Originally Posted by
FlightDetent
PJD1: Are your strong words about illegality not at odds with the EU High Court ruling that specifically says otherwise? I do respect Microsoft's choice to brand them as such.
I am no expert on the legal details and not familiar with the court ruling you refer to however my best guess would be that these sellers are people who have access (probably through their work) to OEM or VLK product keys and are making money by selling them on eBay. This is clearly against the terms of the original Microsoft licence and they are also probably defrauding the person who paid for that licence in the first place (probably their employer). I am aware that many people have purchased these and had no problems and I have heard of others who found that their activation was cancelled after a period of time due to Microsoft black listing the keys. Of course many people will be attracted by the low price and are willing to take that risk for the sake of a few pounds and that is precisely what the sellers rely on. My own personal view is that this sort of thing just increases the price that the honest ones amongst us have to pay for our legitimate software licences and it is no different to benefit fraud or tax evasion but others may have different opinions
