Microsoft will offer free Windows 10 upgrades to pirates worldwide
 

In January, we learned that for one year, Microsoft would offer free Windows 10 upgrades to those running Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows Phone 8.1. Today, at its Windows Hardware Engineering Community (WinHEC) event in Shenzen, the company revealed that this deal will be available to pirates worldwide.

Reuters first broke the news by quoting Terry Myerson, Microsoft’s Windows chief: “We are upgrading all qualified PCs, genuine and non-genuine, to Windows 10.” Yet the article’s headline and body focused on China, where Windows piracy rates are particularly high, so we reached out to Microsoft to confirm the scope.

“Anyone with a qualified device can upgrade to Windows 10, including those with pirated copies of Windows,” a Microsoft spokesperson told VentureBeat. “We believe customers over time will realize the value of properly licensing Windows, and we will make it easy for them to move to legitimate copies.”

http://venturebeat.com/2015/03/18/mi...tes-worldwide/