Microsoft last week killed an anti-piracy service that checked whether customers were running legal copies of Office, saying that the program had 'served its purpose.' ZDNet blogger first reported on Microsoft's move after a tipster pointed him toward a support document on the company's site. That simply noted that Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) 'has been retired,' but offered no explanation. In an e-mail reply to questions today, a Microsoft spokeswoman added, 'The program has served its purpose and thus we have decided to retire the program.'

OGA, which debuted in 2007 for use with Office XP, was Microsoft's way to separate counterfeit from legitimate copies of its popular suite. In 2006, Microsoft restricted Office template downloads to users running a legal edition of the application bundle, then upped the ante early in 2007 by requiring all users to validate their copy of Office with OGA to use the now-defunct Office Update site and service. In 2008, Microsoft added a notification component to OGA that of counterfeit copies to upgrade.

Microsoft declined to expand today on its reasons for dumping OGA, with the spokeswoman saying only, 'Given our strong commitment to anti-piracy, we are making several new investments that will allow us to engage with customers and help victims of fraud.' She did not spell out what future anti-piracy changes Microsoft has in mind. The company has disabled links that once pointed to additional information about OGA, and to a validation check. Those links, which were available on a page cached Sunday by several search engines, now redirect users to Microsoft's main Windows 7 page. Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), which was renamed Windows Activation Technologies (WAT) last year with the introduction of Windows 7, remained active Monday when Computerworld checked several copies of the operating system. WAT serves the same purpose as the now-discontinued OGA, but focuses on the legitimacy of Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7.

Microsoft's anti-piracy policies have had a contentious history as users had regularly complained about the validation checks. In June 2006, for example, Microsoft angered users by pushing a version of WGA to XP via Windows Update, tagging it as a 'high-priority' update that was automatically downloaded and installed to most machines. A year later, a riled thousands of users who were mistakenly fingered for running counterfeit copies of Windows. The 2006 incident sparked a lawsuit that accused the company of misleading customers when it used Windows Update to serve up WGA.

That case was after the plaintiffs and Microsoft agreed to drop the lawsuit. Office users are still required to activate their copies of the suite by entering a legitimate 25-character key after they install the software.

Jun 18, 2013 An insurance company in Guatemala is suing Microsoft for allegedly raiding its offices with armed police officers to search for pirated software. Make sure you are not using software that is an unauthorized reproduction, not properly licensed or illegally distributed. Protect yourself from the risks of software piracy by knowing what to look for when identifying counterfeit or other software misuse. FBI CONSUMER ALERT - The FBI has issued a consumer alert warning.

Product activation, which launched with Office 2000, is another anti-piracy service the company uses for Office on both Windows and Mac OS X, as well as for the Windows operating system. Copies of Microsoft's software that are not activated drop into what the company calls 'reduced functionality mode' that restricts its use and puts nagging notices on the screen. Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at or subscribe to. His e-mail address is.

Contents • • The Most Popular Pirated Software • The Most Popular Pirated Software The most recent SIIA study listing the top pirated software was in 2008 covering the previous year, but since then the organization has reported just by category. In 2010, its annual report broke down the top categories of pirated software as follows: Software Type Share of Pirated Titles Productivity 57% Utilities 30% Database 24% CAD 15% Creative 11% Accounting 11% Development 10% Document Mgmt. 7% Media Mgmt. 6% Security 2% Server 0% Operating Systems 0% A look at the popular BitTorrent tracking site, The Pirate Bay, provides a good idea of just which software titles are the most pirated. This list of the top dozen software titles is sorted by torrents with the most seeds, or full copies of the application, with duplicates omitted: Application Bittorrent Seeds DriverPack Solution 11 17465 Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 6484 Microsoft Office 2010 3036 Microsoft Word 2007 2378 WinRAR 4.0 2154 Nero Burning ROM 10.5 1986 Adobe Illustrator CS5.1 1902 ESET Smart Security 5 1691 Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 1655 Adobe After Effects CS4 1620 Avast AntiVirus Home Edition 1402 Corel Draw X5 1360. Of course, that's just one torrent indexer, but it gives an idea of the types of software being pirated. Many of the downloads come with cracked keys for the software, too.

The list is dominated by Adobe and Microsoft, whom PCMag contacted about piracy in general, and SOPA/PIPA and the Megaupload takedown in specific. Adobe wouldn't give us a breakdown of its most pirated software titles, thought the BitTorrent list probably give some insight into that. They did offer the following brief statement, 'Adobe does not comment on statistics on our products affected by piracy, but can confirm piracy is a major problem for us much like the rest of the software industry. The global software industry suffered a loss of nearly $59 billion in sales last year, according to statistics compiled by the Business Software Alliance (BSA).'

Microsoft, for its part, has, and is known for its cumbersome content protection schemes and activations. The company's business depends on legally purchased software, and the sub-site's mission statement makes that clear: 'Pirated software hurts everyone—from software developers to retail store owners, and ultimately to all software users. Furthermore, the illegal duplication and distribution of software has a significant impact on the economy.' Though Microsoft was notably silent for most of the SOPA/PIPA protest day on January 18, when Wikipedia went dark in the US and other sites displayed banners, we were offered the following statement on the legislation by a Microsoft spokesperson: 'We oppose the passage of the SOPA bill as currently drafted. We think the White House statement points in a constructive way to problems with the current legislation, the need to fix them, and the opportunity for people on all sides to talk together about a better path forward. Xforce Adobe Cs6 Keygen Invalid Request Code Cs6 Master more. ' Michael Muchmore is PC Magazine?s lead analyst for software and Web applications. A native New Yorker, he has at various times headed up PC Magazine?s coverage of Web development, enterprise software, and display technologies.

Michael cowrote one of the first overviews of Web Services for a general audience. Before that he worked on PC Magazine?s Solutions section, which covered programming techniques as well as tips on using popular office software. Most recently he covered services and software for ExtremeTech.com.

An insurance company in Guatemala is suing Microsoft for allegedly raiding its offices with armed police officers to search for pirated software., first reported on the lawsuit on Monday. Here's what the company, Seguros Universales SA of Guatemala City, claims happened during the April 2012 raid: 'Microsoft appeared with armed Guatemalan law enforcement officers and halted plaintiffs’ business operations. Microsoft then proceeded to extort Plaintiffs by demanding an on-the-spot agreement to pay $70,000 or Microsoft would remove all servers containing ALL data and operational software.' Seguros Universales also alleges that Microsoft tried to strong-arm other Guatemalan insurance firms into paying on-the-spot fines for using pirated software, Brinkmann reported.

But Microsoft has a different version of how things went down. 'Seguras Universales confessed to a Guatemalan judge and prosecutor that it used illegal software and freely entered into an agreement to compensate Microsoft for its wrongdoing,' a Microsoft spokesperson told us in an email. 'This suit is a meritless attempt to distract from its own software piracy, and we look forward to addressing the claims,' the spokesperson said. Microsoft is a member of the Business Software Alliance, an industry group that tracks usage of illegal software. In a 2011 survey, the BSA found that 79% of software in use in Guatemala is pirated, compared to 61% for Latin America as a whole, and 42% globally.

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