In the legal world, Microsoft is going after Comcast to be able to unmask the individual behind an infringing IP address which activated thousands of Microsoft product keys stolen from the supply chain of Microsoft.

From 2012 to 2015, Microsoft maintains that its servers were pinged by an IP addy software activation procedure. over 2,000 times during the in Washington

Nevertheless, in the event you decide to run Microsoft applications then you definitely choose to hand over your information. Microsoft considers contact with its activation servers to be “voluntary” and “deliberate;” it uses the information as a portion of its cyberforensic systems.

As TorrentFreak pointed out, the Microsoft charge (pdf) filed in a federal court in Washington states:

Cyberforensics enables Microsoft to examine billions of activations of Microsoft applications and identify features and activation patterns which make it even more likely than not that the IP address related to the activations is an address by which pirated applications is being activated.

Yet neither cyberforensics nor “various investigative techniques” helped Microsoft “absolutely identify the Doe Defendants.”

“Defendants activated and tried to activate at least several thousand copies of Microsoft applications, much of which was pirated and unlicensed,” Microsoft’s legal team wrote. The product keys, Microsoft said, were used “more times than is authorized by the appropriate software license,” used by “someone besides the authorized licensee,” or were “activated outside the area for which they were meant.”

Whether the IP traces back to a Comcast subscriber or was put by Comcast to another ISP, as the The Register pointed out, “It will be an important gaffe on behalf of the alleged pirates in the event the IP address data pointed to their actual identities.”