Hi, I know this is not a legal forum but I had some questions about downloading untouched / cleaned OS versions. Is it illegal to download a uncracked .iso of lets say Office or Microsoft Windows from a site like softpedia or something of that sort? I read online that it is only really a problem if a person were to tamper with the activation feature. If they just use it during the evaluation period is there any harm done? Does Microsoft care about where you obtain a .esd or .iso file? Or, do they just care about how you obtain the activation key for their product? Thanks.
Microsoft doesn't care much about such things, as you can see at this forum, it exists. You can also manipulate the "activation feature", nothing will happen, you only saved some money. Download from whatever source you can find, just check the SHA-1 (or SHA-256) and you're good to go. A db with all MSDN hashes can be found here. Most ESDs have the SHA-1 value at the end of their filename, if not, just enter the SHA-1 into Google and check if there are any entries about Microsoft / Windows.
@luzea, they do care if the links are published on many warez sites, they dmca'd all my svf files except the 17763.1 and 17763.107 LTSCs and 17763.107 Server Essentials, my main filehost and mega got dmca's after they found my links on many warez sites (i never published them off MDL), not when they were published only at MDL.