Slashdot Mirror
Windows 7 Anti-Piracy Plans
Slatterz writes "Microsoft has announced that the forthcoming Windows 7 operating system will contain a number of piracy 'tweaks' it says are designed to protect the interests of customers. Under the new regime users will be expected to validate their software in a much more precise way than before. Other Microsoft operating systems and anti-piracy measures, including Windows Genuine Advantage, allowed users to delay 'activation,' but Windows 7 will make it harder to ignore repeated messages. According to Joe Williams, general manager for Worldwide Genuine Windows at Microsoft, counterfeit software 'delivers a poor experience and impacts customer satisfaction with our products, particularly if users do not know that their software is non-genuine.' Williams gave the example of one piracy exploit that caused more than a million reported system crashes on machines running non-genuine Windows Vista before Microsoft was able to resolve it."
"counterfeit software delivers a poor experience and impacts customer satisfaction with our products, particularly if users do not know that their software is non-genuine."
Since it's byte for byte identical whether it's "counterfeit" or "real", what does that say about Windows 7?
...it says are designed to protect the interests of customers. Under the new regime users will be expected to validate their software in a much more precise way than before... Windows 7 will make it harder to ignore repeated messages.
That's it - I cannot top that - I can't even try.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
One of the biggest sources of piracy Microsoft is trying to clamp down on is the local "Joe's Computer Hut"-type shop. Joe puts together motherboards and chips and sells $300 computers, including Windows. But what Joe's customers don't realize is that Joe is installing pirated copies. WGA, for all its nasty ills, is supposed to provide a way to find out if your copy of Windows is really genuine. (Of course if it's not, you're completely screwed, unless you agree to help Microsoft bust Joe for piracy.)
John
As long as this doesn't victimize legitimate users. That's where the whole anti-piracy thing usually breaks down.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Can you really blame people for piracy when you set the retail price of a license at $100-$200 and the big OEM price at $10-$50?
Pretty soon it'll be easier to get a windows license by buying a netbook and throwing the hardware away.
Given how hard it is to compete with Dell and HP, I can see smaller system builders wanting to give in to the temptation of not paying the microsoft tax and using the savings to put a pirate version of Windows to make a more attractive price point. Of course, they could put a free OS on it but that would only further enforce that they sell machines that "aren't like the big boy's".
More Twoson than Cupertino
Do what you have to to protect your bottom line, but do not bullshit like this. Customer interests would be equally served with an unobtrusive alert that would let them know that the software is probably counterfeit but not interfere with their work.
Although, I doubt it will really help MS financially. Everyone else is moving away from DRM - think of iTunes - and throughout the history of commercial software, most successful companies were the ones that stayed away from parallel port dongles, non-standard floppy formats or entering "word 6 on line 5 on page 15 of game manual". This included Microsoft until a few years back.
Besides most of their profit comes from OEMs and business users. Neither group is likely to use counterfeit software. On the other hand, they will be royally pissed off if this affects even 0.01% of their users.
" Williams gave the example of one piracy exploit that caused more than a million reported system crashes on machines running non-genuine Windows Vista before Microsoft was able to resolve it."
Versus the two million crashes on machines running genuine Windows Vista?
The words all make sense by themselves, but collectively it is like he is trying to redefine every word he uses.
> "Consumers face potential identity theft, system failures and unrecoverable data loss,"
That isn't a consequence of piracy. It may be the consequence of malware, spyware, worms, or viruses, but you can't blame piracy for any of that.
> "Customers want to know that they are using the genuine high-quality Microsoft product they paid for, and they want to know that their systems are more secure and that their software does not contain malicious code"
What about customers who want to use Microsoft products without paying for them at all. Not to defend them, but that is what we are talking about when we discuss piracy. If someone takes a "genuine" copy of Windows and disables your license validation code, what does that have to do with making their system more or less secure and what does it have to do with malicious code. If anything, a hacked copy of Windows may be more secure and less malicious because it isn't "phoning home" to Microsoft.
> "We see many cases of customers who wanted to buy genuine software and believed they did, only to find out later that they were victims of software piracy."
