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."

Let's see what's wrong...

[perlhacker14]

First off, nerds like us are the ones who pirate stuff in the first place. Second, if the image is so small, which user is going to see it, and if the user cannot see it, then claims of amnesty are theoretically possible. Third, due to the traditionally nonintimidating nature of the nerd, what pirate who sees the image will think and stop what they are doing? It seems that Microsoft demonstrates its foolishness through oversight and arrogance once again. Though, the whole idea is quite funny for the rest of us!

They dont really want to stop piracy

[grapeape]

If they really did it would eliminate the fallback excuse of why no one is buying it unless being forced to. The local CompUSA here was going out of business and even at 75% off during the final days they were open there were still dozens and dozens of vista boxes just sitting there.

Re:fail

[petermgreen]

It only takes one customer (or test buyer) to spot a counterfeit and provide information allowing the counterfieter to be traced.

Plain pirates who do nothing to disguise what they are selling as legit may do some damage but buisness customers are easilly scared away from them by the threat of audits, counterfieers OTOH can sell at a much higher price to buisness customers taking sales directly from MS.

Re:fail

[GFree]

For that matter, how many pirated copies of Vista actually exist? [such negative reaction to it why pirate it?]

One point of reference would be to check the number of seeders/peers on any given torrent site for a particular OEM version of Vista Ultimate, pre-activated.

Last time I checked there were a couple hundred seeders and about a thousand plus peers, keeping in mind of course that once you download a new OS, chances are you're gonna get straight to burning and installing it, which reduces the seeder level a lot.

Funnily enough, I also saw torrents for XP which had HIGHER levels of seeders/peers than Vista. Weird.

exactly

[ihatewinXP]

The pirate copy I bought in here in Beijing had these security features:

1. Plastic sleeve
2. No box
3. Burned CD with "Vista 32 Eng" written in Sharpie on the front.

And it works great. Even came with the guys phone number in case I had problems applying the validation hacks.

If youre going to buy a pirate version what do you care? I have seen the nicer versions (with fake box et. al.) but trust me, no one is fooling themselves into thinking that they are getting a $400 program for ten bucks.

But my even more ghetto pirate version only cost $5 and it came with Office 2007 as well (which employed the same counter measures) ;)

Re:fail

[Pharmboy]

There isn't a lot of negative reaction to Vista.

Dell had to revert back to selling XP due to customer demand. Many poles, published on many sites, indicate that the business world is nonplussed with Vista and many have no plans to migrate over. This includes our shop that runs all XP on the desktop and Linux on the servers only.

Many, many people are not interested in Vista, particularly since it won't run a lot of popular software. By the time you can't get support for XP, we will have already migrated to either OS/X or Linux. There IS a lot of negative reaction to Vista. The average gamer or grandma may not care because it is their only choice, but many of us will stick with XP until a better choice comes along. I run IT and I haven't bothered installing it, although I can for free. Won't run all my hardware and software, is buggy as hell, so why would I?

What really matters: More people are trying to pirate XP than Vista. When people won't even STEAL a product, I would consider that a negative reaction to it.

Re:It's all about the photo

[fm6]

All pirates care about is 1) Does it install? 2) Can I "activate" it?

Yet another "everybody's like me" Slashdotter. This isn't aimed at preventing dorks like you from borrowing your friend's install disc. MS would certainly like to prevent that kind of piracy, but they don't really lose sleep over it. What they do lose sleep over is big commercial pirate software organizations that want to pass off their product as "legitimate".

Re:fail

[prockcore]

when 20% of their windows genuine advantage tests result in a legal copy being branded as a pirated copy, why not fix that too?

Oooh look, a statistic pulled out of thin air! It's magic!

The one reporter I've seen who experienced WGA first hand actually found out that the shrinkwrapped copy he had purchased was counterfeit.

Re:fail

[zobier]

You don't say, we're only now upgrading to XP from 2K.

Four pictures but only two sets of faces

[SockPuppet_9_5]

Four pictures, two with people in them, and two photos without faces.

Sounds to me like at least two people chickened out from putting their own faces on there and substituted a vacation photo and a photo of an old painting instead. I'm guessing originally there were to have been more photos on the Vista Business DVD, but they feared the notoriety.

Notice how the names haven't come out yet? If this was planned as an anti-piracy thing, there would be no need for such random images. Does this Easter Egg even remotely smell official? Not to me.

Re:exactly

[speaker of the truth]

Microsoft and Bill Gates would like to thank you for contributing to helping them remain a monopoly through your illegal purchase. The Linux community, however, would like it if you would stop pirating software.

You might not be hurting Bill Gates with your pirating, but you are most definitely hurting people.