Post by Axel BergerPost by 98 GuyHe probably doesn't know that someone would offer him access to a
complete, free Office 2000 premium download.
Free, or stolen?
See, you people have a flawed idea how this works.
You're treating software like it was "real property".
You never own software (certainly not Micro$haft's software).
You purchase a license to use it. And you rarely purchase the license
directly from Microsoft - but from a reseller.
Once Microsoft receives payment for a license, they cease to have any
interest in that license. Sure, they stipulate that you can't share the
licence, they've gone so far as to perform on-line validation for
software released in and after 2002 to insure that the same license
can't be in used to perform more than one install (with volume licenses
being a special excemption).
But you people have to wrap your heads around this fact:
Microsoft sold X licenses for Product ABC. Doesn't matter what X is.
Doesn't matter what ABC is. In this case, ABC happens to be Office 2000
Premium.
I have no idea what X is, but it's a very good bet that there are
probably only 10% of installations of Office 2k still in use compared to
the number of licenses for Office 2K sold.
Does it matter to Meekro$oft if I post a link to download the Office 2K
CD's? Of course not. The media itself is not the issue.
What Milkro$oft would arguably have an interest in is if there is more
active (in-use) installations of Office 2k in use AT ANY GIVEN TIME
(say, like RIGHT NOW) than they have ever sold licenses for.
I would make the case that in terms of Office 2k, or Windows 98 (or any
pre-Vista version of Windows) that it doesn't matter how much rampant
and uncontrolled "sharing" of product keys is happening OR COULD HAPPEN
today. It doesn't matter because (in my opinion) the number of active
in-use installations of those older products TODAY would NOT exceed the
number of licences that MS sold for those products.
So MS could not make any case of being financially harmed if I posted,
and someone else then used, any product keys for products older than,
say, 6 years.
Think of software like books (or a vinyl music record, etc).
A book is a copyrighted work. A publisher might print a run of 10,000
copies of a given book. Each physical book that you buy is really a
license. Once those 10,000 books are bought (by retailers most likely)
the publisher has become "disconnected" from those books and their
associated license. There are now 10,000 licenses for those books out
in the public. The publisher has no idea who has which book / license -
for practical reasons they don't have to know. They've been paid for
those 10,000 licenses when the books came off the printing press so
they're happy. If, over time, 9,000 of those books simply disappear
(discarded, physically destroyed, etc) then what is the harm to the
publisher if someone who has possession of one of the remaining 1,000
books can conjure up a copy to give to someone else? What is the harm
in doing that when the publisher no longer prints that book -> and never
will print that book ever again?
You people ought to treat Office 2000, or Windows 98, as examples of
books that have gone out of print, by a publisher that hasn't published
them for a number of years and WILL NEVER PUBLISH THEM AGAIN. Any work
where something like that happens (be it a book, or a piece of software)
should be treated as if it has fallen into the public domain, where
individuals can do with those works as they please -> but that does not
necessarily mean they can re-sell copies (licenses) of the work in a
retail marketplace (at least not legally).
Only the copyright holder is entitled to make money by selling licenses
for any given work. But nobody should ever be penalized for sharing a
license for a work that has "gone out of print".
Now in terms of software, we can spiral down the intellectual road and
begin the circular argument that if old software continues to be
relavent and useful today, then why is it that a company like Macro$haft
keeps re-engineering it's OS ecosystem to force the obselesence (by way
of engineering incompatibility) into it's newer products?
I would argue that we, as consumers, are not served by the lack of easy
access to the "defunct" or discarded licenses of old software. Because
if we were, then companies like Micro$haft would be FORCED to really
inovate and create new products that are compelling enough so that it
would a clear choice to BUY the licence for the new product vs REUSE
(even hypothetically reuse) the license for the old product.
But because Microsoft is an illegal monopoly, they can't even tolerate
competition even when it's with their own older products. So they
simply stop making the older products available. You, the consumer,
have no choice.
Or you didn't - until the internet and anonymous file-access came
along...