Windows XP copy protection.

Factual Questions
1

This thread over in GD discusses the merits of the anti-pirating controls that Microsoft is incorporating into the new Windows XP and how it will prevent a single user from installing the OS on two or more machines.

I don’t really understand how MS can stop me installing a copy of Windows XP on my three (for example) home machines.

I’m thinking this would be the scenario:

  1. I buy 1 copy of the product.
  2. I install the product on my machine “A”.
  3. The product is registered either over the telephone or internet. It is assigned serial number 1.
  4. Machine “A” runs with copy 1.
  5. I install a copy of the product on my machine “B”.
  6. The product is registered either over the telephone or internet. If necessary I advise that I have installed a new processor (or other hardware) in my “A” machine. It is assigned serial number 2.
  7. Machine “B” runs with copy 2.
  8. I install a copy of the product on my machine “C”.
  9. The product is registered either over the telephone or internet. If necessary I advise that I have installed a new processor (or other hardware) in my “B” machine. It is assigned serial number 3.
  10. Machine “C” runs with copy 3.

Now, I’m sure MS would have thought of this so I’m pretty sure I’ve missed something.

Can somebody please explain it to me in small words?

2

I don’t think you have missed anything. But what it is , you see, Microsoft has you on record from the first time you register XP. If you call in every couple of days and claim to have changed your processor, then you can bet that before long you will have a visit from some folks who want to take a look at your house (or office) and see how many computers you really have with XP and how many have the same XP serial number. You have to enter this number from the CD during installation, and it is recorded somewhere in your system where it can be checked. Too many reinstalls too often, and you have to prove that you aren’t a pirate.

Now, imagine this:
Computer with a problem. Computer has a graphics card, an SCSI card, a network card, an extra IDE controller, and an ISDN card. Something is causing problems on the PCI bus. It may be any one of the cards, or it may be the motherboard or one of the harddisks causing one of the controller cards to flake out. To find the problem, you swap components until the problem goes away. Now we get to XP. How many swaps do you get before you have to re-register? How often can you re-register with getting asked all sorts of stupid questions? How often can you re-register before somebody shows up and wants proof that you aren’t a pirate?
And now, one more thing. Fast forward six years. You have an original installation CD for XP and an old computer that won’t handle XP 2007 (which requires 512MB RAM and a 3 Gigaherz processor,) but will run the older version and would do all that you need done. The computer that once upon a time used XP has long since been scrapped. Will you be able to register your old version of XP for use on the other machine? How long will Microsoft allow you to register and old version? This looks like a perfect scam to force upgrades to me.

January 4, 2003
“Hello, Microsoft XP registry line?”
“Yes.”
“I would like to re-register my Windows XP with code XXXXXXX. My mainboard quit on me. I got a new one of the same model, but XP won’t start now.”
“I am very sorry, that version was published in the third quarter of 2001, and we no longer support registration for it. An upgrade to the current version will only cost you (insert dollar equivalent of right arm here.) The hardware requirements have changed a bit, though. You will probably want to upgrae your mainboard, your RAM, and your graphics card and install a much larger harddisk. Of course, it may be easier to just replace the whole thing. Easier on the nerves, too. And you can get the new machine with XP pre-installed and registered.”
“Uh, gee thanks. I guess I can use the old CD here for a frisbee and my old PC as a flower planter.”
“Thank you for calling Microsoft, and have a nice day!”

The company I work for will not be switching to XP until there is absolutely no other way. A great many programs that we have to use (specialized, proprietary DOS software) will not run correctly in a Windows NT type environment, which XP is. Registration will (in my opinion) be ineffective against large scale pirate operations, and will only succeed in alienating the normal user. Prevention of casual piracy (making copies for family or friends) could be taken care of better with normal CD copy protection schemes.

Short form:
Re-registry too often will get you asked a bunch of questions by the Microsoft registry line and possibly a visit from some unfriendly investigator types.
No one knows how long Microsoft will support re-registry for a particular version.

3

…and this is why altruists have already broken the copy protection. God bless hackers. :slight_smile:

4

And how the hackers have made themselves liable for prosecution, as well as anyone who uses the hack program.

