I also now remember that the best estimate of RIAA is that 40% of song "installations" are pirate copies. So there really is evidence for 50% pirated being a good working number. (No, don't give me the nonsense about how RIAA is lying through its teeth because it represents Big Music.)

I also saw a similiar figure from RIAA on a Yahoo! news article not long ago. I'm going to re-word my question I removed last night. Has any FS developer managed to effectively protect there products thus far? I don't want to know who, I'm just curious if there is a product that has managed to evade the thieves. I always enjoy seeing the pirates complain when they've spent hours stealing a product and it doesn't work. Gives me a temporary grin at least.

I also saw a similiar figure from RIAA on a Yahoo! news article not long ago. I'm going to re-word my question I removed last night. Has any FS developer managed to effectively protect there products thus far? I don't want to know who, I'm just curious if there is a product that has managed to evade the thieves. I always enjoy seeing the pirates complain when they've spent hours stealing a product and it doesn't work. Gives me a temporary grin at least.

See virtuali's posts #s 71, 75 and 82 above. It sounds as if they have something really useful and yes, Umberto, at the appropriate time I'll be in touch. If your stuff would work with my stuff (it might not) I will have no desire to play Don Quijote, tilting with the ISP windmills.

See virtuali's posts #s 71, 75 and 82 above. It sounds as if they have something really useful and yes, Umberto, at the appropriate time I'll be in touch. If your stuff would work with my stuff (it might not) I will have no desire to play Don Quijote, tilting with the ISP windmills.

I saw that Mike, and it made for a good read. I think I was looking for a hacker's confirmation, though I'll admit it's foolish to think anyone would come here and confess to hacking..........I take that back, it's happened more than once.

Split the difference and call it 45% as a base point for your discussion. :( If that is a reasonably accurate estimate then it is readily apparent that FS Developers must begin to be proactive along the lines of Umberto and others to render products inop. :(

I saw that Mike, and it made for a good read. I think I was looking for a hacker's confirmation, though I'll admit it's foolish to think anyone would come here and confess to hacking..........I take that back, it's happened more than once.

I'm going to go out on a limb here just as I did at another site during the piracy discussions of 18 months ago ...In Y2000 I paid $3,000 for a consultant's subscription to all the Microsoft business and software development products and updates as they stood through the beta test of Windows XP. One of the vital (to me) components of that package is Visual Studio 6, which I use to this day on almost a daily basis.Now ... I had to reinstall VS6 about two years ago, only to find that the install CD had gotten cracked somehow and would not even mount, much less read. (I don't know what happened to the CD but clearly it was my fault.) Well, by then Microsoft had stopped supporting VS6. I don't blame them, it has been supplanted by VS8, but worse still for me, when I asked them to replace the CD in question they told me that they had sold the entire stock and would not be making any more of them.So ...I took the law into my own hands and located/downloaded a cracked copy of VS6. The moral question for this forum and thread is: Given this specific situation, did I or did I not Do The Right Thing? I say that I did but, trust me, it was not an easy decision to make.

You recovered from a sticky situation. Laying aside your personal legal/moral question for the moment to ask another question...What if the hacked VB6 had been rendered unusable? What would the legal/moral argument be? :(

You recovered from a sticky situation. Laying aside your personal legal/moral question for the moment to ask another question...What if the hacked VB6 had been rendered unusable? What would the legal/moral argument be? :(

A little more information before I answer your question ...It's Visual C that I care about, not Visual Basic. The C/C++ compiler subsystem in VS6 includes something called "Microsoft Foundation Classes" (MFC), a set of C++ procedures that provide many of the benefits of C# but able to execute at high speed because the result is compiled code, not managed/interpreted code. Now ...MFC is not included in the free version of VS8. The last time I looked it would cost me $700 for a one year subscription to the base package plus updates. I was not and am not willing to pay that price.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxWith that as background, when I took out the subscription Microsoft never said "At some point we will be unable to replace your installation CD if it goes bad". So if the hacked copy I found had refused to run, I would have approached Microsoft and asked for a free copy of MFC as well as of any other tools I would have needed to convert AirBoss from VS6 to VS8.What would I have done under that scenario if they had refused my request? Borland, here I come. Millions for defense but not a penny for tribute. When a vendor mistreats me, I find another vendor.

I'm going to go out on a limb here just as I did at another site during the piracy discussions of 18 months ago ...In Y2000 I paid $3,000 for a consultant's subscription to all the Microsoft business and software development products and updates as they stood through the beta test of Windows XP. One of the vital (to me) components of that package is Visual Studio 6, which I use to this day on almost a daily basis.Now ... I had to reinstall VS6 about two years ago, only to find that the install CD had gotten cracked somehow and would not even mount, much less read. (I don't know what happened to the CD but clearly it was my fault.) Well, by then Microsoft had stopped supporting VS6. I don't blame them, it has been supplanted by VS8, but worse still for me, when I asked them to replace the CD in question they told me that they had sold the entire stock and would not be making any more of them.So ...I took the law into my own hands and located/downloaded a cracked copy of VS6. The moral question for this forum and thread is: Given this specific situation, did I or did I not Do The Right Thing? I say that I did but, trust me, it was not an easy decision to make.

That's a great dillema Mike. I'm going to say it was wrong, hopefully without stirring up the pot too much. I feel for your situation, but wasn't downloading a cracked copy of VS6 still illegal? I don't know if there was any other way to resolve your issue, certainly you didn't think so, but I'm reminded of the old adage that two wrongs don't make a right.

