Microsoft intensifies anti-piracy measures

07.05.08 15:49 Filed in: The Prague Post
Clock ticking for crackdown on illegal copies of Vista

Your computer screen’s menus and icons disappear, slipping beneath a wall of funereal black. The computer still works, but it will not work for you.
While it may sound like a nightmare scenario, it’s exactly the situation businesses and consumers using pirated copies of Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system may find themselves in, as Microsoft has now activated Vista’s “reduced functionality mode.”
As many as one in three computer users in the Czech Republic use pirated copies of Microsoft Windows, according to industry data. The average piracy rate in the country runs at about 39 percent, a notch above the global average, the Business Software Alliance estimates. The United States has the world’s lowest piracy rate, at 21 percent.
In Vista, the reduced functionality mode will take effect if the operating system has not been correctly activated by entering a license key, following a 30-day grace period.
“Vista includes a sophisticated tool to detect illegal copies. The check is carried out in the background and would go unnoticed by registered users,” said Tomáš Koška, who heads the Windows client section at Microsoft ?R.
The new Vista control measures will likely pressure both businesses and home users into buying legal copies of Windows.
“Through our retail partners, we’ve noticed immense demand for [Windows] licenses following remote checks of their computer systems,” said Ji?í Karhánek, product manager with computer wholesale distributor SWS.
Over the past four years, Microsoft has performed checks on more than 4.5 million computers in the Czech Republic, out of 900 million systems worldwide. The company says this helped to reduce software piracy in the country 1 percent last year.
Vista’s anti-piracy tool even detects popular hacks that try to circumvent its authorization mechanism. The updated tool was included as part of Vista’s Service Pack 1, the Czech version having been released April 16.
Microsoft gives users plenty of time to legalize their status, Koška said. In addition to the standard full package product, Microsoft is offering an OEM license for 2,000 K? ($124), but only for a limited time, he said.
While some businesses have learned the hard way that using pirated or counterfeit software is no laughing matter — by staring at a blank screen —  others have started to look into alternative solutions. Linux, a free, open-source operating system that exists in numerous iterations, is a popular alternative.
The Defense Ministry has a Linux pilot project running, but it’s still too early to call it a success, said spokesman Vladimír Lukovský.
Counterintuitively, security concerns are not a major barrier to Linux’s use at the ministry. Its IT system is not under direct threat from hackers, because it is physically disconnected from public Internet, Lukovský said.
Meanwhile, the town hall of D??ín, north Bohemia, is already a few steps — and set-backs — ahead. Tomáš Kejzlar, the city’s IT administrator, uses Linux mainly on servers, an area where its deployment has become a standard solution. But even on desktops, Linux has a lot going for it, Kejzlar said: It saves license fees, is interoperable on different hardware systems and can easily be controlled and maintained remotely.
“However, the Czech IT environment and especially the state administration are not really ready to use Linux on desktop computers,” Kejzlar said. “A lot of software developers have turned a blind eye to Linux.”