When will they ever learn?

It’s a fact that, with great power comes great responsibility. We quote or read such platitudes so easily, so frequently. When will the message get through to companies like Microsoft. Will it ever?

Their current campaign, which is the subject of a new site, Stones Reunited, is a case in point.

Why spend tens, more likely hundreds, of thousands of pounds on a flashy, ill-conceived marketing campaign to send all your registered (ie legitimate) customers a rock in a box to tell them you will be clamping down on software piracy in their area? Is it a veiled threat, designed to put customers on their guard, or an appeal for support? But why sacrifice a small forest and a beach full of pebbles to get your message across in the first place? And why spend more than the cost of handing out free software to needy causes, like schools, in the process?

Sheer lunacy, if you ask me.

Now, I won’t wish any software pirates out there well, but if you go to the coast or some other area of former natural beauty this weekend, and find instead a gaping maw where the rocks once rested, I wish you well.