Imposing a requirement on developers to accomodate pirates by creating two version of a service pack is burdensome on the vendor. If they know which copies are pirated, they would be within their rights to disable the product completely - thereby rendering it secure. ;-)

However, back in the real world, I would wager that the majority of people who use pirated copies of Windows are either fairly technically competant and/or are supported by such in the case of family and friends. As such, those installations are either patched with hotfixes or will be allowed the SP2 upgrade via a hack that will no doubt circulate within a week of the final release of SP2. They want to show off their technical skills and won't let something like viruses and worms ruin their "reputation"...

There will be no army of unpatched pirate copies of the OS wreaking havoc on the internet. That is not to say that there won't be a significant number of unpatched pirated copies, simply that the percentage of unpatched machines will in all likelihood be much smaller with the pirated population versus the legitimate population.

While this is an interesting and well-presented article, I fear the engery is wasted on a non-issue in this case. I look forward to the next as this writer typically has an intriguing slant on things.

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Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/columns/243/26324#26324