To combat piracy, Microsoft’s new Vista OS will permit only one transfer of retail copies. The two cheapest Home versions also won’t let the user run virtual machine (VM) software, i.e. no running multiple operating systems on the same computer.

In contrast, Windows XP allows multiple transfers and VM operation. On the downside, unlike Windows 2000, XP often requires new validation codes when hardware upgrades are made. One can only imagine what will happen with Vista. From reading the tea leaves, it looks like software and hardware changes will likely cause Vista to consider the change to violate the terms of the OS license or interpret the change to mean the OS is a counterfeit copy.

Good luck getting tech support to solve those problems after the OS is erroneously disabled.

Although Microsoft is obviously the dominant OS player, Vista’s anti-piracy features will drive the market towards user-friendly systems, such as the Mac OS, or to a Linux-based system.

Here’s hoping that common sense prevails. Intellectual property rights can be protected without kicking the consumer in the teeth in the process with glitchware that presumes piracy.

Here’s a link to the Windows Vista licenses. Hat tip to TechWeb.

About the Author

With an advanced international law degree from Georgetown University and more than 14 years of real world legal experience, Attorney Mike Young shows entrepreneurs how to protect and grow their businesses online. He's the author of Internet Marketing Legal Secrets Revealed. Not just a lawyer who focuses exclusively on Internet and marketing law, Mike’s been working with computers for more than 27 years (his first computer was an Atari 400 with 8 KiB RAM) and started representing Internet businesses back in 1996.