http://apnews.myway.com//article/20071125/D8T4S5FG0.html
Anti-Copying Programs May Slow Piracy
Nov 25, 1:43 PM (ET)
By BRIAN BERGSTEIN
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If the experience of the world’s largest software vendor is any guide, the industry’s best hope for reducing piracy rests with anti-copying technologies rather than in policing the legalistic user agreements that restrict how software can be used.
While a copyright crackdown by the Business Software Alliance and other industry players has been in force for years, piracy rates – as measured by BSA-commissioned studies – have stopped falling. So a few years ago, Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) began concentrating harder on locking software down through a program it calls its Genuine Software Initiative.
The technology has provoked some hostility, because it enables Microsoft to remotely examine user computers. After analyzing such information as the computer’s manufacturer, hard drive serial number and Windows product identification, Microsoft can block access to certain software functions if it suspects the product was illegally copied.
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Well, I would disagree.
MSFT excludes big businesses from their copyright checking. And, as yet, their self-help has NOT been challenged in court. In the marketplace, I’d suggest you see and out and out revolt.
Do you think the non adoption of Vista except on new hardware is surprising. Or the trend of people to retreat to XP on new hardware when faced with one of Vista’s “features”. Of the cutting edge folks moving to Linux or Mac.
No, I think this is gasps and flings of a dying behemoth.
We haven’t even begun to strike the surface of the WebOS and Google Apps.
Look at the new appliance tops that run Linux and cost under 300$!
No, I’d say that MSFT, and it’s buddy INTEL, have finally let the rodents escape the wheel of hardware / software upgrades. Instead of focusing on making the user experience flawlessly transparent, MSFT treats its Customers as criminals.
It, like the RIAA, will find itself voted off the island.
imho
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