...taxes pay for things from which enable Amazon to have a business at all. Amazon can sell books to us because we're a reasonably literate population. They can get stuff distributed because we have a good road / rail network which is maintained. We have mechanisms in place to dispose of the masses of card packaging that Amazon use. We have employees who are kept reasonably healthy by the NHS (I'll understand if American readers are confused on this point - we have a decent health care system, America doesn't). All of these are the result, essentially, of taxpayer-funded state investment. So, by not paying taxes, Amazon are benefiting directly from such investment without contributing to it which, I would argue, is unfair and parasitical. I saw a great suggestion recently which was that if all of these anti-tax companies really wanted to put their money where their mouths are, they would set up shop in some crummy backward little country that doesn't bother with taxes and consequently has very little in the way of infrastructure, health, literacy etc. That's what small (or no) government gets you. If they decide they'd rather do business somewhere more advanced, they can damn well pay their fair share for the upkeep of the place.

I don't think fighting lawlessness with lawlessness brings any great moral credit to anyone. The British courts are perfectly capable of delivering justice, but reckless twits on the Internet seem to be happy to jeopardise this prospect. I repeat - this isn't going to help.

This won't help things, and is quite likely to make taking any sort of legal action against NI through the proper channels difficult or impossible. (in interests of transparency and honesty, I posted the "Noooo!" comment above while not logged in...)

I have friends who work for FreeStyleGames. They found out last night via the Internet that they were probably going to be made redundant today. In my humble opinion, that kind of treatment from Activision is pretty disgraceful.

No it doesn't. The Earth is rotating and this may be demonstrated by experiment, ergo it cannot be said to be at rest. You can argue that one inertial frame of reference is as good as any other, but the Earth is not an inertial frame.

I usually vote the way PZ Myers tells me to.

sudo echo "Cowboy Neal" > /etc/shadow
Simple, quick and effective.

From the article:

After the first activation, SecuROM requires that it re-check with the server within ten days (in case the CD Key has become public/warez'd and gets banned). Just so that the 10 day thing doesn't become abrupt, SecuROM tries its first re-check with 5 days remaining in the 10 day window. If it can't contact the server before the 10 days are up, nothing bad happens and the game still runs. After 10 days a re-check is required before the game can run.

I don't see a suggestion that it dials home every 10 days, just within 10 days of initial activation to check that the activation key isn't compromised. Am I missing something?