Using Spyware to Report Pirates?

An anonymous reader asks: "I have visibility to AUP complaints we receive at work, and we receive messages from a software vendor that make it obvious that their product is phoning home when it discovers it is running a cracked copy of itself." Apparently the software phones home, and then the publisher's legal department sends the administrator an e-mail. "The message goes on to detail the users IP, a timestamp, the product in question, the users PC name, username, and MAC address. This falls under -my- definition of 'spyware.' What are your thoughts?" Software has been making surreptitious checks for "piracy" for over a decade, yet these checks are usually limited to the software itself, and not data on the user's machine. Do you feel software publishers should have the right to peer into users data, if their software suspects foul play on the machine, or should it do the easy and intelligent thing and just stop working?

Comments

Re:why not?

[scottp1296]

Sounds like your father should have spent more time teaching you. Perhaps if you ever find out who he was, you two should spend some time together.

Re:What we want to know...

[NanoGator]

"Can Linux do this?"

Sure it can! All you have to do is learn how to program, read/understand the source code, and design, implement, and compile the app to do this.
I'd do it for ya, but I'm more interested in writing this Quake 3 stats calculator.

A few terms come to mind

[rahlquist]

Illegal search and seizure Illegal wiretap And.. Theft of services for stealing my bandwith

Re:Hey yanks -- ready to hear the truth?

[Overly Critical Guy]

Who started the pointing? Silly troll, you can do better.