... that you already paid for

To me it was amusing that they put up this barrier, but hired a staff of humans to make sure you could bypass it.

I suppose that could be a gate to prevent people from installing on more machines than the license allows if done at scale. But doesn't lock out legit reinstalls from paying customers. For a cost to MS, to employ that staff.

I believe the scale part is correct. They don't want anyone sharing the software, but they especially want to stop people from selling illegal copies and to stop businesses from using a single license across a hundred machines

It also helps sorting out issues where everything fails.

This is what makes a big difference with doing business with Google and having to deal with bots instead.