Nerdy Photo in Vista DVDs Thwarts Disk Pirates

maximus1 writes "Microsoft says that the tiny photo on the Windows Vista Business Edition installation disks is an anti-piracy feature. The tiny photo of three grinning men — less that 1 mm in size — is one of several images incorporated into the hologram's design intended to make it harder to replicate a Vista DVD, according to Nick White on Microsoft's Vista team blog. 'The real story is interesting, but conspiracy theorists will be disappointed to learn that it is not the result of a deliberate attempt to deceive,' White wrote."

If it were porn...

...would Vista be pirated less or more?

Re:If it were porn...

If it were the same three guys it would be pirated less.

How is someone supposed to know

that they are supposed t look for that to see of the copy they have is legit?

And it only assumes the buyer cares.

Fifth picture discovered

In an even smaller spot, this picture [about.com] was found...

Re:Fifth picture discovered

In an even smaller spot, this picture [wikimedia.org] was found...

Re:How is someone supposed to know

There are a host of anti-counterfeit measures on currency. And for the most part the average consumer will neither know nor care, and just keep passing the stuff off as genuine. Yet the Fed certainly cares, and they are certainly looking for the stuff. Adding tiny anti-counterfeit designs doesn't make it harder to print fake currency, it makes it easier to identify the stuff as fake. So they can locate fake currency floating in the wild and hopefully trace it back to its source.

Watermarks such as this are designed to prevent counterfeits, not piracy. There are large scale counterfeit operations designed to pass themselves off as legitimate software resellers. Considering the type of disc presses these organizations have access to these days, they can stamp some very authentic looking discs.

The BSA and other such agents look out for these tiny missing features, so they know when and where to release the hounds.

A mom and pop shop with a few extra installs than licenses is small potatoes. They group stamping 100s of thousands of discs in China and selling them as genuine in Europe are the big daddy potatoes.

Re:How is someone supposed to know

So they can locate fake currency floating in the wild and hopefully trace it back to its source.

This works with money because it is circulated. Once bound to a host, vista cannot be reused.

Watermarks such as this are designed to prevent counterfeits, not piracy.

I have to wonder how many people will unknowingly buy a counterfeit version of windows. And how many that do are actually going to inspect their DVD for a 1mm image.

Re:How is someone supposed to know

No, Vista isn't circulated like currency, but counterfeit disks will still turn up in raids, seizures of smuggled cargo, etc.

This isn't about stopping you or me from installing a pirated copy of Vista (knowingly or unknowingly), this is about making it that bit easier to find and shut down the big counterfeiting operations.

Fascinating

And by fascinating I mean WHO CARES?

It's all about the photo

Yes, cuz a tiny little photo is going to stop the piracy. Stop the presses... gather 'round children... PIRACY HAS BEEN ELIMINATED!!!!

All pirates care about is 1) Does it install? 2) Can I "activate" it?

Cheers.

Re:It's all about the photo

All pirates care about is 1) Does it install? 2) Can I "activate" it?

Yet another "everybody's like me" Slashdotter. This isn't aimed at preventing dorks like you from borrowing your friend's install disc. MS would certainly like to prevent that kind of piracy, but they don't really lose sleep over it. What they do lose sleep over is big commercial pirate software organizations that want to pass off their product as "legitimate".

Re:It's all about the photo

REAL pirates primarily care about: Can I sell it and get away with it?

REAL pirates primarily care about: Can I SAIL it and get away?

fail

The images are less than 1mm in size and are not visible to the naked eye, so must be viewed using optical magnification. Their presence does not affect the contents of the DVD any more than would applying a label to the front of an audio CD you may have created at home. These security measures were never intended to be impossible to find, but rather difficult to reproduce. While it's extremely difficult to replicate a holographic design in general, the inclusion of original images makes it that much more so. Incorporating optical security into our physical media is just one of many efforts to ensure that Microsoft customers get what they paid for.

since when do software pirates care about watermarks if they can still copy the data just fine? For that matter, how many pirated copies of Vista actually exist? [such negative reaction to it why pirate it?]

Re:fail

Microsoft is more worried about the large-scale pirates - the ones that sell the disks to unwitting consumers, either standalone or as part of a new PC. This would allow them to more easily show that the disks themselves are counterfeit.

Re:fail

It only takes one customer (or test buyer) to spot a counterfeit and provide information allowing the counterfieter to be traced.

