GLOBEANDMAIL.COM
Bill Gates will be frisking you with a simple point and click
By SIMON AVERY
Tuesday, July 26, 2005 Updated at 5:17 AM EDT
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
The next time you visit the website of Microsoft Corp. to download
some software, be prepared to let the world's biggest software company
have a look inside your computer.
In a determined strike to quell the proliferation of counterfeit
software, beginning today, Microsoft will require that all customers
coming to its website for upgrades and other downloads submit their
computers to an electronic frisking.
If you use one of the estimated hundred million PCs running pirated
software, don't expect your upgrade. For Microsoft, the new policy is
a stepped-up effort to combat the loss of billions of dollars worth of
software sales every year to counterfeiters around the world. But in
ramping up efforts to fight piracy, the Redmond, Wash.-based behemoth
already finds itself fending off critics over privacy.
"It sets an extremely negative precedent," Pam Dixon, executive
director of World Privacy Forum, a non-profit public-interest research
centre in San Diego, said of the company's initiative. "Microsoft is
saying, 'Before I let you do anything at all, you have to open your
computer to us.' I really object to this."
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The company will scan machines for a variety of information, including
product keys or software authorization codes, operating-system version
and details on the flow of data between the operating system and other
hardware, such as printers.
It is access to this information that particularly upsets the privacy
advocates. Ms. Dixon says the only information Microsoft needs to
fight piracy is the product key and the operating-system version, and
she says that Microsoft will be able to identify users uniquely based
on some of the information the company collects.
"They are grabbing more information than they need to deter piracy,"
she said.
If Microsoft deems a PC to be carrying contraband code, it won't allow
a user to download Microsoft programs, with the exception of security
patches. But the software company — which says that more than one in
five U.S. computers runs a counterfeit version of its Windows product
— is not just waving a stick. It is also offering a big carrot.
Microsoft said it will give a free copy of its Windows XP to customers
who unknowingly bought a counterfeit version of the operating system
and who fill out a piracy report, provide proof of purchase and send
Microsoft the counterfeit CDs.
Customers who cannot provide proof of purchase but file a piracy
report will receive a substantial discount on a legitimate version of
the operating system, said Tim Prime, a product manager in the Windows
client group at Microsoft Canada Co., a subsidiary of the U.S.
company.
Executives at Microsoft reject any suggestions that the move will
antagonize customers with privacy concerns.
"Customers want to know whether retailers have sold them genuine
software," Mr. Prime said.
More than 40 million users agreed to have their systems scanned in a
10-month trial that began last September in several countries. The
participation rate amounted to 58 per cent of all visitors to the
pilot website, far exceeding Microsoft's expectations of just 10 per
cent, Mr. Prime said.
Microsoft said no personal data will be collected during the
validation process, and information will remain completely anonymous.
The company said it commissioned TÜV-ITÖ, an independent German
security auditor, to test how well its Windows Genuine Advantage
program protects customers' data, and the firm concluded that
Microsoft does not collect any personal information that would allow
it to identify or contact a user.
Seth Schoen, a staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, a civil liberties group in San Francisco specializing in
technology issues, agreed that Microsoft would not be able to identify
customers personally through the program. But the data collected are
unique to every customer, just as human fingerprints are unique, and
the issue becomes how long the company holds onto the details and
whether they could become personally identifying later on, he said.
Technology companies have walked a fine line for years on the issue of
collecting information from consumers' computers. Six years ago,
RealNetworks Inc., whose software plays audio and video content on the
Internet, released a patch for its RealJukebox program after the
public learned the software was relaying personal information about
users to the company.
More recently, Google Inc. created a privacy backlash when it said its
free e-mail service, Gmail, would include special software that
inserts ads into personal e-mails based on their content.
Clearly, Microsoft believes any risk of public-privacy concerns are
worth incurring to fight a problem that has turned into an epidemic in
some parts of the world.
Microsoft has been fighting counterfeit efforts for years with limited
success. It says that 35 per cent of the world's computers run
counterfeit software and that piracy cost the global software industry
$41-billion in 2004.
The Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft and the Business Software
Alliance reported recently that 36 per cent of all software
applications in use in Canada are pirated, costing $1.1-billion in
lost retail software sales.
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