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No doubt, spammers who offer pirated software will also have to reduce their prices. Many of them were offering Vista for $89.00 only a month or so ago. In order to remain competitive they may have to cut their prices by a similar ratio. They should still retain a fairly healthy margin on their product however.
Still even if you can now buy (basic) official Vista software for $99, you might hesitate before actually making the purchase. Provided that you can decide whether you want Basic, Premium or Ultimate. And even if you settle for the Basic offering, it's still $99 more than the fully-featured, very powerful Ubuntu, which comes with its own Office software, web kits, development kits, security software and will run as a server or workstation. Considering only features and performance, if Microsoft was going to compete effectively with Ubuntu, they would be paying us to install Vista.
Of course no one is really purchasing Vista anyway. Almost all the Vista installations are on new machines shipped by major vendors. But it's nice see that Microsoft pretend that they have customers and that they care about them.
Also in the USA, there has been a conviction for spamming. Apparently, this becomes a precedent. After his case has gone through many appeals, Jeremy Jaynes becomes one of the first US citizens to be convicted of the felony of spamming. The supreme court decision was close, 4-3. The reason for the close decision were the concerns that some of the judiciary have about the vague and potentially far-reaching implications of recent anti-spam legislation in the USA. My reading of this is that they probably would have been quicker to convict him, were it not for the rather over-zealous and potentially repressive CAN-SPAM act, that was recently passed to prevent spam.
Admittedly, I'm no lawyer ... but I'm not convinced that it now becomes easier to convict spammers. The fact that some judges expressed reservations about the anti-spam act would imply that sooner or later, someone might mount another legal object to this draconian legislation on constitutional grounds.
IMHO the problem with the CAN-SPAM act and similar legislation is that it is like trying to fight a plague of insects with a machine gun. Most spammers are working for criminals, who using spam to advertise their wares. So prosecuting people for advertising criminal activity only highlights some serious problems with the legal system in general. If criminals are now so bold that they advertise their criminal activities, then maybe there are too many laws? (Or not enough police?). Certainly something seems to be broken.
Even the Chinese can't stop spamming ... Umm let me re-phrase that: Especially the Chinese cannot stop spam!
Still, I could be wrong. Maybe there will be lots more convictions for spamming.
Now if only the Law enforcement folks could catch some of those wily spammers ...