Most major software companies are going this route.
Microsoft is pushing everyone “to the cloud” with their Office 365 project and remote hosting options.
It allows them to reign in piracy by restricting clients to the number of paid licenses they have. Otherwise, system administrators like me could install Windows or Office or any software on any computer without a way for them to validate the licensing. Note: this is specific to volume licensing and enterprise agreements. Home users are required to “phone home” to validate ongoing use of an OS, at least with MS.
Solution: Linux. OR you could always just look around on SourceForge for free stuff that does the same thing.
This won’t hurt the large corporations. They’ll adjust their costs to ensure no profit loss. This will hurt the home users however. I agree with another poster: why upgrade if the “outdated” version works just fine?
Switch to Open office. Then piracy of your MS product vanishes. Piracy assumes there is demand for your product. No demand = no piracy.