Office antipiracy checks to become mandatory

Elizabeth Montalbano   Today’s Top Stories   or  Other Security Stories  

Dynamic Data Center and Virtualization Drives Operational Excellence at Emory Healthcare Web Threats Don't Discriminate The Secure Web Gateway. Mission Critical For Business The Total Economic Impact of the Altiris Total Management Suite Software Securing and Managing the Endpoints: The Case for Convergence An Overview of PAN Manager by Egenera SaaS Solutions for Remote Systems Management Compterworld Technology Briefing: Intelligent Users Use Business Intelligence Computerworld Report- Large Enterprises Pay More for IPAM Sign up to receive Security Resource Alerts

October 26, 2006 (IDG News Service) -- The Office productivity and collaboration suite is about to become the next piece of software from Microsoft Corp. subject to mandatory piracy checks.

The company's Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) program will require mandatory validation of Office software on Friday, the software vendor quietly disclosed on Thursday. After that date, any Office Online templates downloaded from within the Office 2007 Microsoft Office System applications will require validation of legitimacy.

Similarly, starting in January, users of Office Update will have to validate that their Office software is legitimate before they can use the service, Microsoft added.

The company said in a statement Thursday that the validation process will be "quick and simple" for users. The OGA program, currently in the testing phase, is now available in 26 languages worldwide.

OGA is a sister program to Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), launched in July 2005 as a program that automatically checks a user's version of Windows to ensure that it is not counterfeit or pirated.

Microsoft has integrated this check directly into the next version of Windows, Windows Vista, as part of what it is calling a "Software Protection Platform." Through that automatic validation system, a Vista user must activate his copy of the software with a valid activation key within 30 days after the software is installed, or the operating system will go into reduced functionality mode. In that mode, users can browse the Web for an hour, but then the system will log them out and they will have to log in again if they want to browse more.

Microsoft has increased its efforts in recent years to fight software piracy and counterfeiting of its software products. But these efforts have met with some resistance from users, especially when early bugs in the WGA checks were tagging legitimate software as counterfeit or pirated.

Other users object strongly to the program's "phone-home" capabilities. Microsoft also was forced to turn off a notification feature in the WGA that sent information to Microsoft from users' PCs when some complained that the feature was acting like spyware.

Reprinted with permission from

IDG.net
Story copyright 2008 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

Print this Story

Send Us Feedback

E-mail this Story

Digg this Story

Slashdot this Story

"The recent attacks in Mumbai were carried out by assailants using high tech methods. It’s just another way in which..." Read more... Read more Security posts or See all Blogs

Windows users indifferent to Microsoft patch alarm, says researcher Tech jobs down sharply but not out Apple yanks antivirus advice from its Web site More top stories...

Microsoft slates 8 bug updates for year's final Patch Tuesday De Beers tries to force spoof news Web site offline over fake ad Microsoft confirms Yahoo's Lu to run online services

Review: The new MacBook Air, now with extra SSD goodness Thin as ever, the latest Air offers up to twice the storage and snappy performance. Cool Stuff: Your 2008 Holiday Gift Guide We've got an array of economical, expensive, and just plain weird tech gifts for your friends and family. Massive botnet returns from the dead, starts spamming The spam-spewing 'Srizbi' botnet that was shut down two weeks ago has been resurrected and is again under criminal control, say security researchers. Elgan: Why you can't trust 'friends' on Facebook Facebook is popular and growing -- especially with criminals. Here's why they love it. Windows 7 Get the latest news, reviews and more about Microsoft's newest desktop operating system More Continuing Coverage Windows 7 Voting Technology Google's Chrome browser Economy in turmoil: Latest news and tips iPhone 3G Bill Gates moves on Windows Vista A to Z Mac A to Z 2008 Salary Survey Find wage data for 50 IT job titles. More Special Reports 2008 Premier 100 IT Leaders 2007 Premier 100 IT Leaders 2008 Best Places to Work in IT 2007 Best Places to Work in IT 2008 Salary Survey 2007 Salary Survey 2006 Salary Survey 2008 IT Forecast 2007 IT Forecast 40 Years of Computerworld Top 12 Green-IT Users The FAQs About Going Green IT Schools to Watch iPhone: One Year Later Global Mobile Your Next Data Center Management: Reinventing IT Stop Data Leaks Web 2.0 Security Surviving Disasters Managing Storage Virtualization The Lean Storage Machine Storage on Trial Can Web 2.0 Save BI? Bypass These BI Potholes All Zones Business Continuity Zone The File Data Management Zone Security Management Zone The SAS Zone Business Intelligence and Analytics Zone The Enterprise Search Zone Software as a Service Zone The Security Zone See your link here

Moving to Windows Vista: The Promise, The Reality Moving to Windows Vista: The Promise, The Reality View this exclusive webcast today! Go to the webcast  Computerworld Executive Bulletin: Building a Robust Antivirus Defense Download this Executive Bulletin (a $49.95 value) for free, compliments of MessageLabs. (Source: MessageLabs) Antivirus software alone isn't enough to prevent today's speedy, sophisticated virus attacks. Security managers should consider multitiered approaches that include behavior scanning, appliances that check e-mail for worms, and restricting user access to dangerous Web sites. Download this Executive Bulletin (a $49.95 value) for free, compliments of MessageLabs, to learn more. Download this executive briefing  Record Capacity for Microsoft� Exchange 2007 With VMware and IBM System x3850 M2 Download this white paper today! (Source: VMware) The more that e-mail becomes an entrenched IT infrastructure application, the more that messaging administrators face numerous--sometimes conflicting--demands in the categories of availability, flexibility and cost. Employing a virtual solution can help avoid expensive over-provisioning of server computing resources, while improving management and disaster recovery. And ultimately, it can more than double the number of supportable Exchange 2007 users, as compared to a non-virtualized environment. This whitepaper explains how to break down the scalability barrier and respond faster to your mail system needs. Download this white paper  White Papers Read up on the latest ideas and technologies from companies that sell hardware, software and services. 8 Things You Need to Handle Today's Network Traffic Next-Gen Load Balancing: 3 Keys to Successful Delivery of Advanced Web Apps Building a Reliable and Dynamic Data Center with PAN Manager by Egenera View more whitepapers

• Windows users indifferent to Microsoft patch alarm, says researcher
• Microsoft slates 8 bug updates for year's final Patch Tuesday
• Tech jobs down sharply but not out
• More top stories 

The Security Zone With the mobility of employees and the ease with which external devices can be brought in and out of a network, continuing to build your security plan for network servers and clients is a must. Fortunately, there is much that organizations can do to protect themselves from attacks - internal and external. Having the right policies, procedures and server configurations is critical... Learn more in The Security Zone See All Zones

Fired up about IT? Join Sharkbait and share your true tales of IT. SharkBait is the place for you to sound off about everything IT – the good, the bad, and the rest of the weird stuff you deal with every day. New baits

"Turning information into a Competitive Advantage" Companies today are realizing that competitive advantage is harder to sustain when based solely on gains in productivity and cost efficiency. The focus is shifting to invest more in business optimization initiatives which rely on trusted information to develop new insights that deliver better business results. But how can this be done efficiently in a business environment across multiple applications and processes. The answer is an Information Agenda - an innovative approach to transforming business information into a strategic asset for competitive advantage. View this webcast now!  See more Webcasts

Dan Tynan Today's Internet has been brought to you by porn YouTube and Ning are trying to shed adult-oriented content to appeal to mainstream advertisers. Will it work? ... [more]