Microsoft's Stance on Piracy Affects Us All

Microsoft's Stance on Piracy Affects Us All
Oliver Day, 2008-11-14

For the last few years, Microsoft has wrestled with their stance on piracy. Pirated operating systems are just like legitimate operating systems in terms of their exposure to vulnerabilities: Users must install patches or they will be compromised.

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Microsoft's Stance on Piracy Affects Us All 2008-11-14
Anonymous

I disagree with the recommendation. If people didn't pirate the OS in the first place (or just ran Linux and avoid this whole situation) we wouldn't have to worry about trying to patch those systems. It is not in MS's interest to not put Genuine checks in there update system or to just give out free...

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Microsoft's Stance on Piracy Affects Us All 2008-11-14
Anonymous

Have you actually done any investigation for this article? Security patches are free to download from Microsoft's site, with no need for license checks. So, basically, half your article is pointless.

The other half, on the other hand, is a good point - the one about stealth WGA 'updates'. Lots of...

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Microsoft's Stance on Piracy Affects Us All 2008-11-15
Anonymous (1 replies)

Quote: "Whether Microsoft likes it or not, they are responsible for all the machines which use their operating system."

Microsoft is responsible for systems that have illegal, possibly trojan laden copies of it's OS? Are you serious? Name another company which is responsible for supporting stolen...

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Re: Microsoft's Stance on Piracy Affects Us All 2008-11-28
Anonymous

Quote: "Microsoft is responsible for systems that have illegal, possibly trojan laden copies of it's OS? Are you serious? Name another company which is responsible for supporting stolen..."

I don't like much Microsoft and the DRM stuff (and prefer to use Linux and NetBSD,) but I have to agree tha...

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Microsoft's Stance on Piracy Affects Us All 2008-11-17
Anonymous

This has what to do with computer security? Place is losing relevance....

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Microsoft's Stance on Piracy Affects Us All 2008-11-17
NickMax (1 replies)

While I would like everyone to be patched, I think Microsoft has the right to treat real customers different from non-customers. Imagine you have a store and have to put technicians to repair items bought in "another" store......

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Re: Microsoft's Stance on Piracy Affects Us All 2008-11-20
Name another company which is responsible for supporting stolen... (1 replies)

"Imagine you have a store and have to put technicians to repair items bought in "another" store"
= straw man argument
= (possible) slippery slope argument...

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Re: Re: Microsoft's Stance on Piracy Affects Us All 2008-11-20
Anonymous (1 replies)

Would you disagree that Microsoft has hard costs in the terms of bandwidth and computational resources to deliver the updates?...

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Re: Re: Re: Microsoft's Stance on Piracy Affects Us All 2008-11-21
Oliver

I would disagree that they have substantial additional costs in terms of bandwidth since they are already delivering patches via auto update. Also as another commenter has noted they can download via the main website as well....

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Microsoft's Stance on Piracy Affects Us All 2008-11-18
Anonymous

I have to agree with the above poster, the author seems to have an inherent bias to any form of DRM and is simply applying it to the commercial software vendor that everyone loves to hate. The notion that a company is responsible for maintaining stolen products is ridiculous, yet he makes the asser...

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Microsoft's Stance on Piracy Affects Us All 2008-11-20
Anonymous (1 replies)

"AutoUpdate is already a slower method of obtaining updates -- compared to manual downloading ..."

I agreed with most of what you said up to this paragraph. I do not know what you mean by this.

Most ordinary users I know will probably get a new computer before they manually download a patch. ...

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Re: Microsoft's Stance on Piracy Affects Us All 2008-11-21
Oliver

I mean that autoupdate is a passive patch mechanism versus the web based system. I agree that there are some users who likely would not download a patch without the automated download from AU. This is why slipping WGA into that stream of updates seems like a particularly bad idea to me....

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Microsoft's Stance on Piracy Affects Us All 2008-11-20
Rob Harmer PCProfile

Microsoft have lost the plot on piracy - for years they have tried a myriad of different ways to control it and WGA keeps bobbing up time and time again on machines that have ALREADY been validated and proven to be legit. Given the amount of telemetry data they gather from the GUID that phones home ...

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Microsoft's Stance on Piracy Affects Us All 2008-11-21
Anonymous

This thread sounds like complaints from users of pirated and unsecured systems, because unpatched systems will always exist, but other than nuisance traffic and DDOS attacks, patched systems that are operate in a secure manner shouldn't be unduly affected. "Users must install patches or they will be...

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Microsoft responsible for thieves? 2008-11-21
Firewallbill

So if someone breaks into my house, steals my car, runs someone down - I'm responsible? Is Toyota responsible for drunk drivers who kill?
If someone robs a bank, buys drugs and kills someone is the bank responsible? Is the FED?
I find absolutely no logic in this column - it's a disgrace to Securi...

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Microsoft's Stance on Piracy Affects Us All 2008-11-24
Anonymous (1 replies)

I totally disagree with this article.

So, a person who runs an illegal copy of Windows XP or Vista gets infected. Big deal. It happened because of their action of installing the pirated operating system.

Wow! They can't get all the security updates! Boo-Hoo!

They get infected. It serves the...

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Re: Microsoft's Stance on Piracy Affects Us All 2008-11-27
Philip Kerrigan

Really? So you never get spam mail, you never get probed for vulnerabilities?

I think you have missed the point of the article that says "affects us all". The author is not concerned about the user of the pirated copy but about what that user's computer will then do to everybody else's when infec...

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Microsoft's Stance on Piracy Affects Us All 2008-11-26
Anonymous

a thief is still a thief, and Microsoft has no responsibility to support thievery. What is the possibility that people who already went to the length of stealing the operating system, are also involved with the other illegal activities on the Internet? I don't find WGA to be inconvenient and think t...

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