While today is the day for Microsoft anti-piracy stories. Here is a ZDNet story out of the UK that talks about people being shut of out of their machines if the operating system is not activated.
If Vista is not activated with a legitimate product registration key in time, the system will run in “reduced functionality mode” until it is activated, said Thomas Lindeman, a senior product manager at Microsoft. In this mode, people will be able to use a Web browser for up to an hour, after which time the system will log them out, he said.
Plus there is a lot more in the story about the ’software protection program’ Microsoft is announcing…
The new technology is part of Microsoft’s new “Software Protection Platform”, which the company plans to announce on Wednesday. It will be part of future versions of all Microsoft products, but debuts in Windows Vista and Windows Server “Longhorn”
and…
Barring people from using their PC is a significant change from the antipiracy features that Microsoft bolted on to Windows XP with Windows Genuine Advantage. In XP, the piracy-busting features only put a block on downloading additional programs from Microsoft’s Web sites…
…Microsoft will continue to check if Vista was legitimately acquired, even after activation. This happens, for example, when downloading additional Microsoft programs. Should a licence key be deemed illegitimate, the user will be given another 30-day grace period to acquire a legitimate licence key, Microsoft said.
During this grace period warnings will be displayed and Vista will block access to the Windows Defender antispyware tool, ReadyBoost memory expansion feature and Aero advanced graphics option, Microsoft said. Also, a persistent text will display in the lower right hand of the screen: “This copy of Windows is not genuine.
Then we get this nice explanation of the work that will be involved to help a company authorize Microsoft Products in the future.
… Microsoft is also changing the way businesses license its software. New licensing systems will replace the current volume licence keys, which have been widely abused..
Starting with Vista, Microsoft will offer two different types of keys and offer three different ways to distribute them within an organisation. In all cases, some more work will be required on the part of the technology department at a company.
The first type of product key to replace the current system is called “multiple activation key,” or MAK. An IT pro at a company can install a key on a machine that will then need to be validated online. Alternatively a proxy can be set up centrally to activate multiple systems at once, according to Microsoft.
The second licensing option is called “key management service”, or KMS. This requires the organisation to set up a KMS service on the corporate network that will activate client machines. The Vista PCs will silently find the KMS service and activate, according to Microsoft.
I really like the last piece of the story…
It may seem as though businesses will have to count all their licences, but it’s really not as bad as it sounds, said Michael Silver, an analyst with Gartner.
“It has nothing to do with licence counting right now, but companies will need to expend time and effort and some money to administer this, in the name of helping Microsoft recoup revenue lost to piracy,” he said. “There needs to be more of a benefit [for customers]. Linux and Mac communities will try to make hay with this, but this will not be the tipping point.”
While I think that part is total crap, one of the biggest problems with people I talk to is they don’t have a software asset management program in place currently. So they don’t know if the products installed on their machines are legal or not. Companies “want” to be compliant or legal, but they always mention the amount of work and time that would be needed to do it – so they just ignore the problem.
No doubt they “will have” to do this with Microsoft products in the future, because they are forced to. But what happens when other companies start doing the same type of thing? Adobe is already doing a new license scheme, how long until everyone is doing some thing like this. Odd’s are that every vendor is going to want their own special system in place to work with their tools, this sounds like a lot of work in the future.
