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Vista's SPP: bastard child of WPA and WGA? (and geek wallets)
31 comments- IT TOPICS:Emerging Technology, Operating Systems, Software, Windows & Microsoft
How YOU doin'? It's IT Blogwatch, in which Microsoft promises never to kill your PC, oh no, no way, not at all, next question? Not to mention geek wallets...
Microsoft Corp. today confirmed that it plans to overhaul its antipiracy technology in Windows Vista, a move it hopes will avoid the problems associated similar efforts in Windows XP and plug a longtime gap ... volume licensing customers are currently issued a single key ... no matter how many machines the software will be installed on ... Stolen volume license keys often end up on the Internet, where they can be reused millions of times by pirates and unwitting users. Under the Microsoft Software Protection Platform (SPP), business customers of Microsoft will be forced to tighten up how they install software.
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Customers who decline to or cannot successfully validate their copy of Vista during installation will be blocked from using certain features and will receive recurring messages urging them to validate or buy the software. Features they will be excluded from include Aero, Vista's updated graphical user interface; ReadyBoost, an application that uses flash memory to add to RAM and boost system performance; and Windows Defender, which protects against viruses and spyware.
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After 30 days, the operating system will go into ... "ugly mode" similar to Windows Safe Mode, and grant users one final hour of access to a Web browser to strongly encourage them to validate or buy a legal license of Vista through the Internet.
Back in June, I took a bunch of heat from Microsoft when I reported that the company was planning to roll out a Windows “kill switch” this fall. Microsoft denied it. Now, today, comes an announcement of the Software Protection Platform for Windows Vista, which sounds pretty damn close to what I wrote about in the first place.
If your copy of Windows Vista is “identified as counterfeit or non-genuine” you’ll be kicked into “reduced functionality mode” ... There is no start menu, no desktop icons, and the desktop background is changed to black ... After one hour, the system will log the user out without warning ... Sounds like a kill switch to me.
In other words, the technology doesn't turn the computer off. However, for most practical purposes, it renders much of the operating system useless ... It will be interesting to see how this plays out, given the history of Microsoft's existing Windows Genuine Advantage tool. Among other things, the anti-piracy measure has been a target of allegations that it erroneously labels some genuine Windows XP copies as invalid.
Your humble blogwatcher is incredulous:
Let's see if I have this straight. In its ongoing effort to thwart pirates, Microsoft is going to prevent its anti-malware bits from working on a PC running pirated Windows Vista? ... So it's fine for PCs running pirated versions of Vista to spew spam and malware into my inbox? Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Ars's Ken Fisher has his sources, too:
Microsoft's primary concern at this point is stopping both casual piracy and counterfeiters. I know from conversations with people inside the company that there are conflicting approaches to how to deal with this problem, but no one is under the illusion that that SPP, WPA, or WGA is going to completely eliminate piracy. The company is interested in continuing to build tools that make it difficult and inconvenience to be a pirate, however.
Microsoft is providing publicly little more than bare-bones details about these technologies and how they’ll figure in its next-generation products ... Testers I’ve talked to are not too thrilled about the systems-management headaches they believe will result from Volume Activation 2.0. They just see it as yet another service they’re going to have to administer.
Cyrus Farivar connects the dots:
We all thought that Microsoft was asking for trouble when the company announced previously that it would be including all the versions of Windows Vista on a single DVD, setting the stage for those in the know to crack the disc and save themselves some cash by installing Ultimate when they likely bought (ok, probably pirated via BitTorrent) a Vista DVD. Well, Microsoft has fired the first salvo in this war on pirates ... So for those of you keeping score, Microsoft wants to make using your computer as miserable as possible
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If we were betting types, we'd guess that the odds are pretty favorable that this anti-piracy measure will be defeated just as fast as PlaysForSure was.
Dwight Silverman accentuates the negatives and eliminates the positives: [you're fired -Ed.]
Much has been written -- usually in anger -- about Windows Genuine Advantage, which does a check to ensure your Microsoft operating system isn't pirated before you're allowed to download upgrades and additional programs. WGA is prone to false negatives [sic], sometimes declaring a copy of Windows to be illegitimate when actually it is quite legitimate. When this happens, you're forced to contact Microsoft and explain yourself, proving that your copy is real before you're allowed to download the goodies.
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Certainly, Microsoft has the right to protect itself from piracy, but this is the kind of thing that it had better get right, given how dire the consequences would be for its customers if it gets it wrong. Unfortunately, that's not been the history of WGA so far.
The problem with this kind of *cough* feature *cough* is the triggering conditions - any false positive is a disaster waiting to happen, and anyone who's been around software for the last few decades knows that no hardware/software test is 100% reliable. Microsoft is trodding the well known path followed by most mature companies: they got big, their initial visionaries have left, and they're getting increasingly stupid about preserving existing revenues.
But the Best Headline award goes to Harpreet Kaur:
Microsoft To Rip Your Head Off If You Pirate Vista
Buffer overflow:
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Richi Jennings is an independent technology and marketing consultant, specializing in email, blogging, Linux, and computer security. A 20 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. Contact Richi at blogwatch@richi.co.uk.
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