Microsoft TechNet/MSDN keys will expire at end of subscription period
Microsoft, in an attempt to fight piracy, has tightened the terms for MSDN and TechNet subscribers once again. Back in March we reported that Microsoft reduced the number of keys that TechNet subscribers received with their subscription from five to 3. Today ZDNet reports that the company has revised its policies again to fight piracy.
Subscribers up until recently received ten product keys for nearly every Microsoft client and server product available, including Microsoft Windows and the company's Office suite. Counterfeit businesses took the keys and resold them to customers who often were not aware that they did receive keys that were not intended for retail channels.
For a single annual subscription fee of a few hundred Dollars, subscribers would get keys that they could resell for a multitude. Even with three keys, it can still a profitable business due to the sheer size of products Microsoft is making available.
The new subscription terms impact subscribers in several ways:
- MSDN subscribers only get five keys for current versions of Windows and Office, and only three for older versions of the operating systems. TechNet subscribers will maintain their three product keys per version ratio.
- The numbers of keys that MSDN or TechNet subscribers can claim per day is reduced from (roughly) 55 to around 10.
- Unsupported software, like Windows 95 or Office 97 will no longer be available under the new terms.
- New and renewing TechNet subscribers get time-based rights to use the products during the subscription period only.
Previously, subscribers were allowed to keep using the products that they had installed on systems. With the change this is no longer the case.
The subscription provides you with access to software and associated benefits. When your subscription concludes, you will no longer have access to the software or any associated benefits and must discontinue your use of the software.
While it is technically still possible to continue using the products after a subscription has expired, it is now explicitly prohibited to do so.
Existing keys will not be affected by the change, which means that MSDN subscribers who use more than five or three keys respectively can continue to use those after the terms change. Microsoft notes that subscribers can request additional keys if needed, and that it has improved support to deal with additional support requests caused by the change in terms.
A TechNet Standard license is available for $199 ($149 renewal) and includes most Microsoft commercial software expect for Enterprise and Microsoft Dynamics software.
Are you affected by the terms changes?
Update: Changed the original number of keys that MSDN or TechNet subscribers can claim per day as it was inaccurate before.
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Are these articles AI generated?
Now the duplicates are more obvious.
This is below AI generated crap. It is copy of Microsoft Help website article without any relevant supporting text. Anyway you can find this information on many pages.
Yes, but why post the exact same article under a different title twice on the same day (19 march 2023), by two different writers?
1.) Excel Keyboard Shortcuts by Trevor Monteiro.
2.) 70+ Excel Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows by Priyanka Monteiro
Why oh why?
Yeah. Tell me more about “Priyanka Monteiro”. I’m dying to know. Indian-Portuguese bot ?
Probably they will announce that the taskbar will be placed at top, right or left, at your will.
Special event by they is a special crap for us.
If it’s Microsoft, don’t buy it.
Better brands at better prices elsewhere.
All new articles have zero count comments. :S
WTF? So, If I add one photo to 5 albums, will it count 5x on my storage?
It does not make any sense… on google photos, we can add photo to multiple albums, and it does not generate any additional space usage
I have O365 until end of this year, mostly for onedrive and probably will jump into google one
Photo storage must be kept free because customers chose gadgets just for photos and photos only.
What a nonsense. Does it mean that albums are de facto folders with copies of our pictures?
Sounds exactly like the poor coding Microsoft is known for in non-critical areas i.e. non Windows Core/Office Core.
I imagine a manager gave an employee the task to create the album feature with hardly any time so they just copied the folder feature with some cosmetic changes.
And now that they discovered what poor management results in do they go back and do the album feature properly?
Nope, just charge the customer twice.
Sounds like a go-getter that needs to be promoted for increasing sales and managing underlings “efficiently”, said the next layer of middle management.
When will those comments get fixed? Was every editor here replaced by AI and no one even works on this site?
Instead of a software company, Microsoft is now a fraud company.
For me this is proof that Microsoft has a back-door option into all accounts in their cloud.
quote “…… as the MSA key allowed the hacker group access to virtually any cloud account at Microsoft…..”
unquote
so this MSA key which is available to MS officers can give access to all accounts in MS cloud.This is the backdoor that MS has into the cloud accounts. Lucky I never got any relevant files of mine in their (MS) cloud.
>”Now You: what is your theory?”
That someone handed an employee a briefcase full of cash and the employee allowed them access to all their accounts and systems.
Anything that requires 5-10 different coincidences to happen is highly unlikely. Occam’s razor.
Good reason to never login to your precious machine with a Microsoft a/c a.k.a. as the cloud.
The GAFAM are always very careless about our software automatically sending to them telemetry and crash dumps in our backs. It’s a reminder not to send them anything when it’s possible to opt out, and not to opt in, considering what they may contain. And there is irony in this carelessness biting them back, even if in that case they show that they are much more cautious when it’s their own data that is at stake.