Plain pirates who do nothing to disguise what they are selling as legit may do some damage but buisness customers are easilly scared away from them by the threat of audits, counterfieers OTOH can sell at a much higher price to buisness customers taking sales directly from MS.

Re:fail

Dude, for most of us Slashdot might as well be the planet. So shut up and (sudo) get me a sandwich!

Re:fail

There isn't a lot of negative reaction to Vista.

Dell had to revert back to selling XP due to customer demand. Many poles, published on many sites, indicate that the business world is nonplussed with Vista and many have no plans to migrate over. This includes our shop that runs all XP on the desktop and Linux on the servers only.

Many, many people are not interested in Vista, particularly since it won't run a lot of popular software. By the time you can't get support for XP, we will have already migrated to either OS/X or Linux. There IS a lot of negative reaction to Vista. The average gamer or grandma may not care because it is their only choice, but many of us will stick with XP until a better choice comes along. I run IT and I haven't bothered installing it, although I can for free. Won't run all my hardware and software, is buggy as hell, so why would I?

What really matters: More people are trying to pirate XP than Vista. When people won't even STEAL a product, I would consider that a negative reaction to it.

exactly

The pirate copy I bought in here in Beijing had these security features:

1. Plastic sleeve
2. No box
3. Burned CD with "Vista 32 Eng" written in Sharpie on the front.

And it works great. Even came with the guys phone number in case I had problems applying the validation hacks.

If youre going to buy a pirate version what do you care? I have seen the nicer versions (with fake box et. al.) but trust me, no one is fooling themselves into thinking that they are getting a $400 program for ten bucks.

But my even more ghetto pirate version only cost $5 and it came with Office 2007 as well (which employed the same counter measures) ;)

Re:exactly

no one is fooling themselves into thinking that they are getting a $400 program for ten bucks.

That's for the $10 copies. There are, however, the $400 copies, in which case people are fooled into thinking that the $400 they're paying for this program is going to Microsoft instead of some thief's pocket.

(And yes, this is in fact theft. The data might not be "stolen", but the $400 definitely was stolen.)

Re:exactly

(And yes, this is in fact theft. The data might not be "stolen", but the $400 definitely was stolen.)

No, it isn't. Selling an item with the pretense that it's a different item is called "fraud".

Re:exactly

Actually it depends on which country or even which state the transaction occurs in. Where I live (Georgia, United States) it's called Theft By Deception. There is a parallel charge called Deceptive Business Practices, which covers businesses and individuals claiming to be a business that attempt a fraudulent transaction. If they actually succeed in selling a bogus product or service, and money exchanges hands, they are hit with the theft charge as well.

Re:exactly

You forgot one word. Lemme correct it for you:

That's for the $10 copies. There are, however, the $400 copies, in which case people are fooled into thinking that the $400 they're paying for this program is going to Microsoft instead of some other thief's pocket.

hehe...

(And yes, this is in fact theft. The data might not be "stolen", but the $400 definitely was stolen.)

I completely agree. In both cases!

Link To Pictures

For the majority of slashdotters that don't have a Vista DVD and a magnifying glass sitting on their desk, the engadget article [engadget.com] has pictures.

The three guys trap your soul ...

Then, if the disk is illegally copied, they send the soul to Microsoft Hell. And if the disk is genuine, the soul goes to Microsoft Heaven.

All I know is ...

... if I worked on the 'Vista' team I sure wouldn't want my picture printed on the DVD. What if someone recognized me on the street? Or in prison?? Or on /.???

Re:All I know is ...

... if I worked on the 'Vista' team I sure wouldn't want my picture printed on the DVD. What if someone recognized me on the street? Or in prison?? Or on /.???

how can we recognize you unless you uploaded your own photo? for all we know you look like this: 8>)

Re:All I know is ...

how can we recognize you unless you uploaded your own photo? for all we know you look like this: 8>)

OK ... where's that hidden camera?

I Feel Ripped Off

The problem is that when I got my Vista upgrade discs through Dell for systems bought just before Vista was released, I don't have pretty hologram discs like that at all. I have just plain printed Dell labeled junk that anybody could counterfeit.

Let's see what's wrong...

