[Infowarrior] - Microsoft to ease up on piracy check-ins

[Richard Forno]

Microsoft to ease up on piracy check-ins

By Joris Evers
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+to+ease+up+on+piracy+check-ins/2100-7348_3-608
2334.html

Story last modified Fri Jun 09 14:17:39 PDT 2006

Microsoft is cutting the cord on its antipiracy tool.

The software maker this month plans to update the Windows Genuine Advantage
Notifications program so that it only checks in with Microsoft once every
two weeks, instead of after each boot-up, a company representative said
Friday. By year's end, the tool will stop pinging Microsoft altogether, the
representative said.

The changes come after a critic likened the antipiracy tool to spyware. He
found that the program, designed to validate whether a copy of Windows has
been legitimately acquired, checks in with Microsoft on a daily basis.
Microsoft did not disclose in any of its documentation that the application
would phone home.

Microsoft earlier this week had vowed to better disclose the actions of WGA
Notifications. Now the company says it will gradually let go of the program
once it is installed on Windows PCs.

"We are changing this feature to only check for a new settings file every 14
days," Microsoft said in a statement on its Web site. "Also, this feature
will be disabled when WGA Notifications launches worldwide later this year."

No meaningful data is exchanged during the check-in with Microsoft, the
software maker said. Unlike the initial validation, which sends system
information to Microsoft, the check-in operation is limited to the download
of the new settings file, the company said.

Microsoft launched WGA in September 2004 and has gradually expanded the
antipiracy program. It now requires validation before Windows users can
download additional Microsoft software, such as Windows Media Player and
Windows Defender. Validation is not required for security fixes.

Originally, people had to validate their Windows installation only when
downloading additional Microsoft software. Since November last year,
however, Microsoft has been pushing out the WGA Notifications tool along
with security updates to people in a number of countries, including the U.S.

The first time that users run WGA Validation to check if their Windows
version is genuine, the information sent to Microsoft is the Windows XP
product key, PC maker, operating system version, PC bios information and the
user's local setting and language. Microsoft discloses in the WGA tool
license that this information is being sent.


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