Joe Williams, general manager, Worldwide Genuine Windows at Microsoft talks about steps that Microsoft is taking to fight piracy and help protect customers, and what the company has planned for anti-piracy features in Windows 7.

“Windows 7 includes the latest generation of Vista’s anti-piracy technology and provides the technical foundation of our ongoing anti-piracy efforts. For example, with Windows Vista Service Pack 1, if a PC was not activated during the login process, customers would periodically see a dialog box as a visual reminder they still needed to activate their copy of Windows. Within this prompt, they could choose to activate immediately or later. But the option to push the “activate later” button was grayed out for 15 seconds. Customers told us that while the prompt grabbed their attention, they didn’t understand why they needed to activate immediately and that the delay was annoying. In Windows 7 we modified this process: When customers choose to activate later they will see a dialog box highlighting how activation helps them identify if their copy of Windows is genuine and be allowed to proceed immediately without a 15-second delay. In Windows 7 we’ve made changes so that users will see more informative notifications messages and be able to more easily complete the tasks they need to.”

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