It seems MS has decided you are no longer able to make use of your fair use rights under the law if you use vista.
http://p2pnet.net/story/11671A single change to Vista's registry means it'll run for 12 months or more without being activated, says Windows expert Brian Livingston, the publisher of Windows Secrets, "Surprisingly, Microsoft has embedded into its new Vista operating system a feature that makes things easier than ever for true, mass software pirates," he says.
The Redmond company actually included in Windows XP a small file, Wpa.dbl, that makes it easy for pirates to create thousands of machines that validate perfectly.
Far from stopping software piracy, product activation has primarily been designed to prevent home users from installing one copy of Windows on a home machine and a personal-use copy on a laptop. As I explained in an article on Mar. 8, buying a copyrighted work and making another copy strictly for personal use is specifically permitted to consumers by the U.S. Copyright Act and the copyright laws of many other countries.
For example, courts have repeatedly ruled that consumers can make copies of copyrighted songs or television programs for personal use (not for distribution or resale). This principle is legally known as "fair use." The home edition of Microsoft Office 2007 reflects this principle, allowing consumers to activate three copies of a single purchased product. Microsoft Windows XP and Vista, however, allow only one activation.
What can we expect from MS who are not holding back in infesting their O/S with DRM enforcing technology that only hurts its users computing experience, and steals their rights in an underhand fashion.
Cheers to
p2p for sending me this one
