I was naive about Windows Product Activation
Before Windows XP, installing a new copy of Windows was simple. You had a disc, and you had a product key you entered in the installer. Mildly inconvenient, but tolerable.
But Microsoft didn't like that, because it let you commit the heinous crime of buying one Windows disc and installing it on multiple computers! So with Windows XP they introduced "Product Activation", where your license key would be tied with a profile of your computer hardware and you would have to "activate" your product with Microsoft's servers to be able to use it.
Here's where the naivete comes in: at the time I thought "such a blatantly consumer-unfriendly 'feature' can't last. Once Microsoft realizes that people are just installing a crack to get around this, they'll backtrack for sure."
But that didn't happen, becuase people actually went along with it. To this day I see people willing to jump through hoops to ensure that their freshly installed Windows 10 system will "activate" correctly instead of just installing a crack.
News flash: If you pay for a product, you are entitled to use it. Microsoft, despite what they want you to believe, does not get to dictate what is and is not an acceptable way to use something you paid for. If you have a legitimate copy of Windows, you shouldn't feel like you need to prove it to Microsoft's satisfaction just to use your PC. What Microsoft does with "product activation" is essentially the same as those stores that ask you to show your receipt even when there's no reason to suspect you're shoplifting. Hint: I don't shop at stores like that anymore.
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Comments
I certainly don't
selling information is pretty tricky. like a lot of programmers i feel that intellectual property laws are a bad idea when the internet exists, but without IP laws Microsoft and others would have to change their business models a whole lot - providing services and tech help essentially - which is pretty hard and practically speaking probably not as profitable.
It would be nice to extend this to Win10.
the explanation from the consumer's POV would be to believe the author's/etc assertion that without the lock they would be unable to make enough money to support themselves. beyond the moral aspect, this would mean the only authors are people with money from elsewhere, and they wouldn't really have any obligation to write good books since they're not paid for that, and that all would be bad for the reading consumer since that's shitty books.
There only remains one copy of the book. To make the situation truly analogous, you'd have to uninstall Windows from your computer before installing it on a new computer.
there's nothing stopping you copying passages from or even photocopying entire books
i can see Microsoft's perspective on this but i don't see why anyone should feel obligated to put up with it when Windows makes stuff difficult
(i suspect the reason most people do has more to do with laziness than principle, though)
i say this as someone who pirates books all the time!
So far I've never needed to do so but the possibility remains.
Like after the glorious Libertarian upheaval where everyone gets guns and animals inexplicably start talking, libraries will still exist (despite no one paying any taxes) because of the randfather clause.