Lawsuit calls Microsoft's anti-piracy tool spyware

A computer user is suing Microsoft Corp. over the company's Windows Genuine Advantage anti-piracy tool, alleging that it violates laws against spyware.

Link

[basa]

Brave man who takes on the might of the MS lawyers, although he obviously is hoping it will become a class action.

IMO whilst probably not spyware in the generally accepted sense of the term in that it is installed by consent of the end user, it sure as hell in my mind is checking through your PC and reporting back to MS.

Who can say exactly what this s/w does or doesn't do ??

And by what right do they propose a "kill switch" if MS thinks (often mistakenly) that you are running pirated or otherwise illegal s/w ?

AFAIK even if you don't install WGA and consequently MS blocks your Updates, can't you manually download and install relevant Updates some other way ?

[Paul]

Yep, updates are sourcable elsewhere, XP Autopatcher is one such place. A kill switch would be hard for them to do since as quickly as they do something people find work arounds to it lol

[brundles]

Originally Posted by basa

IMO whilst probably not spyware in the generally accepted sense of the term in that it is installed by consent of the end user, it sure as hell in my mind is checking through your PC and reporting back to MS.

It's only installed by user consent in the very loosest of terms. Now that it's in the mainstream updates, the number of PCs that will just have had it installed without really telling the user what's being installed is through the roof.

Or are you referring to the part of the SP2 license agreement which basically says MS can do what they want when they want to your PC and if it destroys your PC, your business and your life in the process it's not their fault?

[DaggaDagga]

I'll just get in the comment about "it's no trouble if you have a legal copy of Windows" before anyone else can

MS are possibly shooting themselves in the foot here. They are going to push a lot of home users towards linux with their heavy-handed tactics. Once everyone's familiar with it at home, it won't be such a leap bor businesses to start using it too.

[brundles]

Originally Posted by DaggaDagga

I'll just get in the comment about "it's no trouble if you have a legal copy of Windows" before anyone else can

You sure about that?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06...oft_wga_snafu/

You might want to have a rummage through this forum too (look for the thread on the kill switch) as there are similar reports of users on this forum where WGA gives false positives.