![]() Most of us have taken advantage of the existing broken system which allows anyone to snag a copy of anything with a simple torrent client… but seriously, it’s time for technology to grow up a little bit. There SHOULD be a standard, reliable platform which helps enforce copy protection for all software that chooses to implement it. People whining about the development of copy protection technology is kinda like shoplifters complaining about the little tags in products that set off alarms in the front of stores.Įven if WGA isn’t perfect, it’s a step in the right direction. how’s that for anti piracy) Reply View in chronology (hell a friend of mine had a cracked version of elder scrolls 4: oblivion BEFORE it was released in stores. given enough time, the latest and gratest will be cracked. However, i do support the anti-piracy movement. others may lose their computer for a few days battling with m$ over the license. i can see a end user, seeing this, and like wtf? ok here’s my credit card. took a few weeks to get to all the computers. using a broad license for XP, company renewed license, got a new CDkey, and all “old” keys were then said to be bad. the problem may come when a user buys Windows multiple times. but those dedicated to piracy will work around it. WGA may have helped acquire more licenses, true. However, all you have to do is search WGA hack on google, and you have at least 15 different ways to get around WGA 15 WAYS!!!! after that, you’re home free. Not only that, but the stingier Microsoft gets on things like this, the more it opens up possibilities for alternative open source or free providers to use Microsoft’s own words against them. Why the change of heart? It’s nice to think that you can boost your bottom line by turning pirated copies into sales - but if it also means making life difficult for many legitimate users and weakening your ability to be the defacto platform, it seems like there may be some additional costs that Microsoft hasn’t yet factored in. Even when people pirated, it helped build up Microsoft’s network effects, and often resulted in many more purchases at a later date (which even Bill Gates has acknowledged in the past). In fact, it’s lack of copy protection in many cases helped Microsoft become the de facto platform around the world. For much of its lifetime, Microsoft has figured out that it can build an incredibly profitable business on software sales without being too stringent on copy protection techniques. Obviously, software piracy is an issue for Microsoft, but there are other ways to deal with it than making life difficult for your legitimate users. He points out that Microsoft defends the program by noting that “Software piracy is not a victimless crime.” Adrian responds: “wrongly accusing someone of software piracy is also not victimless.” This is similar to the movie industry, which still hasn’t figured out that treating people like criminals is hardly a way to encourage loyalty. This time it’s the Software Protection Platform (SPP), and it has the added feature of being a platform so that other software providers can use it to accidentally lock legitimate buyers out of their software as well.Īdrian Kingsley-Hughes has written up an opinion piece over at ZDnet, pointing out many of the problems with this approach. So, what are they doing with their next generation Vista operating system? Putting pretty much the same system into it, with a different name. Over the summer there were reports all over the place about being problems with WGA and how legitimate users were being told their installations were pirated, forcing Microsoft to back down. And, in the case of Microsoft’s WGA that seemed to happen quite a bit. That’s one way to try to prevent counterfeit copies being used, but it also runs into a lot of problems when the software falsely accuses legitimate users of being crooks. If it found they were not, it would shut down the functionality of the operating system. Earlier this year, Microsoft ran into all sorts of problems with its “Windows Genuine Advantage” (WGA) program that was supposed to check to make sure people were using legitimate versions of Microsoft Windows.
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