[Tfug] Microsoft's Mad Anti-Piracy Campaign

[Jon]

> I'll agree that's a good lesson from the story, but I think it's also entirely
> possible that 8 out of 80 is simply error.  Granted that's 10% of their
> machines, but I'd be much more inclined to chalk that up to accidental use
> than if, for example, 60% of their machines were using unlicensed copies.

True. I've worked places where people take the liberty of reinstalling
their OS and putting all the extras on there without asking anyone.

>
> In my view, the proper procedure here, if you REALLY care about legal copies,
> is to tell them to register or else.  At only eight machines, I'm sure they
> would comply.  I didn't see anything in the article to explain how the
> interaction went.  It seems as if the BSA just called up Ball and fined them
> $90K without first asking for compliance.

A $90K fine is truely ridiculous.

>
> MS just used them as an example.  In this case, they didn't really care about
> compliance.

I wouldn't blame this completely on MS. The BSA is backed by Adobe, MS,
Apple and other software vendors. As a supporter of the BSA these
companies should be involved in every case of piracy and work with the
people to comply (which is basically what you said in the first
paragraph).


Jon