XP Pirates, Microsoft is watching you

A posting on the Windows Genuine Advantage Blog (see -- even anti-piracy software can have its own blog these days) announcing that the anti-piracy features present in Windows Vista will, from today, be brought to the Windows XP Pro platform, contains the following interesting claim:

"Our research has clearly shown that customers value the ability of Windows to alert them when they may have software that is not genuine, but they also want the ability to stay up to date with the least effort required on their part."

So, apparently pirates want validation that what they're doing is dodgy -- it makes them feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

In any case, the blog states that Windows XP Pro will get the new feature, but not XP Home, as XP Pro is apparently the most pirated version of Windows. Strangely enough, when Microsoft was launching Windows XP, they claimed that is was the most secure, least able to be pirated version ever. Funny what seven years can do.

Once the new version of WGA is installed, users on non-validated systems will see their system backdrop go black, and a permanent watermark embedded above the system tray that warns that the copy they're using didn't pass validation. Users can work around the watermark, and the desktop can be changed back, but it'll revert every sixty minutes to the all-black backdrop regardless.

You can read all about the changes here.