rights or not, etc.
There’s no need to address the fact. Microsoft is under no obligation to stop people from violating their licensing terms. You’re obligated not to violate them.
If I leave my door unlocked and wide open with cash visible on the kitchen table, you’re still 100% responsible if you walk in and steal it. My failure to secure my cash in no way absolves you of responsibility for your actions.
This isn’t to say that the OP necessarily did something wrong when he bought it and ran it for six months. But now he’s asking for moral permission to crack it because MS de-activated it since it was a (now expired) developer release. The OP thinks that MS’s failure to tell him that he got scammed entitles him to a normal license to Windows 7.
He bought it off eBay, which is always sketchy where anything licensable is in question. Caveat emptor.