Windows 7 Anti-Piracy Plans 403
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."
What does that say about the product? (Score:5, Insightful)
"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?
Re:The interests of customers? (Score:3, Insightful)
Even for MS, this is surely shoveling the BS to astonishing new heights.
I think they'd be better off just not commenting on it at all, rather than trying to completely BS us. At these levels all it's doing is insulting our intelligence. Really, who wouldn't cough up their coffee if they had someone trying to say that to them with a straight face?
+5, Funny to Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
...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.
Re:The interests of customers? (Score:4, Insightful)
eh, I like this part. " 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." versus the "WGA was broken and so only the people who had non-genuine copies were able to use Vista".
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fine (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as this doesn't victimize legitimate users. That's where the whole anti-piracy thing usually breaks down.
How about selling licenses at a reasonable cost? (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you really blame people for piracy when you set the retail price of a license at $100-$200 and the big OEM price at $10-$50?
Pretty soon it'll be easier to get a windows license by buying a netbook and throwing the hardware away.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
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".
"protect the interests of customers" (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:"protect the interests of customers" (Score:5, Insightful)
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".
And guess what all major video game consoles use? Non-standard disc formats.
Re:The interests of customers? (Score:5, Insightful)
" 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."
Versus the two million crashes on machines running genuine Windows Vista?
Is he speaking English or New Speak? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
That's not true (Score:2, Insightful)
Usually the pirates disable those incessant messages begging you to register. Which is the poorer experience?
Re:What does that say about the product? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The interests of customers? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
The neighbor kid puts on a pirated version because of laziness, anti-MS feelings, lack of a product key, etc.
Or that finding the original media and product key for the box in question is either impossible (no media came with the box - that's what the hidden partition is for) or just nearly impossible ("maybe it's with all those manuals and boxes in the attic"). Dealing with a consumer Windows box is a PITA.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, but here's the question: How does that help Microsoft's customers? It doesn't help the customer who bought a computer from Joe, because their computer now has stopped working until the customer pays more money. On the other hand, that customer isn't even Microsoft's customer, because that person hasn't bought anything from Microsoft.
As a Microsoft customer, I don't see how hurting Joe or hurting Joe's customer can help me at all. I can tell you that I've had difficulties in the past with Microsoft's activation and WGA, so I know that these things can hurt customers.
So that leaves two possibilities, as far as I can tell:
Although I have purchased many of copies of Windows and Office through Microsoft's eOpen program, they do not consider me a "customer".
Either way, this inclines me even further to look for an alternative vendor. I don't like when vendors lie to me, and when the vendor says, "The customer is always right," I want that to be me. When I'm giving someone lots of money, I want them to be trying to keep me happy, and to be reluctant to screw me over.
Re:I Hope They Get Anti-Piracy to Work This Time (Score:5, Insightful)
So they can halve their user-share.
... among people who understand what is happening, who are a small minority. The average person does not get it. All he knows is that "it doesn't work", and pay someone to "fix it", or simply buy a new computer. These people also are only vaguely aware that there is any other option than Windows (I actually originally wrote "any other option for an OS than Windows", but remembered that the average person does not really know what an OS is) and therefore a difficult time will not push people to other OSs.
great pc sales will DROP (Score:2, Insightful)
Tortured Logic (Score:2, Insightful)
On what planet is a person who steals your product called a customer?
Shouldn't they be leaving the pirates with their so-called poor product experience (assuming MS is right about this, wouldn't they then hopefully learn the error of their ways and gratefully fork over a few bucks for the real deal). Then they can remove the annoying validation measures from paying customers, to improve the customer satisfaction of people who are actually customers.
What's he on about? (Score:2, Insightful)
counterfeit software 'delivers a poor experience and impacts customer satisfaction
The real stuff is bad enough without worrying about "counterfeit".
let's all pirate (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
You know what? As long as that machine I'm fixing has a sticker on it for a legitimate Windows license key of the same type as the one I'm installing -- I don't fricking care. They got their money. One machine, one license, the transaction is done.
Microsoft already makes it enough of a nightmare for non-technical users to reinstall their system from scratch, because it is a rarity these days for OEMs to provide proper Windows install disks. I'm not jumping through hoops on my volunteer time just to reassure Microsoft that everything is legitimate. I look at the sticker on the machine, which Microsoft tells me is supposed to be an indication of a legitimate license, and do the task as efficiently as possible. On the off chance that it might not be legitimate, I'm not wasting my time on the phone to verify a license they already sold with the machine and presumably had registered once before. There's nothing in it for me or the person I'm trying to help, unless you count wasted time.
If they want to pay me for the information or discount Windows if I provide the information so they can track piracy, great. Then I might do it. But the idea that WGA and license activation is in the customer's interest is a joke.
That's enough articles about Windows 7 (Score:2, Insightful)
Thanks Slashdot for a lot of info on Windows 7. However the world moves on, and I think we can chat about Windows 7 when it's finally released to manufacturing. It's not fair to give Microsoft a separate article for each leakened "feature".
Hello Microsoft. This game starts looking more and more like The Apple Rumor Machine. And Slashdot seem to stick along hand in hand.
Virtual machine detection for license enforcement (Score:5, Insightful)
As is somewhat well-known, Microsoft's license agreement says only the Ultimate, Business and possibly Home Premium editions are permitted to be run under a virtual machine. In Vista, they didn't enforce this technologically.
