My experience has been the opposite of this story summary. Have a 2 year old Dell (warranty expired) that needed Windows (XP Media Center) reloaded on it. Two weeks ago I look for the CDs and couldn't find them, realized they never came with the system. Googled around to this page[1] and ordered the recovery disks. Free of charge. Arrived 2 days later.

At least for Dell this appears to be a non-story.

[1]http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dellcare/en/backupcd_form?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&redirect=1

And at Hacker News: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=558365