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Originally posted by Tony Shepps
It all goes back to a tiny little misconception that everyone has about their non-open-source operating systems. They think that they "purchase" the software and that it is then "owned" by them. In fact they do not. They pay some amount (or their vendor pays some amount) for the right to operate Microsoft's OS on their computer. If MS decides they shouldn't run it any longer, then they will not be able to run it any longer. XP just makes that transaction a little easier for MS.
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Tony, except in Maryland and Virginia (and perhaps even there, given that MSs licenses are probably covered by the laws of the State of Washington, not the state they are sold in), you OWN a copy of that software.
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But then there's the question of who owns your DATA. If it's in one of those MS-proprietary formats, such as Word, Excel, etc., you don't really own your data because you don't own software that can read that data.
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You own your data also -- right down to the copyright. And assuming you bought Word, Excel, etc, you own a copy of the software which can read it.
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computer change. But if for some reason you can't convince MS to get "your" XP back up and running after a hardware upgrade, you will have no recourse because it is not yours.
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You will have recourse; you can sue them. Whether you'd be successful is another question, as this is untested legal territory.