WGA failure highlights major flaw in Microsoft’s anti-piracy strategy

by admin August 27, 2007 at 4:15 pm

This weekend’s Windows Genuine Advantage outage was a powerful reminder of the asymmetrical trade-off inherent in Microsoft’s anti-piracy efforts. Microsoft’s aggressive focus on stopping piracy isn’t matched by the care and precision such a task needs to prevent it from punishing legitimate users. Once again, we’re scratching our heads looking for the “advantage” in Windows Genuine Advantage.

We all know that Microsoft’s products are widely pirated, and the company has every right to try and stop it. Many of us might even cheer Microsoft on, if its anti-piracy efforts both worked and were completely unobtrusive to legitimate users.

Full story: arstechnica.com