My college wants to use a Virtual Machine in our SQL Server class and I am jsut trying to find out if a VM is created without a CDKey and is distributed to students with it requiring them to insert a CDKey would that be breaking the Law or do we need to have the students create their own VM from scratch.

The key implies that you have a license.  Not the media.

MSFT distributed SQL 2008 this way with a time bomb: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=19897

You can download Windows 8 ISO's all day, but without a key it doesn't do any good for you. So no, distributing VM's with 8 on it and requiring a key would not be illegal, at least as far as I know.

• Edited by Acreed02 15 hours 59 minutes ago

You can download Windows 8 ISO's all day, but without a key it doesn't do any good for you. So no, distributing VM's with 8 on it and requiring a key would not be illegal, at least as far as I know.

• Edited by Acreed02 Wednesday, March 18, 2015 3:19 PM

You can download Windows 8 ISO's all day, but without a key it doesn't do any good for you. So no, distributing VM's with 8 on it and requiring a key would not be illegal, at least as far as I know.

• Edited by Acreed02 Wednesday, March 18, 2015 3:19 PM

Hello MattAK83,

Please take a look at the following FAQ about SQL server 2014.
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/about-licensing/sql2014.aspx#tab=4

For more information about SQL server license, to receive better support, it is recommended to contact the phone support.

Thanks for your understanding.

Best regards,
Fangzhou CHEN