Microsoft WGA Issues and On-line Activation

The recent failure with its Genuine Advantage (WGA) validation system (see Gregg Keizer's Computer World story) illustrates the downsides of using on-line activation for licensing and software protection. Although activation holds promise for helping to deter software piracy, it introduces a dependency and point of failure that is not be acceptable for all applications. However, it’s a difficult problem to resolve without greater software protection, because as soon as you allow an offline licensing scenario to exist it will be exploited by the piracy crack groups.

Vic