Chinese Strike Back at Microsoft for Anti-Piracy Measures

Microsoft's roll out of Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), an application that sniffs out pirated copies of Windows, isn't winning the company a whole lot of love in China. In fact, it has inspired a lawsuit and seems to have generated nothing but backlash from potential customers. And government officials.

"Microsoft has no right to judge whether the installed software is pirated or not. It has no right to penalize users by intruding on their computers," Liu, a man one man who is suing Microsoft, told the Xinhua News Agency.

At issue is a WGA feature that turns screens black for users who are running pirated copies of Windows. The user also receives repeated and constant messages that their software is pirated. The black-screen hasn't only infuriated Chinese computer users -- Chinese officials have been equally critical of Microsoft's approach. According to Reuters:

"National Copyright Administration (NCA) Vice-Director Yan Xiaohong said his agency supported "the rights-safeguarding move taken by institutions including Microsoft," Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying in a report late on Monday.

But companies should "pay attention to the methods," Yan said. "Whether the 'black-out' method should be adopted is open to question. Measures for safeguarding rights also need to be appropriate," Yan said.

We don't really get it. Anyone who receives the nagging notices from Microsoft must have signed up for it -- the notices are distributed to people who opted to receive the updates through Windows or through Microsoft Update. And before any automatic updates are installed on a machine, the owner has to agree to the licensing terms for the update service and WGA.

*Photo: *Flickr/Ikhlasul Amal

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