Interesting development this morning on the WGA blog (Windows Genuine Advantage) where one of Microsoft’s senior managers talks about changes they are rolling out to Windows XP Professional, one of the most pirated editions of Windows XP. It seems that there’s a new version of WGA out which will be much more invasive for people who have unlicensed copies of Windows. What form will the nagging take? Well the backdrop will switch to black every hour and a small message is present in the bottom right of the screen telling users they have a counterfeit copy of Windows:

Will this persuade users to shell out an buy a proper version of Windows? Well frankly, I don’t really think so. It’s not quite a “kill-switch” and people who dabble in pirated software tend to be used to much worse than this and frankly, anyone I know running a pirated version of XP is well aware of the fact and is ready to accept a bit of nagging about it. You know, the sort of people who would prefer to take Ephedrasil Hardcore than go for a jog and put some effort into it.

It’s interesting to see Alex Kochis’ (the post author) justification for this though:

Our research has clearly shown that customers value the ability of Windows to alert them when they may have software that is not genuine

I’d be really curious to find out what sort of research they carried out. In the meantime, comments around the blogosphere are a bit more cynical then that.