Anti-Piracy Windows 7 Update Phones Home Quarterly

Lauren Weinstein sends in news of a major and disturbing Microsoft anti-piracy initiative called Windows Activation Technologies, or WAT. Here is Microsoft's blog post giving their perspective on what WAT is for. From Lauren's blog: "The release of Windows 7 'Update for Microsoft Windows (KB71033)' will change the current activation and anti-piracy behavior of Windows 7 by triggering automatic 'phone home' operations over the Internet to Microsoft servers, typically for now at intervals of around 90 days. ... These automatic queries will repeatedly — apparently for as long as Windows is installed — validate your Windows 7 system against Microsoft's latest database of pirated system signatures (currently including more than 70 activation exploits known to Microsoft). If your system matches — again even if up to that time (which could be months or even years since you obtained the system) it had been declared to be genuine — then your system will be 'downgraded' to 'non-genuine' status until you take steps to obtain what Microsoft considers to be an authentic, validated, Windows 7 license. ... KB971033... is scheduled to deploy to the manual downloading 'Genuine Microsoft Software' site on February 16, and start pushing out automatically through the Windows Update environment on February 23. ... [F]or Microsoft to assert that they have the right to treat ordinary PC-using consumers in this manner — declaring their systems to be non-genuine and downgrading them at any time — is rather staggering." Update: 02/12 02:08 GMT by KD : Corrected the Microsoft Knowledge Base number to include a leading 9 that had been omitted in the pre-announcement, per L. Weinstein.

Comments

It's been phoning home all along.

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Every time I don't have an Internet connection,win7 informs me within a few minutes that I "may not be running a legitimate copy". The link it provides to "resolve" this is a essentially a "buy win7 now" page. Without fail a few minutes after the Internet connection is restored, the warning goes away and the desktop watermark accusing me of piracy also disappears again.

I'm actually more than a little peeved about being called a thief every time I resume my session from suspend -- during the few seconds it takes to reconnect -- or use my laptop out of range of my wireless. But my point is that if it wasn't phoning home, it wouldn't be telling me this *only* when there was no Internet connection; and it wouldn't stop telling me *only* when my connection was restored.

Of course, no matter how peeved I am - as long as it doesn't get in my way, it's not worth waiting on hold for 20 minutes of my life to get a solution which may or may not resolve it.

Re:So what do they do

[BronsCon]

The problem is that... well... it doesn't work the way they say it does.

I have a legit copy of Win7 Ultimate, received directly from MS at the Win7 launch event. Installed in October, not genuine on November 1st. Called, got reactivated. Not genuine on December 1st. Called, got reactivated. Not genuine on January 1st. Installed WGA crack. February 11th, still "genuine".

It's been legit all along, and I only had a problem with it until I used the same method used by pirates.

This does NOT affect piracy and it never will. It does, however, ensure that I will be attending every Microsoft OS launch event in order to never give them another red cent, eat their free food, and get my free copy of their shiny new toy.

If I had paid for this, I'd be outraged. Knowing that it WILL happen IF I pay means I'll NEVER pay. Period.