14 DAY TRIAL // Shhhht... Tread lightly, because you tread on Microsoft's anti-piracy dreams... There is one issue that troubles me since Microsoft has unleashed Windows Vista onto the world. Microsoft has done little to separate pirated copies of Windows XP from genuine one in terms of features and functionality. With Windows Vista, Microsoft has introduced the Reduced Functionality Mode for all Vista copies detected as non-genuine.
What bugs me? Well, it all started with something Alex Kochis, a senior licensing manager on the WGA team, said at the beginning of February 2007, just two weeks after Windows Vista had hit the shelves. "A colleague and friend of mine was traveling in Brazil recently and during her trip she took a few minutes to see what software was easily available on the streets of Sao Paulo. While Windows Vista was among the counterfeits available it was cheaper (about $5 vs $10 for other software titles) because the vendor said it 'might expire'," Kochis had said back then.
Kochis' position was shared by Cori Hartje, director of the Microsoft Genuine Software Initiative who stated: "On a recent trip to South America, we met a street vendor who had a copy of Windows Vista that included an inkjet-printed package, obviously counterfeit. He said, "This isn't going to work very long because Microsoft is going to shut this key off and you won't be able to activate it. But you can use it for a trial." This was eight days after the business launch of Windows Vista to volume licensing customers in the first part of December. So on one hand, low-quality copies are already out there, but on the other, the counterfeiters are aware that that Windows Vista's anti-piracy technologies are working."
The conclusion? Pirated copies of Windows Vista are cheaper because the operating system's anti-piracy technologies and the WGA mechanism are hard at work. I can see how this is an argument that can swing both ways. However, on a website that touts itself as being a superindex for in excess of 5,000 torrent trackers, just on the first page I managed to superficially count over 200,000 downloads of pirated copies of Windows Vista. Ironically, one of the torrents available is named Windows Vista All Versions Genuine.