First off, nerds like us are the ones who pirate stuff in the first place. Second, if the image is so small, which user is going to see it, and if the user cannot see it, then claims of amnesty are theoretically possible. Third, due to the traditionally nonintimidating nature of the nerd, what pirate who sees the image will think and stop what they are doing? It seems that Microsoft demonstrates its foolishness through oversight and arrogance once again. Though, the whole idea is quite funny for the rest of us!

They dont really want to stop piracy

If they really did it would eliminate the fallback excuse of why no one is buying it unless being forced to. The local CompUSA here was going out of business and even at 75% off during the final days they were open there were still dozens and dozens of vista boxes just sitting there.

"I buried Paul"

Microsoft Corp. has clarified the identity of the mysterious trio on the installation disks for the business version of Windows Vista.
And no, you can't play the installation DVDs backwards and hear the devil talking, either.

Yeah, you have to play them forward to hear the devil talking.

Avoid CLick through

Real story [blognewschannel.com]
no ads.
This isn't an anti-piracy measure, Microsoft is actually pretty upset about it. They don't like easter eggs because it makes them look unprofessional. If they find the guys that did this, they will probably be fired.

Re:Avoid CLick through

from TFA:

Microsoft doesn't like easter eggs in its products, doesn't like surprises that could make it look unprofessional or just be embaressing. Larry Osterman said, "Nowadays, adding an easter egg to a Microsoft OS is immediate grounds for termination". Jeremy Mazner has more:

        Leading up the release of Windows 2000, Microsoft starting getting a lot more serious about selling servers into the government and large enterprise markets. These guys saw NT 4 as the first really credible enterprise-class product from MS, and were evaluating Win2k to see how things were progressing.

        The story, as I recall it, is that one of these customers had some strong words for our easter eggs, suggesting that any company that could let such things frivolous things into their products wasn't doing a very good software engineering job, and thus couldn't be trusted to run an enterprise-scale business.

        The argument never made much sense to me. Easter eggs, at least on teams I worked on, were never anywhere near critical-path code. And they often seem to have been pretty well tested by every member of the product team who wanted to verify their name showed up. Maybe there's some story I don't know about how an Easter egg caused a perf hit, or crash or something (I bet if such a story existed, Raymond would know it.). In any event, it seemed like we one day got this email that said "no more Easter eggs ever again", and that was pretty much the end of it.

Re:Avoid CLick through

But how can MS find them? They are so tiny and could hide anywhere.

At least...

... they didn't use this one [trinity.edu].

Who is looking for these images?

"The images are less than 1mm in size and are not visible to the naked eye, so must be viewed using optical magnification."

So why bother with them then? Seriously, let's say that I wanted to know if someone was selling me a counterfeit vista disc. I look on the back and there's nothing there, how do I know whether or not the watermark is there?
Completely fucking worthless.

So this is why Vista is so expensive

Hmmm Embeded holographic images... So wait a second, is this why Vista is so Expensive? I mean are people who are paying $300 bucks for vista paying really $1 for the OS and $299 for the Hologram?

Sweet!

Worried about being authentic

So does anyone have a torrent of this hologram? The Vista I have really needs it.

If you intentionally buy "pirated" software

Do you really care it doesn't have the pretty little picture?

Sort of like counterfeit bills, if it passes at the local burger joint, its good enough. Who cares if the feds catch it at the federal bank and take it out of circulation? You got your use out of it.

Nerdy Photo?

That's not a nerdy photo.

If there were really serious, THIS [informacyde.com] should have been the embedded image.

Sensible Idea

I'm no Microsoft apologist, but this does make sense for them. The point is that law enforcement in any country can be pretty clueless on whether a CD is copied or not. This way, when they find a warehouse full of suspicious CD's, they have an easy way to tell if they are actually legit or counterfeit. This sort of thing is *not* designed for customers (who don't know about it) or illegal dupers (who don't care about it).

Probably a cryptographically encoded image

containing plans for Microsoft's Jihad against the Linux unbelievers.

I always liked legal MS Cds...

Those holograms are cool. I wish normal CD burners could make them

Small image

The image is for people buying in bulk to verify it is legit. That we they aren't stuck with having to repay for copies they resale after they find out their illegal. Its not intented for the common end-user to assure their copy is legit.

It's a secret BECAUSE...

Nobody has cared to look at the Vista Business Install CD.

Image Here...

http://inicia.es/de/kwisatz/ [inicia.es] It's almost like that 10m^1 thing.

upon being told about the hologram...

