“Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled anti-piracy plans for Windows Vista that take tougher measures against users of counterfeit software, including limiting protection against spyware and incapacitating the PC. Not everyone welcomed the measures,” Gregg Keizer reports for TechWeb. “Windows Vista, which Microsoft has said will ship to business customers in November and to consumers in January 2007, will be the first operating system to include technologies that the Redmond, Wash. developer called ‘Software Protection Platform.'”
Keizer reports, “Under the new plan, counterfeit copies of Vista will not run the Aero interface, the OS’s much-touted updated graphics look; will disable ReadyBoost, a feature that lets users add memory to systems by plugging in a USB flash drive; and will cripple Windows Defender, the anti-spyware protection tucked inside Vista. Previously, Microsoft had said it would strip some features, including Aero, from non-genuine Vista, although Defender was not among those mentioned.”
Keizer reports, “Product activation, which debuted in 2001 with Windows XP, but is now part of Software Protection, will also be dramatically revamped. If a copy of Vista is not activated within 30 days, the operating system will only let the user run the default browser, and then only for an hour at a time before logging off. Legitimate copies that for some reason later fail the ongoing validation tests will have another 30 days to re-activate or purchase a new license before the PC slips into what Microsoft dubbed ‘reduced functionality,’ while copies detected as fake during the validation process will also be downgraded after 30 days. In addition, users of genuine Vista must reactivate within three days of ‘a major hardware replacement,’ said Microsoft, or face a crippled computer.”
“‘This is actually a little more open in Vista [than in Windows XP],’ said Cori Hartje, the director of Microsoft’s Genuine Software Initiative. ‘Today, if you don’t put in a key [within 30 days], you can’t use the computer at all,'” Keizer reports. “‘But is she talking about validation or activation?’ asked Joe Wilcox, analyst with JupiterResearch, who thinks Microsoft is making the wrong move at the wrong time and giving legitimate users another reason not to upgrade to the new OS.”
Full article here.
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