Yeah, of course these cheap keys are bent. They're obviously way too cheap. Unless the letter of the law is stuck to in the license conditions, it's technically pirate, no matter how edge case it may seem. I think that this should be a settled question.
Having said this, the marketplace is rife with sellers of such keys and heck, they're even promoted on TPU with locked threads, so what's the deal? To me, that strongly suggests that Microsoft looks the other way as market dominance is everything to them because of a bigger payoff than someone not paying for Windows. A multibillion dollar company like Microsoft could easily clamp down on this practice if they wanted to. So, if Microsoft isn't bothered by it, or tacitly accepts it as a cost of doing business, who are we to start worrying exactly how legit these keys are? I say, buy the keys and enjoy the products, no need to worry about exactly how legit they are even though they activate.