This might change in Windows 7. I found some assembly code in the Windows 7 beta kernel that was detecting whether it was running under a virtual machine. This code was in functions clearly related to license management. The beta version was Ultimate, so I don't think anyone noticed that VMs don't work...
Re:0wned Windows Installs (Score:1, Insightful)
What kind of a dumbass downloads a pirated operating system and just hopes that it is magically clean? Once they boot with it, there is a possibility that the rootkit could never be discovered. It probably will be eventually, but these are the users that will rush to the net and post everywhere "OMG VISTA IS HORRIBLE IT BSODS ALL THE TIME!!!"
These people deserve whatever happens to them.
Re:Really? (Score:2, Insightful)
"I am no fan of WGA, but most customers don't care, until something goes wrong."
But that's the point. WGA is one more opportunity for things to go wrong, so it is by definition not in the customer's best interests to have it installed. If you eliminate it you will have a more reliable operating system that won't fail due to spurious WGA errors or the WGA servers going down (as they [pcmag.com] occasionally [msdn.com] have [engadget.com]) or being unreachable over the network.
Re:That's enough articles about Windows 7 (Score:2, Insightful)
I can only concur. Slashdot looks more and more like a place for Microsoft to badmouth Google and overhype any old crap with a new name. I want tech NEWS damnit, not a torrent of flaimbait articles of some ancient crap like Windows.
Re:What does that say about the product? (Score:5, Insightful)
Pirate copies don't have to deal with activation, entering of license codes etc...
There are also pirated distributions, which come pre bundled with updates, more drivers and third party apps... The pirate copies are just better than the genuine ones.
uhh, wait a minute (Score:4, Insightful)
nope, that's not piracy, that's by design.
Re:Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
The one thing MS have done really well, is convince people that computers are inherently unreliable devices that just never work properly...
DRM causes a bad experience either way. (Score:2, Insightful)
Those millions of crashes wouldn't have happened if the DRM wasn't in the OS to begin with. Still Microsoft's fault for adding defective-by-design code that require exploits to correct.
Re:How about selling licenses at a reasonable cost (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I Hope They Get Anti-Piracy to Work This Time (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure. Half of the pirates don't even want it for free. Does not necessarily means the copy protection is better. ;-)
Re:Really? (Score:2, Insightful)
No, Microsoft didn't convince them, it was tech workers. It's easy to blame a huge corporation that isn't there to defend itself when you are talking with a client. Customers accept this excuse because they don't know any better. They don't understand how the computer works so they turn to other people to help them understand the problem. Who are they to challenge the word of the computer "expert" that either sold them the computer or was hired to repair it?
Re:I Hope They Get Anti-Piracy to Work This Time (Score:5, Insightful)
If you could get a 5 licence Windows 7 (or XP) licence pack for $100 more than a single licence, it wouldn't be so unpalatable.
Re:0wned Windows Installs (Score:1, Insightful)
> So that's why there is some value in knowing your Windows came from Microsoft direct
Or a trusted release group.
Problem solved.
Re:Hasn't MS learned *anything* over the years? (Score:1, Insightful)
You may have been modded funny, but there is a lot of truth in what you say.
I've said it before and I'll say it again
Linux is suitable for only a select group of people. And I will list them for you.
-The check email, browse a few sites, write up some docs, type people.
-Really advanced level computer users.
-People with lots of patience to learn a hard-to-learn, hard-to-use system.
Nowhere in this list are the people in between. And this is where Linux fails, miserably.
I fall in this category. I'm not a hardcore program in command-line person. But I know my way around. So no, I'm not going to convert to linux just so I can read my email. Windows (or Mac if you so wish) does that just fine for me, thank you. If I'm going to switch to Linux, I want to be able to do all the cool advanced things that I can do on Windows. And those "cool advanced things" are precisely what Linux makes hard to do.
Honestly. I can say I tried real hard to like Linux. But it totally and utterly failed me, so I've chosen not to like it. And no, that does not make me any less of a geek than you.
Have fun converting your grandma's into using Linux, guys. Let me know when this nix thing can do a better job at being Windows. Then we can talk.
Re:I Hope They Get Anti-Piracy to Work This Time (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually the retail version of iWork 09 doesn't have any activation or serial numbers. The downloadable version does. Anyone planning on buying iWork would be far better off getting the packaged version just to avoid the hassle of entering in the stupid 28 character license key. $150 got me iWork 09, iLife 09 and the latest version of Leopard, no serial numbers or activation on any of them.
Re:What about all of the false-negatives?!? (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you honestly believe that? WGA has NO way of stopping BULK wholesale pirate copies if the wholesaler knows what he is doing.
Keep dreaming in your little world because the day that MS gets it right is the day that they will loose market share. You can get complete systems cheaper than you can get a retail XP CD. either they will fill landfills or someone like myself will load an alternate OS.
Re:some sugestions (Score:3, Insightful)
Another thing I forgot to mention a few comments ago - The reason I have to stop doing whatever I'm doing when my uncle comes in is because he throws huge fits whenever something isn't fixed immediately, or if he immediately breaks it after (Or, on occasion, if something just plain isn't fixable.) and tends to decide that whoever's responsible is no longer welcome in the house, and my aunt doesn't want that turned on me.
Especially since he has a tendency to get virii on his computer doing pretty much the exact same thing, and blames the kids' computer for giving it to him over the network... but given the once or twice I had to use his computer for something and the recent pages dropped down when I entered a URL... *shudder* He brings it on himself, too.
Blah.
Yeah, sorry for the ranting, but it's been bugging me and needed let out.