News WGA lawsuit fails Class Action bid

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2010/01/22/wga-lawsuit-fails-class-action-bid/1

A lawsuit brought against Microsoft for its Windows Genuine Advantage technology - described in the claims as "spyware" - has failed in its bid to be granted Class Action status.

 

As long a WGA is only reporting back whether Microsoft software is legitimate or not, there's no possible case to answer.
If it started reporting what other software etc you were using then there would be an issue.

 

Doge a lawsuit you say?

 

To be fair, it was a bloody ridiculous suit in the first place!

 

If you've got nothing dodgy on your PC then you should have nothing to hide. Most software "phones home" for licensing requirements. I don't have a problem with it myself, but then I use my PC for legitimate reasons.

 

Oh please, dont come draging the "if your not doing anything bad you shouldnt mind them monitoring your" argument into this. That is wrong on oh so many levels i wont pollute this thread with the rant describing it in full.

 

for more information about wga click Here

it is mearly an anti piracy tool. why should you be concerned about it if your license is genuine? even if it flags your genuine copy as counterfit, a quick phone call will soon sort it out

 

I have been moderately annoyed by WGA in the past, though I can completely understand why they want to make sure you are using legal versions of the software.

It actually annoyed me enough on my (legal) version of Vista (locked me out, couldn't activate etc) that I decided to "fix" it with a pirated version. It stopped causing problems after that

 

I have found over many years that these 'anti-piracy' measures actually encourage ppl to re roll windows installs/use pirated versions when using XP

 

I think the only ones that have a genuine problem with WGA are the pirates. If you have a genuine copy of windows then there is no problem. If it does go tits up and refuses to activate a genuine copy then a quick phone call sorts that.

 

I agree completely with some of the posters above. I perform OS reinstalls all the time as part of my job, and never once have I been denied the ability to activate Windows because of it. I can almost always perform the online activation which takes no time at all, and occasionally I need to make a three minute phone call to get the code. Even if I have to go one step further and talk to a person (gasp!) you can easily say that you have only installed Windows on one PC and you just needed to reinstall or upgraded your hardware: in that case, they'll give you the code anyway since they can't prove you wrong. Basically, the system is defeated by the human element of the process. Then, what else is there for it to send back to microsoft besides the activation status? It's just like the google argument to me - everyone claims their privacy is being invaded, but I think that google really couldn't care less about me personally, all they want is my browsing history so they can show me some ads. Big deal. Some people are just paranoid.