Microsoft's relationship with piracy is quite complex. On one hand, it has decided not to pursue individual users, offering instead different mechanisms to access a legal copy of its software, and on the other, it mercilessly hunts those who carry out hundreds, or even thousands, of fake activations. However, its latest action has a strange detail: Faced with a lack of precise data about the identity of the pirates, Microsoft filed a lawsuit against an IP address. Good luck...?
I think it's worth starting this article by saying that the deadline to get a copy of Windows 10 through the so-called "accessibility technologies" ends on December 31. If you have a valid Windows 7 or Windows 8.x license, it's enough to download the latest ISO image (based on the Fall Creators Update) and use your key during activation. At the same time, there are alternatives to official stores that offer Windows 10 keys at lower prices, which activate without issues. But beyond those resources, piracy continues to hit Redmond hard. Steve Ballmer said in 2014 that 90 percent of Windows copies in China are illegal, and I'd dare say that number has increased (a good reference is the explosion of Windows 7 users on Steam, basically Chinese players accessing PUBG). When piracy is so widespread in a country, Microsoft seeks to work with the current government, but if it's a company or unscrupulous technicians, then lawsuits are the order of the day.
The problem is that the company's latest legal maneuver is not directed at a person, but at an IP address. According to the official text, "an individual or group of individuals" have accessed the activation servers through the address 73.21.204.220 more than 2,800 times between December 2014 and July 2017. Those attempts are linked to more than a thousand copies of software, among which stand out Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, and Office Professional Plus 2010. Microsoft detected keys that were used too many times, or that belonged to a completely different region. A basic analysis of the IP address reveals a link to a Comcast office in New Jersey, and Microsoft's hypothesis is that someone has been selling refurbished computers outside traditional channels, loaded with illegal software.
Technically speaking, this is not the first time Microsoft has filed a lawsuit of this nature. The previous case dates back to March 2016, which also involved a Comcast user who contacted the servers more than two thousand times between 2012 and 2015. Now, unless Microsoft receives absolute cooperation from Comcast in the process, the lawsuit doesn't seem to make much sense. After all, an IP address does not equal identity.