Wow. This one just made my head hurt. They are completely trying to redefine victim here. That's like calling a bank robber the victim of his crime because he stubbed his toe running out of the bank.
I guess I'm supposed to read all the above and think that Microsoft is acting benevolently to make sure no malicious code has been inserted into the operating system at install time. If that was really some sort of crisis that needed to be solved, they could simply ship install CDs with known signatures and provide a mechanism for checking those signature. Problem solved with no need for checking hardware configurations, issuing serial numbers, tracking activations, etc.
What a bunch of asshats.
The neighbor kid puts on a pirated version because of laziness, anti-MS feelings, lack of a product key, etc.
Or that finding the original media and product key for the box in question is either impossible (no media came with the box - that's what the hidden partition is for) or just nearly impossible ("maybe it's with all those manuals and boxes in the attic"). Dealing with a consumer Windows box is a PITA.
Sure, but here's the question: How does that help Microsoft's customers? It doesn't help the customer who bought a computer from Joe, because their computer now has stopped working until the customer pays more money. On the other hand, that customer isn't even Microsoft's customer, because that person hasn't bought anything from Microsoft.
As a Microsoft customer, I don't see how hurting Joe or hurting Joe's customer can help me at all. I can tell you that I've had difficulties in the past with Microsoft's activation and WGA, so I know that these things can hurt customers.
So that leaves two possibilities, as far as I can tell:
Although I have purchased many of copies of Windows and Office through Microsoft's eOpen program, they do not consider me a "customer".
Either way, this inclines me even further to look for an alternative vendor. I don't like when vendors lie to me, and when the vendor says, "The customer is always right," I want that to be me. When I'm giving someone lots of money, I want them to be trying to keep me happy, and to be reluctant to screw me over.
So they can halve their user-share.
... among people who understand what is happening, who are a small minority. The average person does not get it. All he knows is that "it doesn't work", and pay someone to "fix it", or simply buy a new computer. These people also are only vaguely aware that there is any other option than Windows (I actually originally wrote "any other option for an OS than Windows", but remembered that the average person does not really know what an OS is) and therefore a difficult time will not push people to other OSs.
I'm going to recommend people to pirate a copy of Win7 once a crack comes out.This is going to be so much fun. Why bother going through a hassle of nightmare after paying $120? Who enjoys getting punched in the face after you have given them some money? Go piracy!
You know what? As long as that machine I'm fixing has a sticker on it for a legitimate Windows license key of the same type as the one I'm installing -- I don't fricking care. They got their money. One machine, one license, the transaction is done.
Microsoft already makes it enough of a nightmare for non-technical users to reinstall their system from scratch, because it is a rarity these days for OEMs to provide proper Windows install disks. I'm not jumping through hoops on my volunteer time just to reassure Microsoft that everything is legitimate. I look at the sticker on the machine, which Microsoft tells me is supposed to be an indication of a legitimate license, and do the task as efficiently as possible. On the off chance that it might not be legitimate, I'm not wasting my time on the phone to verify a license they already sold with the machine and presumably had registered once before. There's nothing in it for me or the person I'm trying to help, unless you count wasted time.
If they want to pay me for the information or discount Windows if I provide the information so they can track piracy, great. Then I might do it. But the idea that WGA and license activation is in the customer's interest is a joke.
As is somewhat well-known, Microsoft's license agreement says only the Ultimate, Business and possibly Home Premium editions are permitted to be run under a virtual machine. In Vista, they didn't enforce this technologically.
This might change in Windows 7. I found some assembly code in the Windows 7 beta kernel that was detecting whether it was running under a virtual machine. This code was in functions clearly related to license management. The beta version was Ultimate, so I don't think anyone noticed that VMs don't work...
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
It may not technically be right but as far as I'm concerned it's legit. I paid for a copy of Windows and I'll use it as I see fit.
Sure. Half of the pirates don't even want it for free. Does not necessarily means the copy protection is better. ;-)
C - the footgun of programming languages
If you could get a 5 licence Windows 7 (or XP) licence pack for $100 more than a single licence, it wouldn't be so unpalatable.
Don't tailgate - the end is near!