A little more information before I answer your question ...It's Visual C that I care about, not Visual Basic. The C/C++ compiler subsystem in VS6 includes something called "Microsoft Foundation Classes" (MFC), a set of C++ procedures that provide many of the benefits of C# but able to execute at high speed because the result is compiled code, not managed/interpreted code. Now ...MFC is not included in the free version of VS8. The last time I looked it would cost me $700 for a one year subscription to the base package plus updates. I was not and am not willing to pay that price.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxWith that as background, when I took out the subscription Microsoft never said "At some point we will be unable to replace your installation CD if it goes bad". So if the hacked copy I found had refused to run, I would have approached Microsoft and asked for a free copy of MFC as well as of any other tools I would have needed to convert AirBoss from VS6 to VS8.What would I have done under that scenario if they had refused my request? Borland, here I come. Millions for defense but not a penny for tribute. When a vendor mistreats me, I find another vendor.

How about ebay? I just looked there and there are lots for sale for much less-one going "used" for about $70 right now. Of course....they may be pirated.

That's a great dillema Mike. I'm going to say it was wrong, hopefully without stirring up the pot too much. I feel for your situation, but wasn't downloading a cracked copy of VS6 still illegal? I don't know if there was any other way to resolve your issue, certainly you didn't think so, but I'm reminded of the old adage that two wrongs don't make a right.

As I said, it was a close call. However ...As it happens I'm a lay expert on music copyright issues and, to a certain extent, somewhat knowledgable on USA copyright matters in general. No, I'm not an attorney, and no, what follows isn't legal advice. Anybody who really cares about this stuff should consult a qualified attorney. That said ...In general, civil suits such as copyright infringement cases have to be about lost profits. Mine is one of the few cases you'll ever come across where it can truly be said that I would not have purchased a legitimate copy, the reason being that I had already purchased it.So that's where I came down. Self help, technical foul, no jury in the country would find me guilty of anything.But that's simply how I see it. I could well understand how you might still disagree.

How about ebay? I just looked there and there are lots for sale for much less-one going "used" for about $70 right now. Of course....they may be pirated.

Fair question. My take is, Why should I pay even as little as $70 given that I'm already the rightful licensee of the bit patterns?

You recovered from a sticky situation. Laying aside your personal legal/moral question for the moment to ask another question...What if the hacked VB6 had been rendered unusable? What would the legal/moral argument be? :(

I see that in my post #97 above I didn't really answer your question. Let me do so now ...xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxMy view is that it would be perfectly reasonable for Microsoft to render a product unusable in situations like this. They should want to make me whole in a financial sense but they shouldn't be required to put their business at risk just to handle a few oddball special cases like mine.My only concern is with the mechanism for making products unusable -- the systems harboring even confirmed pirated copies should not be harmed in any way.

Fair question. My take is, Why should I pay even as little as $70 given that I'm already the rightful licensee of the bit patterns?

Answer...to avoid a moral if not legal quandry. At the end of the day, we all make personal decisons based on our own moral views.We are free to decide these matters on the basis of endowment by our creator. :(

Answer...to avoid a moral if not legal quandry. At the end of the day, we all make personal decisons based on our own moral views.We are free to decide these matters on the basis of endowment by our creator. :(

I understand your point but we're splitting hairs here. Just because something may be illegal doesn't necessarily make it immoral. Furthermore, the sellers of used copies of Visual Studio have no right to sell them. The licenses are not transferrable so my purchasing a used copy (or even a new one from an unauthorized seller) would resolve one moral question only to raise a different one.In the end it's a matter of conscience. Mine is clear though I did have to think about it.It's as with the Ten Commandments. If you go back to the original Hebrew the commandment really is, "Thou shalt not murder". It doesn't say "Thou shalt not kill in self-defense". So yes, I'm invoking the legal doctrine of Necessity here, which is the commission of a harm in order to prevent a greater harm.

I think in the scenario of downloading a cracked version of software you legitimately have a license for, you are not really doing anything wrong. Since you have a license to have the software, and to use it, by dint of having bought it, all that was really done was to circumvent the inability to install it, in order to exercise the right you already have, by having bought the software.No moral dilemma, I imagine pretty much everyone would do the same thing in the same circumstances.That said, I have repaid fees in the past to get hold of installation .exe files again which I've had and lost through HD crashes, when I could have found hacked versions somewhere or other I suppose. Granted it was only five quid or so to renew the download service, but I certainly preferred to pay that fiver in preference to going some other route. But of course if there is no way to get the thing, and you (legally if not physically because of a busted CD) already have it, then I'd not regard using creative means to acquire it again as doing anything really dodgy.What will be an interesting dilemma for people, is when MS stop supporting FSX activations, as they presumably will at some point in the distant future. Assuming there is no other sim of choice at that time, will people then use a hack to get around that situation?Al

Hello,

I think in the scenario of downloading a cracked version of software you legitimately have a license for, you are not really doing anything wrong. Since you have a license to have the software, and to use it, by dint of having bought it, all that was really done was to circumvent the inability to install it, in order to exercise the right you already have, by having bought the software.No moral dilemma, I imagine pretty much everyone would do the same thing in the same circumstances.

Right.So ..if I can ask why all the fuss (manytime) when a poor sod post about where is a NO-CD ? cause his CD N