Posted on 08/02/2005 12:29:08 AM PDT by LibWhacker
The next time you visit the Web site of Microsoft Corp. to download some software, be prepared to let the world’s biggest software company have a look inside your computer.
In a determined strike to quell the proliferation of counterfeit software, Microsoft is now requiring that all customers coming to its Web site for upgrades and other downloads submit their computers to an electronic frisking.
If you use one of the estimated 100 million PCs running pirated software, don’t expect your upgrade. For Microsoft, the new policy is a stepped-up effort to combat the loss of billions of dollars’ worth of software sales every year to counterfeiters around the world. But in ramping up efforts to fight piracy, the Redmond, Wash.-based behemoth already finds itself fending off critics over privacy.
“It sets an extremely negative precedent,” Pam Dixon, executive director of World Privacy Forum, a non-profit public-interest research center in San Diego, said of the company’s initiative. “Microsoft is saying, ‘Before I let you do anything at all, you have to open your computer to us.’ I really object to this.”
The company will scan machines for a variety of information, including product keys or software authorization codes, operating-system version and details on the flow of data between the operating system and other hardware, such as printers.
It is access to this information that particularly upsets the privacy advocates. Dixon says the only information Microsoft needs to fight piracy is the product key and the operating-system version, and she says that Microsoft will be able to identify users uniquely based on some of the information the company collects.
“They are grabbing more information than they need to deter piracy,” she said.
If Microsoft deems a PC to be carrying contraband code, it won’t allow a user to download Microsoft programs, with the exception of security patches. But the software company – which says that more than one in five U.S. computers runs a counterfeit version of its Windows product – is not just waving a stick. It is also offering a big carrot.
Microsoft said it will give a free copy of its Windows XP to customers who unknowingly bought a counterfeit version of the operating system and who fill out a piracy report, provide proof of purchase and send Microsoft the counterfeit CDs.
Customers who cannot provide proof of purchase but file a piracy report will receive a substantial discount on a legitimate version of the operating system, said Tim Prime, a product manager in the Windows client group at Microsoft Canada Co., a subsidiary of the U.S. company.
Executives at Microsoft reject any suggestions that the move will antagonize customers with privacy concerns.
“Customers want to know whether retailers have sold them genuine software,” Prime said.
More than 40 million users agreed to have their systems scanned in a 10-month trial that began last September in several countries. The participation rate amounted to 58 percent of all visitors to the pilot Web site, far exceeding Microsoft’s expectations of just 10 percent, Prime said.
Microsoft said no personal data will be collected during the validation process, and information will remain completely anonymous. The company said it commissioned TUV-IT, an independent German security auditor, to test how well its Windows Genuine Advantage program protects customers’ data. The firm concluded that Microsoft does not collect any personal information that would allow it to identify or contact a user.
Seth Schoen, a staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group in San Francisco specializing in technology issues, agreed that Microsoft would not be able to identify customers personally through the program. But the data collected are unique to every customer, just as human fingerprints are unique, and the issue becomes how long the company holds onto the details and whether they could become personally identifying later on, he said.
Technology companies have walked a fine line for years on the issue of collecting information from consumers’ computers. Six years ago, RealNetworks Inc., whose software plays audio and video content on the Internet, released a patch for its RealJukebox program after the public learned the software was relaying personal information about users to the company.
More recently, Google Inc. created a privacy backlash when it said its free e-mail service, Gmail, would include special software that inserts ads into personal e-mails based on their content.
Clearly, Microsoft believes any risk of public-privacy concerns are worth incurring to fight a problem that has turned into an epidemic in some parts of the world.
Microsoft has been fighting counterfeit efforts for years with limited success. It says that 35 percent of the world’s computers run counterfeit software and that piracy cost the global software industry $33.7 billion in 2004.
You are preaching to the choir! I would've switched to Linux when I upgraded this year except I knew I simply wouldn't have the time to fiddle with a new OS until next year. I regard this PC as just a placeholder until sometime next year, when I will reassess the situation. I may switch to Linux or I may go back to Mac. If Vista is as oppressive as it sounds, then it'll definitely be time to move on!
PS. But I still don't see why I should have to subsidize thiefs!
This supposes that nothing is happening in the background while the B drive is connected. It could be sitting there doing a scan every X minutes and storing that to Drive A. In fact, it probably is.
Will you put me on your ping list please?
ping
Done! Welcome aboard!
Actually the problem is that pesky old registry.
The registry essentially keeps a log of all the software you have installed whether it's on C: or Z:....
What you mean is it offered them. No one has to accept any updates, and anyone can read the descriptions before choosing specific downloads.
The Maytag repairman is lonesome because people throw away their Maytags rather than repair them. I just threw away a Maytag a little over three years old. I got tired of repairing it and Maytag wanted almost as much as a new machine to "see if they could fix it." I declined to join the class action suit against them.
I saw a thread yesterday with an article where someone had already come up with a hack to disable checking of your computer for illegal software. Was it for this check?
It could be used for that. It simply goes right past the WGA.
javascript:void(window.g_sDisableWGACheck='all')
Go to Start/settings/control_panel/ and click on Automatic_Updates.
This has GOT to be the biggest bit of horsepuckey I've ever read.
Do you keep an adequate supply of tinfoil around? Watch for black helecopters?
I can hear it now: Hey, Ivan. Write some particularly bad code today. We need to slow down Win95 so sales of Win98 will pick-up.
regardless of the *HUGE* number of applications that stopped working, check the performance of a typical system running SP2 vs. SP1 on Windows XP sometime. i too used to say, nah, thats being paranoid. unfortunately, M$ is a company with absolutely no scruples. check out how M$'s vaunted anti-spyware stopped flagging Claria items after M$ bought them...
Dittos! I have four machines, all four run Linux. Although two have W2K as a boot option. I haven't chosen that option for some time now. Not missing it.
A fact brought home as I sit here and clean a friends XP Home laptop of over 200 spy/adware programs and over 45 virus'. What a mess, a mess complicated by Microsoft's brilliant decision to incorporate IE/ActiveX into the OS.
Just bloody brilliant.
and guess what? Windows 98SE as a client runs rings around Windows 2000 client! bummer. what to do?
the solution? Windows ME is born! problem solved! Windows 2000 ekes out a win against the bloated Windows ME and the market clowns have something to sell the corporate CIO's who actually look at benchmarks (but clearly not very closely). as for the sheep, they've too stupid to know better and will run whatever DELL installs on their new machines. the M$ market droids will tell them ME is an improvement over 98SE and the sheep will look puzzled for a second, and take it as gospel, feeling a bit uncomfortable for a minute while they almost formed a thought in their head, but were able to suppress it! phew, that was close!
I have my main machine here that is running SP1, a few dual Xeons running SP2, and a dual-core Intel 840 running SP2.
Even given the fact that they all (currently) have different purposes, I can tell no difference in performance.
Is there something in particular I should be looking for?
"Windows XP SP1 SP2 Performance"
The gamers clealy recommend *against* SP2. the first one that hits in groups.google.com has five fairly complicated things that were necessary to erase the SP2 performance penalty over SP1...
of course, if you type the same string into the M$ search engine these delusional anti-M$ posts claiming slower performance probably won't show up. i don't dare try it since the eveel eye in redmond may notice me!
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