[AccessD] Ethical or not...

after a client meeting today, the issue of AC2003 vs. AC2007 came up.
Oh, what a mess: they do want to use built-in Access security to control
user rights to the tables...which of course is not possible in 2007.
 
So if they purchased 5 individual licences of Access 2007 and then "someone"
installed the AC2003 runtime on the network to be downloaded by all 5
license holders, is that fair to Microsoft ?
Isn't it obvious that the AC2007 runtime has little value relative to the
AC2003 runtime ?