Betanews has a nice article about the product activation of Microsoft's upcoming Operating System Windows XP. The article tells us the procedure Microsoft has in mind and also about Microsoft's view on both privacy and piracy.
For those who think it will be easy to 'hack' the Windows XP product activation, Microsoft has a suprise, according to the Microsoft employee in the Beta version of the OS this was easy to bypass, but for the final version this will be harder:
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BetaNews: Does the apparent ease of cracking Microsoft's upcoming next-generation version of Windows concern the company?
Allen Nieman: Actually, product activation in Windows XP has yet to be cracked. I was able to analyze the "smart crack" that you forwarded to me and determined that it includes the same set of instructions that other so-called cracks do; essentially the setting of a registry key that disables activation. We made the existence of this registry key public to our beta testers back in early February and included it as a testing tool, telling them where it was and how to set it to disable activation. We knew what we were doing when we created it and we know how to remove it.
That said, the intellectual property (IP) protection arena is a cat-and-mouse game. All IP protection technologies will be cracked at some point; it's just a matter of time. So we need to take the measure of success into consideration. The measure of success is not completely stopping software piracy, which is probably an unattainable goal. Success is more likely measured in increased awareness of the terms of the license agreement and increased license compliance.
Very intresting article, read more by clicking on source on top of this newsposting.
Source: Betanews.com