I do not condone piracy. My company produces a couple of programs, and we use copy protection. Our software is special use for a VERY narrow vertical market. We simply can’t miss a single sale in getting our investment back. The software itself is an enabler, a selling point if you will, that adds a lot of value to our hardware. The hardware will do its job without the software, but the software makes the user’s life ever so much easier as well as providing him with information and capabilities otherwise only available from systems costing dozens of times more than ours.
In general, I don’t like copy protection and didn’t really want to put a dongle on our software. That was before I was asked point blank by a customer how he could get around our copy protection. He could use forty copies (which is more than we have sold so far) and only bought two. The cost of the software he would need is actually less than the cost of the PCs he would have to purchase to use the program.
I do not like copy protection, so I did my best to make ours as painless for our honest customers as possible. Our software is networked, and only needs a single dongle for all machines running simultaneously in the customer’s net. We use the best dongle we can get so that our customers can use the printer port without interference. In a perfect world, this wouldn’t be necessary.
I understand that Microsoft wants a good return on its investment. They are just doing it at the expense of the honest users.
I personally use Linux. I purchased my CDs from SUSE because SUSE supports the Linux development community (as do most other distributors) rather than just copying the CDs from a friend. I prefer the openness of the Linux community, have hope to someday contribute something useful myself.
Linux (through the GPL) is freedom. You can license your software under your own proprietary license but still use it on a Linux system or you can go GPL and let others improve on your code and use it to make new things. My favorite example of this is the Lexmark Z series inkjet printer drivers. They use Ghostscript (either the GPL version or the more up to date Aladdin version) to preprocess Postscript files and generate a bitmap of the finished output. There is then a small proprietary program that then converts the standard bitmap to the proprietary printer commands. Through the power of the GPL, Lexmark provides Linux users with the equivalent of postscript (which is the standard output format for many document producing programs under Linux and actually Unix in general) capable printers at a very good price for the user, with relatively little development cost for Lexmark.

Sorry for the hijack. I tend to get carried away when discussing software licenses and copy protection. I am stuck with one butt cheek hanging on each side of the licensing fence with no way to get down. I see both side of the story, and know the problems and advantages of each.

I would switch the company over to Linux if it were possible, but there is the pesky problem of the propretary software that we have to use from other companies that just can’t be made to run properly under anything but a DOS based Windows system.

Hey! Somebody call Mr. Gates and suggest he put a real dongle in with XP. That would take care of most of the mess. No more registering, no one could use more than one installed copy of his Windows CD at a time. OK, Microsoft would have to deal with replacing failed dongles - but heck, that’d be less hassle than what they’ve started. They could even have a failsafe mode that lets you use Windows a set number of days (or reboots) from the last time the dongle was installed so that you can get a replacement dongle when one fails. Replacement against turn in of old one only. Computer shops could charge dongle cost plus a couple of bucks to exchange them outside of the guarantee period. Microsoft could provide replacement dongles to the software handlers on a deposit basis. The dealer shells out a deposit equal to the price of a new Windows XP CD for each spare dongle he wants to stock. Every time he replaces one for the customer, he sends it to MS. If the replacement is within the guarantee period (dongles have a small write once memory to record date of first use,) then it is replaced at no cost to the dealer, else at cost of a new unit. XP copy protected, users happy, dealers happy. Big time pirates aren’t going to be stopped by this, but then Microsoft’s current scheme won’t stop them either.

Damn. Double hijack. Really sorry, folks.

5

What’s a dongle?

6

A dongle is a hardware solution for copy protection. It’s been around for ages, and works quite well.

7

A dongle is a hardware solution for sopy protection. It’s been around for ages, and works quite well.

8

Further to what cmkeller said, a dongle is often (but not always) a small plug-in to the serial or parallel port that the software checks for. It’s very common on high-value software, such as forensic computing programs.

9

Small hardware device that plugs into the computer. Normally the parallel port, but they are also made for USB and serial ports. It has a small, low power microprocessor, a fair amount of ROM, and a small amount of EEPROM. The ones we use also have an encryption feature. Your software occassionally makes requests for data from the dongle, or asks it to perform an encryption task for which your software can also calculate the answer, but only if the keys in the software and the dongle match. If you don’t get the right response, then your software can take whatever action you think necessary. For our software, decided on a fall back to demo mode. Every two hours (when the dongle is absent,) the software pops up a warning window telling yopu that the trial period has expired. Clicking OK shuts down the program, and there is no cancel. You can of course let it continue running with the warning showing, but then it will only take care of predefined, automatic tasks and you can’t give it new instructions without clicking “OK.” Our software also manages the number of licenses in a network. One PC is defined as the license server, and all other copies of the program ask this machine for a license. When it has as many active users as the dongle says this customer is allowed to use, then no other copies of the program get permission to run, and in this case the particular copy shuts down completely and automatically. You can also run the license server without a dongle. This lets a customer try out a network system of up to 99 clients without having to have that many licenses. Of course, all 99 shutdown after twqo hours at the same time.
The ones we use cost about thirty US dollars each the last time we bought a batch of one hundred. Since the list price of our software is on the order of a thousand US dollars, it is not a real big expense. If the things were being produced by the gazillions like Microsoft would need, then they could be made much cheaper.
A dongle is what MS is trying to make out of your whole computer - a hardware device that verifies your right to execute a particular installed copy of a program.

