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Windows Genuine Advantage is a stepped-up effort by Microsoft to enforce payment for proprietary software. If you have ever downloaded security fixes for your Windows XP SP2 operating system, you will be likely part of this project.
At first, end-users didn't notice the WGA programs being installed on their hard drive. Moreover, the system pinged a Microsoft server inadvertently to the user. That enraged IT analysts and critics. Several tools and HOWTOs for circumventing WGA have also been written.
After learning from the past, Microsoft has improved the project and related tools. Windows Vista will include a more robust WGA system, surely at the cost of some of some of the user's privacy on the web.
Although I am not part of the Corporative Empire (and I will fight to remain so), and I do not share many of their ideas, I have to say that efforts like this are a good part of fighting software crime. People should not just buy/sell software without even reading the license terms, and selling a proprietary piece of software - which is the intellectual work of someone, without even having sh/e to know that we are doing so is a crime worth punishing.
I hope WGA and friends remain doing what they are intended to do: to protect the developer's right to have an income from the software s/he makes. I also hope that such efforts respect the developers who choose to abandon such a right. I hope no anti-piracy tool do any harm to those pieces of software released under the terms of licenses like GNU, BSD or Creative Commons, which constitute fine pieces of artwork in the hands of everyone.
With music, it is different. Of course, music piracy should be punished in the sense that none should have a profit from selling someone else's artistic creation. However, sharing music freely (and for free) among friends contribute to get to know better the music artists, to share their love for them and to remember them. That is a keyword. To remember and renown an artist contributes to his/her income in a large-time basis. If the music industry had not to face music sharing, then the CDs and DVDs' prices had not dropped. Then, you man in a developing country could neither have a song from a friend or afford an album from an artist. Consequence: No sales.
Dear reader, I invite you to participate in several campaigns that promote the free music sharing while protecting artists and labels' rights over it.
Finally, the circumvention and cracking mechanisms against WGA and anti-piracy tools should keep on the development; that will rise proprietary software's quality and security standards, very low nowadays.
You will find this reading very interesting.
I do not favor piracy!!!! That is one of the reasons I use Linux. As a software developer, I try to support developer's rights.