Bill Gates was quoted as saying "this is the stupidest fucking idea I've heard since I've been at Microsoft!"

Kneel before ZOD

If an explosion occurs nearby, won't it shatter the hologram releasing these three criminals that were imprisoned on Krypton nearly 3 decades ago? You know they must be pissed! They would have super human powers, and superman is nowhere to be found!

Does no one get it?

This is not about buying a cheap copy for $5 and "wondering" if it's real or not (hint: it's not). A contrived example of why this is important:

You go to your local mom and pop PC shop. You buy a PC for $1000 including Vista. They give you a disk that has a nice color silkscreened vista logo. 9 months later, the activation hack they applied and didn't tell you was applied is fixed via update, and you call MS to deal with validation. They ask you about your disk, which has no holograms. They tell you you've been "had," so you go back to the mom and pop shop and require a real copy, this time knowing what to look for and demand.

The same story could be told about small businesses who are not large enough to use corporate version with their own keyserver, and thus buy bulk professional licenses and have the CDs as proof of license.

I don't buy it...

...you can download ISOs for Vista from Microsoft. Obviously, the disc itself is not important. It's the keys that determine legit or not. I'll bet they found out about this image only recently and this is the spin.

I can see the fnerds!

I can see the fnerds!

How is this news?

Microsoft have been using holographic images on discs as an piracy countermeasure for years. The only remotely interesting thing that the articles answers is who were the three guys, but it seemed fairly obvious to me that they would have been Microsoft employees.

It's all about the hologram

The headline is misleading (this is /. after all). Hologram on the Vista DVD helps thwart piracy, said hologram just happens to contain a collage of photos and one of these photos just happens to be three grinning nerds. Move along, nothing to see here.

The real secret.

Anyone who looks at the pictures dies in seven days.

Wow,good thing because the copy I almost bought..

had a cryptic label that spelled MEMOREX.

-ted

Wrong Side

It's the stuff on the other side we are boosting.

Cracked?

Will cracked versions feature a pasty white buttocks of the nerd that cracked it?

Vista by itself is enough to thwart piracy

My sister's friend's brother's girlfriend has a cousin that went to china and said she saw them throwing out the vista cds and pirating the clamshells.

not first time for 3 people picture easter egg...

Yes, it may have been a while, but this is NOT the first time someone has taken a picture of 3 people and embedded it as an easter egg. Once again, MS is following the crowd.

http://www.eeggs.com/items/26468.html [eeggs.com]

For those click weary, it is about the Tandy Color Computer 2, and the famous deveoplers picture. Now this was in the computer and you had to hold down certain keys, etc... but still it look very familiure to the "security" picture.

http://bink.nu/photos/news_article_images/picture1 7588.aspx [bink.nu]

BTW, that small makes it an easter egg if you ask me... As the average person would not beable to look for that "SECURITY" check when purchasing the software. Really, nice try MS.. You've been egged, just accept the joke and move on.

Not worth it

Microsoft don't make the Vista CDs themselves.

Other companies do. And I bet a fair number operate in China. So guess who can make 1mm holograms?

Most pirates won't bother because their target markets don't care. But how hard is it for a factory to have "production overruns" or "test runs"?

In fact, I've seen a 100% original MS CD that was a _low_quality_ stamp (and was not easily readable by some drives) - you could see the "shiny side" was "disfigured" - I've seen low quality pirate CDs that looked like that, but wasn't expecting MS to use the same el-cheapo manufacturers.

I bet if MS sues one of those Chinese factory after a few too many "overruns", it'll just close down, and reopen under a new name and "new management", and start making the same stuff.

Three Pictures

Just take a look at those three pictures (black/white but very clear) founds on Business Edition: http://sugiero.blogspot.com/2007/06/windows-vista- dvd-who-are-those-people.html [blogspot.com]

"DRM" tag...?

Why is this article tagged with "DRM"? You need quite a lot of people to tag an article with something for it to show up these days -- do that many people really not know what DRM is that they think TFA is an example of it? Are people just mentally equating it with anti-copyright-infringement methods in general, and tagging without stopping to think about whether something actually is DRM?

Come on, people; if you dilute a phrase enough it is liable to lose its meaning; calling all anti-theft measures from holograms on discs to security guards at the entrance of a shop "DRM" will just detract from legitimate efforts opposing the use of actual DRM to prevent fair use, etc.