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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."
So they can halve their user-share.
My work here is dung.
"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
Hahahaha!
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
It's amazing that after all this time Microsoft still believe they can win the fight against piracy. As long as there is someone that builds anti-piracy measures in there will be people willing to hack around and take them out. Equal and opposite forces. Look at the iPhone for example; it took very little time for people with no previous knowledge of the device to have a working solution for jailbreaking the phone and installing pirated apps. MS needs to come up with viable solutions instead of crippling the user's experience.
Oh, shit, that's right, we're talking about Microsoft. Never mind; carry on with Ubuntu installs. ;-)
=Smidge=
Is it just my observation, or is eldavojohn an idiot?
because they buy their copy of windows with a new PC from Dell or HP and it's tied to the hardware and probably won't need to be activated.
for the DIY it probably makes sense to buy a technet sub and get "free" Ultimate copies of the OS. my msdn license keys for Vista say up to 10 activations and you can give it out to other people for "marketing purposes"
...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.
Any code made by someone can be broken by someone.
Some consumers have already realized they don't have to put up with this bullshit, I hope more do every day.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
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
"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."
WTF do you care what happens to people running pirated copies? Why don't you tell us about all of the times WGA has screwed up legitimate installations with false positives? I've actually had to "hack" a few falsely tagged installations so they'd run until I had time to go through the hassle of getting my system re-legitimized. And I don't maintain that many windows systems. I can only imagine the shitstorm that could be caused in a company with thousands of identical systems that, through some quirk, got nailed with a false positive from WGA.
WGA does absolutely nothing to protect legitimate consumers. Nothing. The only thing WGA can do to any specific installation is disable it. It can't ENHANCE or IMPROVE the system in any way.
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.
Actually, I've seen it quite a bit. Usually what happens is a non-techy person will ask the neighbor kid to fix their computer. The neighbor kid puts on a pirated version because of laziness, anti-MS feelings, lack of a product key, etc. The non-techy person doesn't know the difference and never does manual updates, so they don't find out until WGA tells them.
The confidence of ignorance will always overcome the indecision of knowledge.
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.
Believe it or not, there's actually something to say about ensuring Windows is "genuine" as such; and really this is new to Vista +...
I've seen a few Vista installs now where Windows was completely screwed (no laughing at the back) for no apparent reason, and more importantly would not update. On digging around a bit more, it turned out almost in every case they'd downloaded it off bittorrent/emule, burnt it to disc, and fired it up.
Thing is, Vista is more flexible than ever for OEMs and system builders to streamline their own stuff into the install process so this is a hackers dream; take most popular OS on the planet; "Customise" it with rootkit/trojan; release to downloaders via bittorent and tada...pre-rooted Windows for the pirating masses.
So that's why there is some value in knowing your Windows came from Microsoft direct (rather than some h4x0r)
throw new NoSignatureException();
counterfeit software "delivers a poor experience and impacts customer satisfaction with our products
Obviously he hasn't tried Johnny's Ultimate version of XP. It's awesome! A great experience and it offers great satisfaction. MS should hire him.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Oh, you mean like that time that the Massive Microsoft WGA meltdown fingered legit Vista and XP owners as pirates?
;-)
Lot's of fun I think - but since Microsoft is changing the name from WGA to WAT you should trust them to put the kill switch in your computer
I'm so happy I can do all my computing without having anyone's kill switch in my computer... sorry was I gloating?
I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress -J Adams
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.
And I used to work for one. I took a job in Florida working for a company (AVC Concepts of Bradenton, Florida. Now defunct.) that did just that. The owner sold computers with pirated copies of Windows XP installed. Around this time in 2006, Microsoft started to distribute WGA. Needless to say, we got calls from customers who's machines were flagged running pirated copies. It was my job to pick these machines up, bring them back to the shop and replace the pirated OS with a legitimate copy.
My boss instructed me to lie to customers and tell them that they had a valid copy, but that Microsoft's own Windows Genuine Advantage was fouled up. Blame Microsoft. It's an easy excuse that customers easily accept without much fuss.
"When you see a unixer brainwashed beyond saving, kick him out of the door." - Xah Lee
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.
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!
Except that for XP, we use VLKs which never get flagged by WGA because they belong to organizations far bigger than us from whom MS will never revoke the keys. Never Ever.
- Joe
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.