said by psloss:
Unless Microsoft can disable XP's built-in firewall on pirated copies, those can protect themselves from worms like Sasser by using it.
Well, at least psloss makes a reasonable point.
Many of you others seem to be ignoring blacksurfer's concise, very valid point -- "THIS IS EXACERBATING THE PROBLEM".
In my opinion it was always rather stupid of MS to deny updates to pirated copies, for exactly this reason, which a lot of people saw coming (and discussed) a mile away.
1. MS does not have the, er, most admirable security history.
2. MS claimed a new security initiative, top priority, blah blah blah.
3. MS KNOWS FULL WELL that thousands (millions) of copies of all its software are pirated, and in many cases actively, if selectively, polices that. In addition they KNOW FULL WELL that people have gotten around their WPA protections in many cases. (It can easily be argued that one big factor to MS's overall success is the initial and continued widespread piracy of things like Office, but that's another thread.)
4. MS intentionally cuts off pirates (or more significantly, innocent users who MAY NOT KNOW that their vendor or geek has installed pirated software) from both feature AND security updates. This is petty and wrong, if ONLY because of MS's overwhelming dominance on the desktop and the Internet.
Does it cost MS extra bandwidth they are NOT obligated to provide? Sure, but that's a rather petty reason to provide yet ANOTHER path that allows UNCHECKED propagation of worms and spam and such.
I would not be entirely averse to MS tracking down those who try to get updates with pirated copies, but to refuse them entirely is bad policy.
No, I don't use or condone pirated copies of any software (that's why I root for free and "Free" alternatives for the cheapskates among us). Also, if you're a stickler you can replace "pirated" with "copyright infringed" all through the above -- I'm far too lazy for that.
-- B