Nerdy Photo in Vista DVDs Thwarts Disk Pirates

maximus1 writes "Microsoft says that the tiny photo on the Windows Vista Business Edition installation disks is an anti-piracy feature. The tiny photo of three grinning men — less that 1 mm in size — is one of several images incorporated into the hologram's design intended to make it harder to replicate a Vista DVD, according to Nick White on Microsoft's Vista team blog. 'The real story is interesting, but conspiracy theorists will be disappointed to learn that it is not the result of a deliberate attempt to deceive,' White wrote."

Link To Pictures

[pavon]

For the majority of slashdotters that don't have a Vista DVD and a magnifying glass sitting on their desk, the engadget article [engadget.com] has pictures.

Re:fail

[rborek]

Microsoft is more worried about the large-scale pirates - the ones that sell the disks to unwitting consumers, either standalone or as part of a new PC. This would allow them to more easily show that the disks themselves are counterfeit.

Avoid CLick through

[blhack]

Real story [blognewschannel.com]
no ads.
This isn't an anti-piracy measure, Microsoft is actually pretty upset about it. They don't like easter eggs because it makes them look unprofessional. If they find the guys that did this, they will probably be fired.

Re:fail

[mulvane]

To date, I have already had 28 people come to me to wipe Vista and put XP on Vista pre-loads. What part of the planet is switching?

Re:Avoid CLick through

[blhack]

from TFA:

Microsoft doesn't like easter eggs in its products, doesn't like surprises that could make it look unprofessional or just be embaressing. Larry Osterman said, "Nowadays, adding an easter egg to a Microsoft OS is immediate grounds for termination". Jeremy Mazner has more:

        Leading up the release of Windows 2000, Microsoft starting getting a lot more serious about selling servers into the government and large enterprise markets. These guys saw NT 4 as the first really credible enterprise-class product from MS, and were evaluating Win2k to see how things were progressing.

        The story, as I recall it, is that one of these customers had some strong words for our easter eggs, suggesting that any company that could let such things frivolous things into their products wasn't doing a very good software engineering job, and thus couldn't be trusted to run an enterprise-scale business.

        The argument never made much sense to me. Easter eggs, at least on teams I worked on, were never anywhere near critical-path code. And they often seem to have been pretty well tested by every member of the product team who wanted to verify their name showed up. Maybe there's some story I don't know about how an Easter egg caused a perf hit, or crash or something (I bet if such a story existed, Raymond would know it.). In any event, it seemed like we one day got this email that said "no more Easter eggs ever again", and that was pretty much the end of it.

Re:How is someone supposed to know

[Saxerman]

There are a host of anti-counterfeit measures on currency. And for the most part the average consumer will neither know nor care, and just keep passing the stuff off as genuine. Yet the Fed certainly cares, and they are certainly looking for the stuff. Adding tiny anti-counterfeit designs doesn't make it harder to print fake currency, it makes it easier to identify the stuff as fake. So they can locate fake currency floating in the wild and hopefully trace it back to its source.

Watermarks such as this are designed to prevent counterfeits, not piracy. There are large scale counterfeit operations designed to pass themselves off as legitimate software resellers. Considering the type of disc presses these organizations have access to these days, they can stamp some very authentic looking discs.

The BSA and other such agents look out for these tiny missing features, so they know when and where to release the hounds.

A mom and pop shop with a few extra installs than licenses is small potatoes. They group stamping 100s of thousands of discs in China and selling them as genuine in Europe are the big daddy potatoes.

Re:Link To Pictures

[hendridm]

http://bink.nu/Article10229.bink [bink.nu]

Re:exactly

[arashi no garou]

Actually it depends on which country or even which state the transaction occurs in. Where I live (Georgia, United States) it's called Theft By Deception. There is a parallel charge called Deceptive Business Practices, which covers businesses and individuals claiming to be a business that attempt a fraudulent transaction. If they actually succeed in selling a bogus product or service, and money exchanges hands, they are hit with the theft charge as well.

not first time for 3 people picture easter egg...

[sjs132]

Yes, it may have been a while, but this is NOT the first time someone has taken a picture of 3 people and embedded it as an easter egg. Once again, MS is following the crowd.

http://www.eeggs.com/items/26468.html [eeggs.com]

For those click weary, it is about the Tandy Color Computer 2, and the famous deveoplers picture. Now this was in the computer and you had to hold down certain keys, etc... but still it look very familiure to the "security" picture.

http://bink.nu/photos/news_article_images/picture1 7588.aspx [bink.nu]

BTW, that small makes it an easter egg if you ask me... As the average person would not beable to look for that "SECURITY" check when purchasing the software. Really, nice try MS.. You've been egged, just accept the joke and move on.

Not worth it

[TheLink]

Microsoft don't make the Vista CDs themselves.

Other companies do. And I bet a fair number operate in China. So guess who can make 1mm holograms?

Most pirates won't bother because their target markets don't care. But how hard is it for a factory to have "production overruns" or "test runs"?

In fact, I've seen a 100% original MS CD that was a _low_quality_ stamp (and was not easily readable by some drives) - you could see the "shiny side" was "disfigured" - I've seen low quality pirate CDs that looked like that, but wasn't expecting MS to use the same el-cheapo manufacturers.

I bet if MS sues one of those Chinese factory after a few too many "overruns", it'll just close down, and reopen under a new name and "new management", and start making the same stuff.

"DRM" tag...?

[SEMW]

Why is this article tagged with "DRM"? You need quite a lot of people to tag an article with something for it to show up these days -- do that many people really not know what DRM is that they think TFA is an example of it? Are people just mentally equating it with anti-copyright-infringement methods in general, and tagging without stopping to think about whether something actually is DRM?

Come on, people; if you dilute a phrase enough it is liable to lose its meaning; calling all anti-theft measures from holograms on discs to security guards at the entrance of a shop "DRM" will just detract from legitimate efforts opposing the use of actual DRM to prevent fair use, etc.

Re:How is someone supposed to know

[Tim C]

No, Vista isn't circulated like currency, but counterfeit disks will still turn up in raids, seizures of smuggled cargo, etc.

This isn't about stopping you or me from installing a pirated copy of Vista (knowingly or unknowingly), this is about making it that bit easier to find and shut down the big counterfeiting operations.

Just so you know...

[adarklite]

It's not because of professionalism that MS doesn't include easter eggs anymore. Its because of a court ruling that undocumented features also known as "Easter Eggs" were not allowed in software that is used by the government. And MS was a key proponent of easter eggs during that case.

Yes, it's easy to duplicate holograms.

[twitter]

It also assumes that the factory did not print 16 million extra copies and that the "pirates" won't be able to duplicate the image. The widespread counterfieting of currency is evidence to the contrary.

And from a story the next day, a report of just that [sfgate.com]:

Later, when she returned to the bank that had been her original destination that morning and took possession of the lost driver's license, it was a perfect forgery -- with a hologram and a California seal -- and it had Lodrick's name but Nelson's photo and physical characteristics. "You can buy the technology (to add marks and holograms) on your computer from companies that have legitimate government contracts and then make a lot of money selling the technology to people they must know are not legitimate," Fairbairn said. "Millions and millions of dollars." The black market, he said, is "a growth industry."

It's amazing how deeply you trolls will modbomb usefull and accurate information. Keep bombing, that's what Bill Gates pays you for.