Microsoft closes piracy loophole: mandatory activation for volume licence Vista

With the imminent arrival of Vista Business and Enterprise additions, Microsoft has dropped a nasty little surprise on system admins. Windows Vista sports a little feature called Volume Activation 2.0. Yes you read correctly – Volume ACTIVATION. Apparently, every volume licensed product to date has been using Volume Activation 1.0, which bypassed the activation process once the correct key was entered.

Volume licenced serial numbers have been the mainstay of pirated copies of Microsoft products – they may fail the online validation test, but they keep running once installed.

Every volume product except Windows Vista and Longhorn Server will keep Volume Activation 1.0. Microsoft has moved to Volume Activation 2.0 for two reasons:

• Close significant piracy loopholes (Volume License keys represent the majority of keys involved in Windows piracy)
  
• Improve the volume customer experience.

http://apcmag.com/node/4471