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It's not oft-noted that Microsoft certainly
benefited from the PC's easy ability to copy software. While MS got paid by HW manufacturers for copies of the OS (who were generally honest), in the wild and wooly early days of the PC there was quite a trade in purloined applications.
This was limited to some degree by the advent of CD-ROM distribution, when applications outgrew easy transport on floppies, and when things like shared DLL's made it more risky to roll-your-own installer disks, but the emergence of cheap CD burners has caused the issue to flare again. And Microsoft now has a large add-on applications business itself.
So, having benefited from this practice in the past (since it encouraged wider adoption of the PC because of all the "free" software) Microsoft wants to close off this loophole (via the internet, which Microsoft also got for free!!)
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