MS, please stop futile pestering
I gave up on Windows a long time ago. However, there is a couple of residual tasks for which Windows remains useful. Therefore, I retain a copy of Windows 7 professional to run in a virtual machine on Linux. Needless to say, my copy of Windows 7 is unofficial. I also keep a copy of Windows 10, upgraded from unofficial Windows 7, merely to check from time to time on how this consumerism orientated spyware monster is progressing.
To start with, I took the trouble to use tools purporting to 'activate' Windows but these didn't provide a long term fix. Now I ignore the mildly irritating pop-ups begging for activation and the occasional dire warning that my copy of Windows is malware; the latter offers Hobson's choice: stick with honest malware or move over to Microsoft malware. It was obvious years ago that Microsoft would never go further than offering irritation because attempts to wholly disable an unregistered copy would go badly awry should software error wrongly identify a legitimate copy as unregistered: think in terms of litigation by a corporate user to recover consequential damages.
So, given that as always Microsoft is awash with money, now more so than usual, why continue irritating people who clearly have no intention of spending money on bloated software they only occasionally use? Indeed, why charge anyone for copies of desktop Windows? The Microsoft business model has gravitated toward providing cloud-based subscription services and vending products from 'trusted partners'. In which case, the base operating system is little more than a marketing platform and enabler for running acquired software. Not only can Microsoft vend its own services but also it can charge 'rent' to other providers of services. Additionally, thereby a source of anger to legitimate users can be removed: the registration process makes fresh installation overly complicated and is source of frustration to users needing to re-install on devices shipped with a copy of Windows.
Microsoft has already gone down that path with respect to Visual Studio. Sensibly, a complete version is available free of charge to individual users; most of these outside corporate environments would have been using unofficial copies anyway unless they desperately needed subscription to additional resources for developers. Now Microsoft vends only two versions these with facilities easing collaboration among small and very large teams respectively.
Indeed, that is an inevitable route for all personal computer software and for digitally encoded culture in general. Copyright can no longer protect would-be monopoly interests. Digital sequences can be copied perfectly and distributed at negligible cost. It follows that such 'products', no matter their cost of creation, have zero intrinsic monetary value because there can be no scarcity. Ubiquity means there cannot be market price-discovery. Digital goods continue to be sold as luxury items within a fantasy market where price is whatever one can gull people into paying. Even this supposed market lacks price-discovery because monopoly powers intervene.
Response to this fact of modern life is ever more complicated futile attempts to plug holes enabling so-called 'infringement'. The draft EU copyright amending legislation is a mare's nest of nonsense predicated upon the false assumption that 'content', of itself, holds monetary value in the same manner as physical goods.
It should be borne in mind that all this has nothing to do with protecting earnings of creative individuals. The intent is to prop-up the income of price-gouging intermediaries between creators and people admiring/using their output. Middleman distributors take the lions' share, and more, of income generated.
Genuinely creative people, and production teams, would better be served in absence of both copyright and the plethora of middlemen. The Internet enables direct contact, with relatively little overhead, between creators and those enjoying their works. Instead of attempting to sell that which cannot, other than by twisted logic, be sold, creative output would be distributed on the basis that if one wants more one ought contribute to the upkeep of its creator. 'Price' is replaced by invitation to contribute. Means of contribution include crowd-funding, patronage, subscription, one-off donation, provision of bespoke added-value for a fee, and sale of associated goods and services.
Note that in a sense, Netflix's offer of 'all you can eat' from its stock for a modest subscription is in essence solely the added-value of a curated catalogue together with reliable digital distribution; with a time and effort everything in Netflix's catalogue could be obtained free of charge from unofficial sources.
Demise of copyright by substitution of 'entitlement to attribution' would benefit truly creative people immensely. 'Derivation' is the engine of creativity, yet copyright forbids it until a long time has passed. Vibrant culture demands immediacy of unrestricted derivation (but with attribution).
Biting the hand that feeds IT
