Vista piracy the least of Microsoft's problems

Stan Beer
Thursday, 06 December 2007 06:08

Opinion and Analysis

After patiently explaining to her that I am a tech journalist who often gets review copies of software direct from the vendor, the operator apparently decided that I was as genuine as my copy of Vista and helped me activate my copy by dictating a new code to insert over the phone.

I can't help but wonder how many other new Vista users have had similar issues with the activation process. How many have uninstalled and reinstalled Vista only to be told that their activation code is invalid? Furthermore, since most are not journalists who received their software direct from Microsoft, how many have been met with skepticism by the Microsoft help desk operator? How many have been made to feel that the presumption on the other end of the line is that they're software pirates?

There is not much doubt that the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program is causing a lot of angst in the Windows user community.

Microsoft has been crowing lately that the piracy rate of Vista is half that of XP. I for one am not surprised. As one poster to a blog put it: who would want to pirate Vista anyway? A slightly less caustic explanation might be that right now you need some pretty damned expensive hardware to run Vista, so until the hardware market catches up in the places where piracy proliferates, pirated copies of Vista are not particularly sought after.

However, Microsoft's back-pedalling actions in removing the Vista total disabling function for computers that haven't activated the operating system within the required time frame suggests that the company now recognizes that this time it has pushed its user base too far. Paying customers don't like to be accused of being criminals. They don't like being told how many times they can uninstall and reinstall software they have already paid for. This is simply not good customer relations and Microsoft knows it.

One has to wonder what Microsoft was thinking when it introduced WGA anyway. If piracy was such a huge problem for Microsoft, how did the company manage to become one of the greatest corporate success story in history, with profits that most other companies can only dream of? How did Microsoft manage in the space of less than two decades to build a near monopoly in both the business and consumer desktop space?

More than a decade ago Bill Gates himself implied that piracy is a lesser of two evils for Microsoft and this is true. There is not the slightest doubt that Microsoft would rather a computer user was running a pirated version of Windows than Linux. The majority of Windows piracy occurs in the second and third world markets where users often can't afford to pay for genuine copies of Windows. However, the chances are that at some stage a fair percentage of these users will one day move over to a genuine copy of Windows - unless they move to Linux.

Vista piracy is the least of Microsoft's problems and it would be no surprise if Microsoft eventually drops the WGA program altogether. If Microsoft really believes it can get the next billion computer users outside the first world to use Windows, then it will first have to figure out a way to give them a version of Vista that they can even use let alone want to copy.