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[Sergius]

Microsoft's response: give out free licenses to activist groups.

To prevent non-government organizations from falling victim to nefarious actions taken in the guise of anti-piracy enforcement, Microsoft will create a new unilateral software license for NGOs that will ensure they have free, legal copies of our products.

-1 Evil points for Microsoft. That's pretty cool, really. Most companies would be happy to sit around and rake in the anti-piracy money.

Yes, too bad they only did that once the NY Times called them out on helping Russia do exactly that for YEARS.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

Considering that they already apparently had a program in place to provide activist groups with free licenses, it would appear that they were more or less unaware of the abuses, and their local agents were inclined to pad their own pockets and not bother reporting it to them. One of the provisions of the new licensing program is the creation of an agency to find and educate such organizations on the existing program, while temporarily granting a blanket license to all NGOs, regardless of whether they followed the proper channels or are even aware that they can legally use the software.

[Soadreqm]

Yeah, Microsoft is so huge that it could easily oppress a few people without intending to, or even noticing. Someone is concerned about software piracy, and after extensive bureaucracy, it is decided to combat it by hiring some lawyers from all over the world to represent Microsoft whenever the police catch some pirates. Everyone is satisfied and heads out for a game of golf on a yacht or whatever it is that rich people do. The lawyers proceed to kind of do their own thing, working with the police to harangue people accused of piracy because, well, that's kind of what they were hired to do. Being a dick to non-government organizations was never the goal, and it's kind of bad press for the company, but the first time anyone hears about it is when the New York Times calls them out on it