10

While I agree that WPA is not the best way to prevent pirating software, I do feel that some form of copy protection is necessary. Just by looking at the amount of pirated versions of Windows out there, I can see why MS wants to prevent casual piracy (ie, burning 15 copies of Windows 98 for your buddies).

This also caught my attention:

Well, XP may be an NT environment, but MS has a pretty nifty compatibility mode that allows the usage of many 9x and legacy programs that otherwise wouldn’t work.

My view on the matter is that MS should scale back or revise the current WPA model. This model could work with less hassles to valid customers, and still provide a good protection against piracy.

(I’m curious…isn’t it possible to place an encrypted segment onto the CD that is required for installation, but the code is programmed in a way so that it can only be read, not copied?)

11

I hate all these copy protection scheams. I can understand their point but I have used hacked software that I bought leagally because it is easier to install and reinstall.

12

Sorry, no soap. The stuff we have to use directly addresses certain parts of the hardware. The emulation needed to fool our programs into thinking that they are really accessing the hardware instead of some figment of NT’s imagination is just too slow. I am talking about realtime handling of interrupts with devices in the outside world setting the pace.
Also, if you can read a piece of data from a CD, then there is nothing to stop you from copying it. There are copy protection schemes out there that work similarly, though. They fool your CD drive into thinking that certain sectors have bad data. The actual software then checks for the presence and location of these bad sectors. If they aren’t there, then the program shuts down. This is a dongle in CD form. There are crack programs that will fool the protected software into thinking that the correct CD is in the drive. These are usually patches to the software. Then there are CD drives and software that will allow you to copy a CD perfectly, including the errors. All that all of this does is to raise the bar and prevent casual copying. It doesn’t stop a determined pirate. Just about nothing will.

13

That is why I made damn sure to use the best dongle and software available. The user doesn’t notice ours once he has plugged it in. Setting up the Windows network for the system is worlds harder. Our software, you just run the setup, plug in the dongle and don’t sweat it. If the dongle dies, we replace it. No questions. If you want to put the software on another machine, fine go ahead. It will even work for a couple of hours (if you don’t move the dongle as well) before you have to click on “OK” and then restart the program. Hell, it is not even all of the program. If you act fast, the database won’t have shutdown, and restarting only takes less than a second. It is enough of a nuisance that the software isn’t usable over long periods, but a small enough nuisance that it doesn’t bother someone who legitimately wants to try it before purchasing it.
Yes, most copy protection is so poorly implemented that it gets in the way of legitimate use. It doesn’t have to be that way, it just very often is.

14

I still wonder each time I use the Windows Update feature where Microsoft says, ‘This is done without sending any information to Microsoft.’ Perhaps. Maybe what they do is send the info to some other company?

15

Thanks for the info about the programming of the CD, Mort. I was thinking similarly myself, but I didn’t know for sure.

Also, I’m not surprised that your DOS software won’t run on the emulator…Not all legacy programs work on it, especially not the intensive ones.

16

Is Microsoft’s licensing agreement for XP legally enforcable though?

Distribution of copyrighted software or using a pirated copy is pretty cut-and-dried, that’s illegal. But modifying your own legally-obtained copy to suit your own purposes (such as being able to fiddle with your hardware without having to call Microsoft to get permission, or to not have to keep track of a dongle any more) is more of a grey area.

I’m not totally certain about this, but I thought that if contract law says there are certain things a company can’t stipulate in a licensing agreement, then you can ignore those stipulations and otherwise live up to your end of the agreement in all other respects. I’m not certain of the illegality of hacking software you legally obtained, DMCA weirdness aside. Isn’t that what the whole UCITA fight is about as well? Courts have said those shrink-wrap licenses are unenforcable, so the industry is trying to get new legislation passed to make them so?

-fh

17

And, thinking a bit more about my OP, what’s to stop me installing my copy of XP on my 3 machines with the one serial number that I have obtained from Microsoft over the 'phone?

As long as the serial number is valid, the CD doesn’t know what (or how many) machines I am installing on.

Or does it, somehow?

18

Here’s an overview of how the Windows XP copy protection system works. Since XP hasn’t been officially released yet, this could change. But it probably won’t be radically different from what is described in that article.

Short answer, the serial number will be different for each machine you use, because it is based in part on the unique hardware configuration of the machine (and most likely also involves a random factor such as the time during install so that identically-configured machines will still have different hardware IDs). The CD doesn’t know what machine you are installing on, but the installed operating system does, and that’s what is verifying your serial number.

-fh

19

From geek.com

from hardocp.com

20

You know, I don’t even pirate much of anything anymore. When I crack something it’s for convenience. I don’t see any harm in removing, say, the cd check from a game or cracking windows xp so I don’t have to go through the verification process each time I reinstall. My original point was that the copy protection was an annoyance and not implying that I want to distribute copies of windows xp in Taiwan to enrich my personal financial empire. :slight_smile: