don't underestimate the abilities of the hackers...
"Hackers" work on both sides of that fence.
Don't underestimate the determination of either side.
MS is trying to battle an unbeatable monster...
On the contrary, MS is raising their defensive posture to something that
matches
mainstream approaches. You don't have to battle monsters to create
incentives for
them to go somewhere else.
The solution was not to take more antipiracy measures... rather
to create a new strategy that includes generosity.
The solution exists in both directions, becoming more generous in front will
not stop
pirates from trying to take what they can off the side. Making piracy
harder on the
platform also sends a message to other software companies that face the same
issues.
I have no doubt that the spread of windows 95 and 98 on computers
was mostly due to that it could be copied easily... in the long run MS
made big bucks out of the global expansion of windows... YES, Piracy made
them rich.
They may well have benefited in the short term from that, but they have paid
the
price over the long term for allowing that attitude to persist. They lost
far more
in time, effort, and credibility in having to fight the continued spread of
the OS
and associated products. Piracy did not make them rich, it added to the
marketshare
in ways that do not translate back to the bottom line, and do not make a
reliable
accounting of the actual state of the industry.
Yet this simple fact seems to elude them.. they will gain
nothing from all this battle.. if they continue they will lose everything.
The facts do not elude them, the fact that piracy of XP volume license keys
far
exceeded the spread of previous versions of Windows did not elude them
either.
Situations change, and the need and interest to provide security for their
products as
well as within thier products has also changed since the early days of
Win9x.
MS is not accountable to the pirates, they are (want to be seen as)
accountable to
their customers, business partners, developers, beta testers; and yes, their
shareholders.
For every hacker who desires a workaround to get Windows Vista, and programs
that will run
on Vista, for free; there are many other people who desire a computer that
the can see as being
more secure and protected from exploit than the previous versions.
Securing the programs that
run on that platform is part of that process; and an operating system is
made up of the first line of
programs developed with that platform in mind.