Microsoft in piracy crackdown

Software giant launches prorgramme to altert users of pirated applications

Microsoft is to enhance the product-activation programme in its Office software to make it more like that in Windows.

And it will extend its 'Windows Genuine Advantage' (WGA) programme to send alerts directly to users of pirate software, the company said yesterday.
Under the scheme called the Genuine Software Initiative, Microsoft said it will provide "notifications" to end-users using non-genuine Microsoft Windows XP.
"Customers" who are running a non-genuine copy of Windows, get to have the notifications beamed "directly to their desktop" to inform them that, "the copy of Windows they are running isn’t genuine".

The initiative extends to Office, which its has a Genuine Advantage programme that, according to sources, will operate almost identically to WGA.
Microsoft has continually battled against the software pirates and will extend the Genuine Advantage programme to as many products as it can, as quickly as possible, the sources said.