George,

>Puts you one up on my, Mike. I still can't figure out what's being said. As close as I've come (and pardon me for over-simplifying) but...People are stealing the software. MS does something to curb that. Other people are pissed at MS for doing so. If that's right (and that's about the best I can make of it), I don't get it. I'd be pissed at the morally and ethically bankrupt people who are doing it (stealing the stoftware) in the first place.

At least three people (Steven, Jerry, and myself) have made the point that we are not against a company trying to stop what is essentially stealing (I agreed it is stealing, I agree now, and always will agree, just as I agree that giving another person an MP3 of a song without that person having license to the content is stealing). We take issue with the following:

- To stop piracy (which may or may not be as bad as "estimates" make out), MS is implementing more stringent processes and verbiage that can and do) make it harder for bona fide, paid-up, legitimate users to use the said software. If I change my hard drive and video card, by all accounts I have read, I will need to call MS to get a new registration number for my license to work on the "new" machine as Windows XP sees it. Even if this only takes five minutes for me to do, who is paying me for that lost time?

In another message I furthered this line of thought...one could argue that taking five extra minutes is a small price to pay to make the user community as a whole "more honest". It could be argued that a reduction in piracy should result in LOWERED software costs. But do you _really_ think that even if a study came out showing that ALL piracy had been eliminated that MS would start taking a few bucks off the licensing fee? MS is quick to use piracy estimates to legitimize more stringent registration practices and even to state that such rampant piracy leads to higher costs for everyone. But if piracy were reduced I can guarantee that they wouldn't use those same studies as justification to _reduce_ prices.

JoeK