Piracy, of course, lived on, and WPA has largely been assessed as a victory only to the extent that it stopped many forms of casual piracy. With Windows Genuine Advantage, Microsoft is looking to improve on the anti-piracy tools of 2001, and WGA is best understood as the heir to WPA. Whereas the original tools only required activation once in the first 30 days of use, WGA is designed to constantly monitor a system’s licensed state. In very general terms, the idea is to make life as a so-called pirate difficult.
“The game is changing for counterfeiters. In Windows Vista, we are making it notably harder and less appealing to use counterfeit software, and we will work to make that a consistent experience with older versions of Windows as well,” said a spokesman in a statement.
Read this article from Ars Technica
