Well, Jim, of course you realize I was only quoting the article. I wasn't picking an arguement. But if you want to digress to a moot discussion: I guess your ethic is that anything is okay as long as you don't get caught? Seems to be a common justification these days. <s>

Seriously,

1) It's not a question of whether the licensing agreement is "fair." So far as I've been reading the Courts, until recently, have often disallowed shrink wrap licensing as constituting meaningful contractual agreement. But, more often it is being accepted. BTW, ACM as an organization does a good job reporting on legal sorts of issues surrounding our profession.

2) I'm not going warrant or even be able to smile at someone hacking an EXE of mine. If they own the source code, that's one thing. But otherwise, no, it can only cause serious business liabilities (just as a start).

3) Wrapping someone's EXE is one thing. Hacking the EXE is...well, hacking.