[quote user="Sgt. Zim"]
I am not a Microsoft-lover. I am also not a lawyer. That said, I can see what they were trying to stop with this clause, when you look at it in context:
8. SCOPE OF LICENSE. The software is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all other rights. Unless applicable law gives you more rights despite this limitation, you may use the software only as expressly permitted in this agreement. In doing so, you must comply with any technical limitations in the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways. For more information, see http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/userights. You may not:
- work around any technical limitations in the software;
- reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the software, except and only to the extent that applicable law expressly permits, despite this limitation;
- use components of the software to run applications not running on the software;
- make more copies of the software than specified in this agreement or allowed by applicable law, despite this limitation;
- publish the software for others to copy;
- rent, lease or lend the software; or
- use the software for commercial software hosting services.
I read this as a fairly standard attempt to stop users from "hacking", "cracking" or modifying it to remove things like DRM or Activation. That said, the wording is pretty vague, and could be used for nefarious purposes.
[/quote]
And thats the issue here. If you go to court as M$ you would win, if you want to disallow users to do things like installing a video codec, a device driver <insert-gigantic-long-list-of-useful-additions-to-windows>. If my mum would say that, I would certainly say "oh, she really wanted to protect it from beeing hacked". But you cannot do this if M$ says something like that. Never. They will turn it against you, no matter what they say today.