Unfortunately, this sort of attitude is not unheard of among proprietary software vendors - see for example FTDI bricking your hardware if they think it's counterfeit:
And as a side effect to that story - I recently needed to purchase a USB to RS232 adapter to program a router and I went explicitly out of my way to make sure the adapter I purchased didn't use an FTDI chip.
FTDI is a name I won't be forgetting anytime soon.
Wouldn’t that be downright illegal? Moreover, someone bricking my hardware would inspire me to forcefully return said “brick” to them, through their nearest window.
Wouldn’t that be downright illegal? Moreover, someone breaking my windows would inspire me to forcefully discuss said behaviour with them, with their nearest brick.
Totally illegal, but while I would feel like tossing something through their window, I would never do it. If only this company had as much of a moral compass!
Actually, it’s “we suspect you may have broken the law, so we’ll break the law.” A distinction no one seems to be hammering on, but that I think makes what they did much, much worse.
Not even sure if users broke the law. Just using a 3rd party cracked software doesn't necessarily violate laws (at least no criminal offence). The distributors and crackers clearly violated laws but any user with a cracked serial number was targeted. That also included people who might've received the number against payment from someone else and thought they had a genuine copy.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8493849