Trolling4Dollars's Journal: An Open Journal to Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer

Bill and Steve,

I know you guys have a lot on your plate with Windows right now, but I thought I would try and make your life a little easier by solving the piracy problem for you. I've worked out a plan to completely put an end to piracy of Microsoft products and it's just a modification of your current licensing scheme!

Ever since you guys moved to using Windows registration combined with license keys, you've certainly put somewhat of a roadblock to piracy in place. But, people are still pirating Windows. You know that and I know that. I think part of the problem is that you guys were a little soft on the issue. If you really want to stop piracy of your products try this:

1. Keep track of every one of those codes in a database
2. Require that all Windows machines have an always on or "phone home" connection to the internet. No internet? No Windows.
3. Disable a Windows installation if any one of those codes was not generated by MS, thereby destroying all registration key generators
4. Disable multiple Windows installations if there are duplicate registration codes/software keys
5. Get rid of Volume License Key versions of Windows
6. Require users with disabled copies of Windows to buy a new registration key at the full price of a new copy of Windows. This can be extended to people who originally had pirated copies so that they don't lose the data they have on that machine.

These simple changes would most assuredly end Windows OS piracy because it would no longer be possible for people to install Windows on multiple systems without MS's knowledge. This is good because it would end piracy as we know it today. This could be extended to MS software such as Office as well. People would complain but that doesn't really matter as the end goal is to end piracy. Or is it???

UPDATE: I will note that no one seems to want to touch this topic with a ten foot pole. Is it because no one really wants to stop piracy? Including the big companies that purport to loathe it? Is because a lot of you are afraid of being caught with a pirated copy of Windows or other Microsoft products? Is it because a lot of you don't want piracy to stop since it is how you acquire some or all of your software?

man, I can't even post, so don't blame me

[js7a]

maybe I can, someone gave me five upmods today. Let's see....

[tap, tap] Is this thing on?

[js7a]

Okay I can post, yeay!

I do have something to say about this: Microsoft doesn't actually want to stop piracy, because the extra homogenety which is bred through piracy is worth more to them for its locking-in effects, and as advertising, than the marginal revenue that they lose, because people who have no other recourse but to pirate are unlikely customers to begin with.

Somewhere in the internet someone figured out the marginal cost of piracy for Microsoft, and it was negative. I can't find the article

10 foot pole here :-)

[tomhudson]

Okey-dokey :-)

Microsoft has always been a net benefiter of piracy. It's what helped make them a monopoly, and "the" closed standard.

Now, as for the suggestion of destroying installations, etc - have you tried to see the difference between the "8" and the "B" (number 8 and letter Bee) on their microscopic stickers? Or "0" and "O" (zero and owe)? It's almost impossible to get it right on the first try with a legit product.

Also, there are laws against destroying computer data that you don't own, so it's re

Re:10 foot pole here :-)

[Trolling4Dollars]

Actually, that reminds me of something I forgot to put in my JE above. The Windows installation shouldn't be destroyed, just locked and inaccessible. If the user (regardless of whether they have a pirated copy or not) wants to access the data again, they need to contact Microsoft and pay for a new registration key. The price should be the full cost of a brand new copy of Windows. After all, it was the user who was irresponsible about their key whether they were the pirate or their legit key was pirated

Re:10 foot pole here :-)

[Trolling4Dollars]

Oh yeah... thanks for posting. I just don't get why people aren't reacting negatively or positively to this particular JE. It's not like it's a subject that a lot of people discuss on Slashdot... is it some kind of fear? Weird.

Signature passing would have to be incorporated

[OldMiner]

As demonstrated by such things as VMWare and Soft-ICE, it's very possible to load executable code before Windows loads and prevent anything in Windows from seeing it with some effort. Further, an external level 2 device could intercept all attempts to communicate registration information and pretend to be the Microsoft server. As such, one would have to be certain to utilize a public/private key encryption scheme to ensure that they were always talking to a legitimate Microsoft server.

But this then int

Re:Signature passing would have to be incorporated

[Trolling4Dollars]

Well... I'm not really trolling. When I first started using PCs, I came from the Mac and Atari worlds. I was used to shareware and freeware and had a lot of it. When I moved to the PC it was a lot harder to find freeware (1994) and most of the shareware was too expensive for it's actual usefulness. I wasn't going to pay $30 just so I could use my modem to dial out to BBSs with a crappy DOS shareware package. I was used to a very functional GUI based terminal program (Flash) on my Atari that cost me $1

Re:Signature passing would have to be incorporated

[OldMiner]

...(1994) and most of the shareware was too expensive...$30 just so I could use my modem to dial out to BBSs with a crappy DOS shareware package. I was used to a very functional GUI based terminal program (Flash) on my Atari that cost me $19.

Never tried {Commo}? I know I was using it in 1993. Well worth the $40 registration fee, worked very well with screen readers, quite customizable, but with a very intuitive friendly default interface. Of course, one could make his own menus and cryptic key combos

Re:Signature passing would have to be incorporated

[zedmelon]

But, at that time I was still not to cognicent of the rules of shareware and thought that I could keep using it for free, not realizing that it was an honor system. Once I realized that, I dumped all of my shareware and found that... I had very few programs left for my Windows PC.

Not trying to troll, but curious: You were using all these apps while you thought they were freeware (I also thought "shareware" meant "freeware" back then), so weren't some of them worth keeping once you learned you should've pa

Re:Signature passing would have to be incorporated

[Trolling4Dollars]

You are correct, I should have been a little clearer on that. There were SOME shareware programs that I DID keep while I was using windows. One of those was the original version of CDRWIN by Goldenhawk technologies. The other was CoolEdit (not the Pro version which is now Adobe Audition). They were nagware/shareware. And while I'm remembering back... ACDSee (an image viewer) was another keeper. But back then it was rare that most shareware was worth the cost. Since I haven't used shareware in a long

Bad motivation?

[Ahnteis]

I assume your goal here is to promote a registration system so draconian that people will move to linux to escape it? If that's the only reason for moving to linux, linux needs serious work.