Whether strictly legal or not it's very unlikely to cause any complaints. For instance this would pass a BSA audit with flying colors as all they'll be interested in is installed_copies < licensed_copies.

Though it's very likely to be a very bad idea anyway. As has been pointed out elsewhere a large majority of such activation disabled software is loaded with rootkits and other malware.

If you've bought a Windows 7 kit and your DVD got damaged, you could copy a friend's disc or use one downloaded from work off technet / software assurance / msdn.

The point is that it's OK from a legal point of view, as long as you use your original serial number for the same windows edition.

I 'swapped' discs back when Windows 7 SP1 came out. I got the update off SA and the updated ISOs as well.

Should you have to prove you actually bought a license of that OS, you should have

a) the invoice & warranty papers of the computer it came preinstalled on and being used on - if preinstalled; possibly the restore disc as well if there is one b) the invoice, the original (damaged or not) disc and the box of the original windows kit - if bought separately as a windows install kit

Those are required to prove that you're the rightful owner of that Windows kit. I don't know if you can resell a PC with Windows on it.

Microsoft is very silly to make people jump through so many hoops. Especially when the pirates enjoy a better service.

Also, they should offer downloads to people who got the OS preinstalled on their machines. Apple is giving people this serice under the form of network restore since 10.7.

IANAL, so talk to one if this information is of more than theoretical interest to you, but the Psystar case makes me believe it would not be legal. Courts seem to take a copy-centric view of things, so an illegal copy can only make more legal copies and a legal copy can only come from a legal copy.

So the pirate version would always be pirated in the judge's eyes, even if you had paid for a license for a legit copy as well. They won't let you use the legal license you acquired to cover a pirate copy. Or something like that, anyhow. There are always lots of funny little details that can make a big difference when dealing with law.

I'm not sure how applicable Psystar would be to an individual making a copy from an illegal one. Psystar was making copies of Mac OSX and then selling them. Even if it was buying licenses, it was making and selling copies. If this was one person doing it on their own PC, I'm not sure how different that is in the eyes of the law.

I have no idea whether it's technically legal, actually. But I'm working off two premises: 1. The author doesn't care about legality, since he's finally resorting to piracy anyway. 2. The author would like to compensate MS for the use of a Windows license. If those are true, then buying a copy but actually using a pirate copy does what the author wants.

Eh, the author wants to pay MS money for the product, but also to be able to use the product without jumping through a bunch of stupid pointless frustrating hoops.

MS insists these hoops are needed.

The author, after years of giving MS money and jumping through hoops decides to stop giving them money, and stop jumping through the hoops.

The author is trying to tell MS, in the post and with the lost sale, that the anti-piracy measures are totally counter-productive, and have pushed a paying customer into a pirate.

The author says:

>"if I have to go through the hassle of pirating it to get a working copy, I will not be paying for it"

Yet his whole argument up to then has been how much easier 'pirating' the OS is. In short he just doesn't want to pay.

If it were about ease of use he'd send them the money somehow.

I think what they are saying is that while it may not be legal, it is at least ethical -- so long as you've paid for as many copies as you are using.

in the US? almost certainly not, just like how ripping your own dvd's is technically illegal under the dmca.

also, based on my own experience, you can activate windows 7 on multiple computers with the same key just fine (got 1 key through msdnaa, wanted to get another to replace my academic home premium because i needed/wanted the backup functionality and xp mode. but when it took my schools msdnaa admin more than a week to respond, i just used the key i already had. at some point i'm sure i'll switch over to the new key that i eventually i got, but i don't see a reason to do that until windows starts hassling me).