A second proposed class-action lawsuit has been filed against Microsoft Corp. over Windows Genuine Advantage, on behalf of two Washington businesses and three Seattle-area residents. The lawsuit alleges that the company's anti-piracy tool qualifies as spyware.
The latest suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle, raises issues that include the way a test version of the tool checked in daily with Microsoft's servers. The company says that this practice has now ended.
The suit also challenges the company's method of distributing the tool as part of its Automatic Updates system, more commonly used for security patches. Many of the claims in the second suit are similar to those in the first, which Microsoft has called baseless.
The company says the purpose of the Windows Genuine Advantage tool is to inform people when they are running unlicensed versions of the Windows PC operating system.
I understand the impetus behind WGA in that it’s designed to thwart piracy. BUT, once it is determined by WGA that the operating system is perfectly legitimate, why isn’t that enough for Microsoft?
Tell me why that bloated software (WGA) has to connect to the Microsoft servers on every start-up in order to constantly validate the operating system, especially after it has already been validated/passed inspection?
This slows my system down to a crawl as well…making me one very unhappy customer. Grr.