WGA: You Are Busted! Or No?

Since the day one when I was unknowingly busted by Microsoft's anti-piracy Spyware tool WGA for the English version of Windows XP Professional SP2 using an unauthorized VLK, there has been no less periodical harassment from the right bottom of the screen than I expected. I really shoulda checked out what had been added to the critical updates when the bubble of automatic Windows Updates once again started to arouse concern, it just cannot be uninstalled. Each time I started the cursed Windows, it was routinely delayed by at least 5 seconds with a message box requiring an extra click whose text I could almost recite reversely. Roughly 1 month after the first introduction of the WGA to "60 million Windows cheaters", no matter they are absolutely innocent or truly "guilty”, the highly recommended update by Microsoft was even upgraded to its newer version with nothing seemingly improved but an obvious humanistic function: displaying the start-up message in the language that coincides with the setting in the Advanced Tab under the "Regional and Language Option" menu from your Control Panel. So the message urging me to immediately act on my identity verified as a privacy victim now turned into plain Chinese, clearly stating that "你是盗版软件的受害者，不再有资格获取Windows的精选升级", how fun is that!

I do have genuine copies of Windows, which of course, come together with the laptop I bought in none-English spoken counties and the unique product keys printed on the COA label affixed to the PC chassis, however, the international versions of OS in many cases just won’t work very properly under a holistic English software environment.

But just like the diagnostic tool even cannot catch those deliberate cheaters who simply Google for invalid CD product-keys that may have been there for years just to test how WGA would response (that is, the checking result by WGA on these obviously illegal Windows copies may be very likely that they are 100% genuine, safely letting them through the validation steps of those installation procedures which require Genuine Windows installed first, such as IE7 Beta, Windows Defender and Windows Media Player 11.), it seems that it can neither exert any essential influence on my Windows PC. I don't know why but as a diagnosed and apparent privacy victim I can still have the critical and cumulative updates for Windows, IE6, etc. automatically and successfully installed, most recently are the patches for 23 vulnerabilities Microsoft released this week. And for important Office 2003 Updates, which under my impression for many years were absolutely correlated with the genuineness of the Windows where it's installed as well, they are also running so smoothly without interruption to notify me familiar messages. My Outlook 2003 equipped with the latest algorithm for calculating junk email can filter spam just as accurately as Rogers Yahoo! Mail's Spam Protection does so it has been a long time since the last time I checked my Bulk folder for miscategorised messages.


So what the point of the crappy WGA and all those related anti-privacy products? Are they to seize those "law-abiding" citizens who have completely out-from-factory copies of Windows installed and demand more ransom from them, or to indulge the lucky outlaws by offering them all the benefits that only "club members" could enjoy, or to even just perfunctorily warn the miserable prisoners about their marked standings but actually totally ignore them as if they had been successfully bribing the officers into transferring them to the golden club area???