User Pressure Spurs Microsoft To Revise Antipiracy Program

[Thaising]

Windows Genuine Advantage now to make fewer validity checks.

Elizabeth Montalbano and Eric Lai, IDG News Service

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Responding to pressure from irked Windows users, Microsoft today released an updated version of its antipiracy program that changes the frequency with which the program checks for pirated or counterfeit copies of its client operating system.

The new version of Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) Notifications program now no longer checks a server-side configuration of a user's version of Windows every time the user logs on to see if it is a valid copy of Windows. Instead, it periodically checks to see if the user's copy is genuine.

"Our customers have told us that they were disappointed with their WGA Notifications experience, and we have made an effort to improve that with this update," the company said in an e-mailed statement through its public relations firm, Waggener Edstrom.

Pilot Program Ends

Today also marks the end of the pilot phase of WGA Notifications, which means that eventually the program will run on all versions of Windows XP worldwide that use Microsoft's Automatic Updates system. The program is currently in a phased rollout, beginning with all English, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, French, German, Italian, and Dutch versions of Windows XP. Microsoft will soon offer these users the updated WGA Notifications through Automatic Updates.

Microsoft has mounted an aggressive program to eliminate counterfeit and pirated versions of Windows, and WGA is part of that effort. The program was first distributed, not as an automatic update, but just to users of Microsoft's download services who wanted to install add-on software, excluding security releases, for Windows.

The company later updated it with the WGA Notifications program, distributed as part of Microsoft's Automatic Updates. For users whose copy of Windows is not genuine, the program reminds them of this fact and informs them of what Microsoft calls the "benefits" of using authentic Windows software.

Users can opt out of WGA Notifications, but not the WGA program in general if they want to use Microsoft's download services. With the new release of WGA Notifications, Microsoft is including instructions for removing an older version of the program from a PC as Knowledge Base article No. 921914 on Microsoft.com, the company said.

Complaints

Since WGA's release last year, users have complained of bugs in the program that identified legitimate copies of Windows as counterfeit. A privacy advocate also accused the WGA Notifications of acting like spyware, since it sends information about a user's PC back to Microsoft automatically without letting the user know exactly what information is being sent.

Upgrading the program so it does not contact Microsoft every time a user logs in should help remedy the latter issue. The new version of WGA Notifications also includes a more comprehensive End User License Agreement that clearly explains the purpose of the software and details about the program, Microsoft said.

Paul DeGroot, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, says that for most consumers using legal copies of Windows XP, WGA probably "wasn't much of an issue."

The bigger issue, he suggests, is one of perception, especially after the spyware accusation. "For WGA to phone home every day was causing problems for some people," DeGroot adds. "Microsoft may have blown a lot of credibility here."