Command and Conquer: The First Decade

So I picked up C&C: The First Decade at Best Buy the other day, and got around to installing it on my Windows 7 box last night. I proceed to fire up Red Alert 2, but it bombed out telling it can't init the string manager. I let it run as an admin, and up it comes, the excellent invasion of the US intro and the cheesy acting really bringing it all back. I then find that once battle control went online, all my units died instantly and the mission failed. After some googling, it appears this is because the Red Alert 2 exe thinks it's been (amatuerishly) cracked. I put the exe in Win2000 compatibility mode, and all is well. Good times. As a games developer, I have no great love of pirates either, but whoever at Westwood decided on this "feature", clearly leaning on some undocumented / not well supported part of the Windows API, this was a really bad idea. How many First Decade sales is this 10 year old crappy piracy check going to cost you?