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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?
...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.
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.
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