Lucky Green vs. Palladium

CodeTrap writes "Wired has an interesting story "Can a Hacker Outfox Microsoft" on a fellow named Lucky Green that is attempting to force the issue surrounding MS's Palladium Gambit using a very creative method involving patents. If his patents are granted, MS will be unable to use Palladium to enforce software licensing. If MS challenges his patent, then we all know thier true intentions. Very clever indeed."

Comments

What's more amazing to me

[Fritz Benwalla]

"Though this may be the first instance of a cypherpunk filing a defensive patent to prevent software anti-piracy efforts, it's a relatively common tactic in the area of industrial patents. "

...is that Wired is still using terms like cypherpunk.

Stupid question:

[Krapangor]

Why shouldn't Microsoft be allowed to enforce software licensing ?
Yes we all love free software blablabla... but MS Windows, MS Office & co are their intellectual property and they should be free to do with it what they want. If they want to charge zillions of bucks, then that's ok. They may. It's their software.
When you want other people to respect that you give software away for free via the GPL, then you must grant other people the right to charge money, too.
This open advocacy for pirate copies is a bad thing. Declaring crimes as "minor incidents" via public opinion dictatorship undermines to morale of the society and the goverment as a whole. Stuff like this is the reason for Enrons of this world.

Re:i think

[bizitch]

Actually alot of those copies of non activated product are simply ISO's of product from the MSDN subscription. Some of my favorite ROMz are things like keyless 2000 server and keyless 2000 office pro premium etc ...