In article ,
"David R. Norton MVP" wrote:

OK, so the availability of Office 2003 in Warez groups means that robbing
the legitimate publisher of the software is all right?

Please. The situation is not even remotely the same. The availability of
a commercial package that is never distributed via warez sites means
that downloading Office 2003 from those sites is presumably always
illegal.

There are, however, many legitimate uses for removing passwords. There
is nothing in any license agreement, much less law (at least in the US),
that restricts someone's ability to access files that they own or are
legally entitled to, by removing the password protection. There are
companies that have provided these legitimate services for decades, and
there have been free methods for many protections for nearly as long.

Given that even a moderately close reading of the Office license
agreement makes it clear that Microsoft doesn't represent that any
Office application is fit for any particular purpose, it's clear that MS
is not claiming that removing the protection violates its license, or
even that it's wrong.

The only other reason it would be illegal is if the person removing the
protection doesn't have the legal right to the information. That is not
a technical issue, and given that there are legitimate reasons for
removing the protection, I see absolutely no reason for people not to
avail themselves of legal services.

The fact that some misguided people rely on Office protection schemes to
keep their information secure, despite Microsoft's own explicit claim to
the contrary, and despite the plainly available free and commercial
methods of removing them, shouldn't limit the legal users from
recovering their information.