Microsoft tweaks antipiracy tech for Windows 7

I think some of you are PMSing.





Periodic Microsofting leads to elemental activation.

C'mon guys what planet are they on.

Microsoft trying to make anti-piracy work is a bit like trying to stop an Oil Tanker mid stream with a folded copy of a Newspaper.

Before we even consider "Bypassing the activation" there's enough "Quasi Legal" ways to get multiple copies of Windows anyway.

1) Virtualisation techniques make it possible to "replicate identical hardware" on zillions of computers so once a copy has been activated you can presumably replicate these VM's and use them. Not saying it's legal but there we are.

2) Even at a LOW Level of "Piracy" a normal user can usually get a copy of Windows activated on a second machine etc etc. -- Since MS (like many other companies) tends to regard "Customer service" as a penance which must be delivered as cheaply as possible the call centers are usually established in places like India, Malaysia, The Phillipines etc where wages are really low.
The people who work in these places don't have much technical knowledge - so when you phone the call center to activate windows you just say something like Computer broken / replaced a component or whatever. Provided your copy of Windows is NOT an OEM copy you'll get a new product code.


3) There's enough info on the 'Net now about what hardware changes trigger the activation process -- people who are seriously into piracy will presumably try and "reverse engineer" some of this stuff so that they can "pass on" already activated copies of windows.

The ONLY proper way to stop Piracy and it's not 100% foolproof either, would be to get the CPU manufacturers to build in a serial number into the instruction set of the CPU. A privileged instruction called something like STCCPID (from my old IBM mainframe days -- STORE CPUID) would transmit this to the MS licensing center as part of the windows activation process. This would be appended with a unique key to give that copy of Windows a Unique ID.

If you tried to use the same copy of windows on another machine it would HARD HALT on first access to the internet even if it had been previously activated.

You COULD transfer activation between machines -- so this would basically stop simple piracy of people distributing the same copy of windows to multiple customers. Once the CPU ID was checked any other CPU running this version of windows would be "deactivated" automatically.

Why people find it so hard to design reasonable robust stuff that wouldn't cost a bundle I don't know.

I came up with this idea whilst sitting in a Pub waiting for my Beer (incredibly slow service in that Pub BTW).

Best Engineering designs are completed quickly on the back of a Beermat.

Finally if the product is reasonably priced people won't bother with substantial Piracy -- however if as most people will get the HOME PREMIUM edition by default as it will be pre-installed on purchased machines --which lacks some fairly basic but essential features like RDP -- nearly everybody at home has some sort of a network these days and even if they don't they often want to be able to access their home computers from work without using 3rd party or web based services people will get HACKS etc to get a version of Windows WITH this feature included.

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

C'mon guys what planet are they on.

Microsoft trying to make anti-piracy work is a bit like trying to stop an Oil Tanker mid stream with a folded copy of a Newspaper.

Before we even consider "Bypassing the activation" there's enough "Quasi Legal" ways to get multiple copies of Windows anyway.

1) Virtualisation techniques make it possible to "replicate identical hardware" on zillions of computers so once a copy has been activated you can presumably replicate these VM's and use them. Not saying it's legal but there we are.

2) Even at a LOW Level of "Piracy" a normal user can usually get a copy of Windows activated on a second machine etc etc. -- Since MS (like many other companies) tends to regard "Customer service" as a penance which must be delivered as cheaply as possible the call centers are usually established in places like India, Malaysia, The Phillipines etc where wages are really low.
The people who work in these places don't have much technical knowledge - so when you phone the call center to activate windows you just say something like Computer broken / replaced a component or whatever. Provided your copy of Windows is NOT an OEM copy you'll get a new product code.


3) There's enough info on the 'Net now about what hardware changes trigger the activation process -- people who are seriously into piracy will presumably try and "reverse engineer" some of this stuff so that they can "pass on" already activated copies of windows.

The ONLY proper way to stop Piracy and it's not 100% foolproof either, would be to get the CPU manufacturers to build in a serial number into the instruction set of the CPU. A privileged instruction called something like STCCPID (from my old IBM mainframe days -- STORE CPUID) would transmit this to the MS licensing center as part of the windows activation process. This would be appended with a unique key to give that copy of Windows a Unique ID.

If you tried to use the same copy of windows on another machine it would HARD HALT on first access to the internet even if it had been previously activated.

You COULD transfer activation between machines -- so this would basically stop simple piracy of people distributing the same copy of windows to multiple customers. Once the CPU ID was checked any other CPU running this version of windows would be "deactivated" automatically.

Why people find it so hard to design reasonable robust stuff that wouldn't cost a bundle I don't know.

I came up with this idea whilst sitting in a Pub waiting for my Beer (incredibly slow service in that Pub BTW).

Best Engineering designs are completed quickly on the back of a Beermat.

Finally if the product is reasonably priced people won't bother with substantial Piracy -- however if as most people will get the HOME PREMIUM edition by default as it will be pre-installed on purchased machines --which lacks some fairly basic but essential features like RDP -- nearly everybody at home has some sort of a network these days and even if they don't they often want to be able to access their home computers from work without using 3rd party or web based services people will get HACKS etc to get a version of Windows WITH this feature included.

Cheers
jimbo

But then your messing with activations and no guarantee that everything will actually work. It should, but with activations and de-authorizations anything of the sort tend to be hassles for many users. Just look at DRM video and machine authorization and the problems that has caused with machine authentication etc. I'm not saying it could not work, but personaly I would rather not have anything like that near an operating system.

To combat piracy, you dont combat it. You give consumers what they want. People who know that they get what they pay for are more willing to pay for a new OS then borrow a freinds disk and crack it (which is pretty much common practice these days)

Just saying, better price and sell the **** out of the package!

Maybe MS could give beta testers (and i mean all of us that have downloaded the Beta and RC, not just the "official" testers) a discount. Seeing as we are already putting time and effort in to helping make it a better OS.
Just a thought.

Dave.