Lying to Microsoft for Fun and Profit
David Coursey’s article on ZDnet continues his (justified) tirade against Microsoft’s new copy-protection schemes. I can’t help wondering why Microsoft is doing this. This sort of copy protection seems like a last-ditch effort by a desperate company to squeeze out every drop of revenue they can while their customer base lasts.
Why would Microsoft need to do anything like this? They’re Microsoft. They have every chance of being the majority OS vendor for many more years, and they can set their prices wherever they please.
Microsoft may have a few justice department issues left, but they certainly aren’t in enough trouble to act out like this.
This may just be paranoia, but I have to wonder if there’s another reason. Perhaps they’re planning on making a grand gesture and changing their tune at the last minute for the positive PR. Maybe they’re planning on licensing this technology to more desperate companies. Or maybe it just looks good to shareholders.
Who knows, it’s probably just the kind of “lateral thinking” that Microsoft uses to come up with new ideas (such as Microsoft Bob), knowing that they can afford a few thousand mistakes.
Coursey’s article goes on to suggest (tongue firmly in cheek) that everyone call Microsoft and lie to get more licenses. Perhaps this will work better than he imagines – between the “liars” and the legitimate complaints, Microsoft will spend more on phone support than they ever lost on piracy. Hopefully they’ll change their tune quickly.