600 Million Microsoft Products Running in the Piracy Marathon

In excess of 600 million Microsoft products have been running for a whole year in the piracy marathon. 600 million is the total number of unique Microsoft products validations that have been processed through the Windows Genuine Advantage program starting as back as July 2005. "We have had an amazing year and have made a lot of progress on many fronts," revealed Cori Hartje, director of the Microsoft Genuine Software Initiative on the occasion of GSI's first anniversary.

In an interview with Microsoft's own PressPass, Hartje carefully avoided mentioning two vital pieces of information related to the volume of piracy. While focusing on the 600 million processed validations, Microsoft kept hush-hush all the details concerning the actual volume of pirated products detected by the WGA mechanism. Another aspect that is swept under the rug, and that the Redmond Company is not breathing a single word about is the potential source of a consistent amount of controversy: false positives.

Microsoft has acknowledged the fact that Windows Genuine Advantage has erroneously labeled genuine Microsoft products as pirated but has failed to reveal the actual volume of instances this problem occurred. In fact, the Redmond Company has gone as far as to overhaul the WGA process introducing a gray area in order to help reduce the number of false positives.

Along with the Windows Genuine Advantage, Microsoft also introduced the Office Genuine Advantage in its first year. "We also have solutions in place for customers that include support and legalization. For example, through WGA and OGA we provide a way to purchase genuine product at a discount if a consumer fails the validation process. In addition, if they have a high-quality counterfeit product and would like to report their source, they can complete a counterfeit report form and send a copy of their invoice along with the counterfeit product to see if they qualify for a complimentary replacement. To date, we've followed up on all of the approximately 60,000 counterfeit reports submitted through the WGA and OGA systems," Hartje added.