Nerdy Photo in Vista DVDs Thwarts Disk Pirates

maximus1 writes "Microsoft says that the tiny photo on the Windows Vista Business Edition installation disks is an anti-piracy feature. The tiny photo of three grinning men — less that 1 mm in size — is one of several images incorporated into the hologram's design intended to make it harder to replicate a Vista DVD, according to Nick White on Microsoft's Vista team blog. 'The real story is interesting, but conspiracy theorists will be disappointed to learn that it is not the result of a deliberate attempt to deceive,' White wrote."

Comments

If it were porn...

[rufo]

...would Vista be pirated less or more?

Re:If it were porn...

[Anonymous Coward]

If it were the same three guys it would be pirated less.

How is someone supposed to know

[geekoid]

that they are supposed t look for that to see of the copy they have is legit?

And it only assumes the buyer cares.

Re:How is someone supposed to know

[Saxerman]

There are a host of anti-counterfeit measures on currency. And for the most part the average consumer will neither know nor care, and just keep passing the stuff off as genuine. Yet the Fed certainly cares, and they are certainly looking for the stuff. Adding tiny anti-counterfeit designs doesn't make it harder to print fake currency, it makes it easier to identify the stuff as fake. So they can locate fake currency floating in the wild and hopefully trace it back to its source.

Watermarks such as this are designed to prevent counterfeits, not piracy. There are large scale counterfeit operations designed to pass themselves off as legitimate software resellers. Considering the type of disc presses these organizations have access to these days, they can stamp some very authentic looking discs.

The BSA and other such agents look out for these tiny missing features, so they know when and where to release the hounds.

A mom and pop shop with a few extra installs than licenses is small potatoes. They group stamping 100s of thousands of discs in China and selling them as genuine in Europe are the big daddy potatoes.

Re:fail

[rborek]

Microsoft is more worried about the large-scale pirates - the ones that sell the disks to unwitting consumers, either standalone or as part of a new PC. This would allow them to more easily show that the disks themselves are counterfeit.

Let's see what's wrong...

[perlhacker14]

First off, nerds like us are the ones who pirate stuff in the first place. Second, if the image is so small, which user is going to see it, and if the user cannot see it, then claims of amnesty are theoretically possible. Third, due to the traditionally nonintimidating nature of the nerd, what pirate who sees the image will think and stop what they are doing? It seems that Microsoft demonstrates its foolishness through oversight and arrogance once again. Though, the whole idea is quite funny for the rest of us!

"I buried Paul"

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Microsoft Corp. has clarified the identity of the mysterious trio on the installation disks for the business version of Windows Vista.
And no, you can't play the installation DVDs backwards and hear the devil talking, either.

Yeah, you have to play them forward to hear the devil talking.

Avoid CLick through

[blhack]

Real story
no ads.
This isn't an anti-piracy measure, Microsoft is actually pretty upset about it. They don't like easter eggs because it makes them look unprofessional. If they find the guys that did this, they will probably be fired.

At least...

[ceroklis]

... they didn't use this one.

exactly

[ihatewinXP]

The pirate copy I bought in here in Beijing had these security features:

1. Plastic sleeve
2. No box
3. Burned CD with "Vista 32 Eng" written in Sharpie on the front.

And it works great. Even came with the guys phone number in case I had problems applying the validation hacks.

If youre going to buy a pirate version what do you care? I have seen the nicer versions (with fake box et. al.) but trust me, no one is fooling themselves into thinking that they are getting a $400 program for ten bucks.

But my even more ghetto pirate version only cost $5 and it came with Office 2007 as well (which employed the same counter measures) ;)

Re:fail

[GFree]

Dude, for most of us Slashdot might as well be the planet. So shut up and (sudo) get me a sandwich!

Re:It's all about the photo

[Anonymous Coward]

REAL pirates primarily care about: Can I sell it and get away with it?

REAL pirates primarily care about: Can I SAIL it and get away?

Re:fail

[Pharmboy]

There isn't a lot of negative reaction to Vista.

Dell had to revert back to selling XP due to customer demand. Many poles, published on many sites, indicate that the business world is nonplussed with Vista and many have no plans to migrate over. This includes our shop that runs all XP on the desktop and Linux on the servers only.

Many, many people are not interested in Vista, particularly since it won't run a lot of popular software. By the time you can't get support for XP, we will have already migrated to either OS/X or Linux. There IS a lot of negative reaction to Vista. The average gamer or grandma may not care because it is their only choice, but many of us will stick with XP until a better choice comes along. I run IT and I haven't bothered installing it, although I can for free. Won't run all my hardware and software, is buggy as hell, so why would I?

What really matters: More people are trying to pirate XP than Vista. When people won't even STEAL a product, I would consider that a negative reaction to it.

Fifth picture discovered

[walt-sjc]

In an even smaller spot, this picture was found...

Cracked?

[Associate]

Will cracked versions feature a pasty white buttocks of the nerd that cracked it?