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:What we want to know...

[Simon Brooke]

If Linux is to succeed on the desktop, then third parties must be allowed to write closed-source applications for Linux.

In whose interest is it for Linux to 'succeed' on the desktop? It may be in the corporate interest of companies like IBM, RedHat and SuSE, but it isn't in our interest. When Linux becomes just another mainstream operating system it will no longer suit us, and we'll all have to find something else (HURD, perhaps, or xBSD - I'm just starting an experimental HURD install).

But no, my vote is that we do nothing whatever to encourage mainstream adoption of Linux. It is not in our interest.

...DEAD HORSE BEATS YOU

[yerricde]

It's old.

And you probably aren't as skilled as Yakov.

So stop making "Soviet Russia" jokes unless you can think of something original.