Some prominent ads have been appearing on the web offering Microsoft Office, among other products, at very low prices and with immediate download.
Some prominent ads have been appearing on the web offering Microsoft Office, among other products, at very low prices and with immediate download. Usually these offers are via spam or obscure web sites but we’ve seen one site advertising prominently, some might say shamelessly, on Google.
With a retail price of US$500 and legitimate street prices around $390 or less for Office 2003 Professional then an offer of US$69.95 looks good, but only the most optimistic or na‹ve buyer would think that there isn’t something very strange going on. When you see Autodesk products for $100 instead of $3,750 then surely alarm bells ring.
US$70 is well below the wholesale price to legitimate retail outlets, and furthermore Microsoft’s main products like Windows and Office are not legally available for sale via download. You have to buy them as a ‘box product’ with a CD or bundled with a new computer.
Mostly likely these sites are selling downloads of the readily available ‘pirate’ versions of software that almost anyone can get from a peer-to-peer web service. Assuming you get any kind of download at all (or your credit card isn’t misused in some way) then the software won’t have any support and most likely won’t qualify for updates from Microsoft. And that assumes that the software will install properly and run at all.
Redmond’s product activation system is being increasingly used to prevent access to product updates as well as allowing access to the software in the first place.
We asked Microsoft for comment on this particular web site and to confirm that sales via download was not available for their core products. We also asked them to confirm that the retail price on offer by the site was well below the wholesale price.
Microsoft declined to answer our questions and would say only that “we will not be able to confirm whether or not (web site).com is selling legitimately”. We find that response to be disappointing but unsurprising.
For many years Microsoft has ‘battled’ piracy but has placed the obligation on their customers to know if they are buying legitimate software or not. In this case it’s pretty likely from the prices and method of delivery that the software is pirated – but if Microsoft can’t or won’t say whether it is legitimate or not – how do they expect customers to know?
On the company’s anti-piracy web site it has plenty of generic information but nothing that covers this common situation of a web site selling Microsoft software for immediate download.
Microsoft loves painting Office Watch as the enemy – but in situations like this we try to do the right thing and get stonewalled. Makes us wonder how serious Microsoft really is about software piracy.
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