As Microsoft bewilder ready to plunge Windows Vista and Office 2007 to consumers , it exact a unnerving new foe it lacked at its last major consumer software launch five long time ago : the popular filesharing net known as BitTorrent .

This third - generation peer - to - peer ( P2P ) service , already used by decade of one thousand thousand of Internet users to swap digital euphony and moving picture for free , is becoming a popular mechanism for those looking to get commandeer package .

“ Any software that is commercially useable is usable on BitTorrent , ” according to Mark Ishikawa , CEO of BayTSP , a Los Gatos , Calif. , antipiracy consulting firm .

Piracy and prerelease

Or in the case of Vista and Office 2007 , before they were commercially useable . Both intersection were release to corporations almost two month ago , but wo n’t be formally launched to consumers until Jan. 29 .

But as early as mid - November , “ cracked ” copies of both products were available via BitTorrent . As of mid - January , more than 100 individual copy of Office 2007 and more than 350 individual copies of Windows Vista were usable on the service , according to BigChampagne , a Los Angeles - based online media - tracking firm .

The pirates that cracked former copies of Vista all sidestepped Microsoft ’s later antipiracy technology , the Software Protection Platform . SPP is supposed to shut out down any transcript of Vista not register to Microsoft over the Internet with a logical , pay off - up licence key within the first 30 years .

Microsoft has quietly take on that it has already found three different workarounds to SPP . It says it can defeat one , dubbed the Frankenbuild because of its cobbling together of code from beta and last versions of Vista . It has n’t yet announced success against several other cracks , including one seemingly inspired by Y2k , which allow Vista to run unactivated until the yr 2099 rather than for just 30 days .

“ Pirates have unlimited time and resourcefulness , ” BayTSP ’s Ishikawa state . “ You ca n’t establish an encoding that ca n’t be broken . ”

Microsoft popular with pirates

According to BayTSP ’s most recent figures from 2005 , six out of the 25 most widely highjack software packages on BitTorrent and eDonkey , another P2P internet , originate at Microsoft . Office 2003 was the second most - hijack software system behind Adobe Systems ’s Acrobat 7 . Other widely pirated Microsoft software admit InfoPath 2003 , FrontPage 2003 , Visio 2003 , Office XP and Windows XP .

Cori Hartje , music director of Microsoft ’s Genuine Software Initiative , remains confident that SPP , along with another effort by Microsoft to clamp down on the abuse of corporate intensity licence keys by pirates , can thin the rate of piracy of Microsoft ’s latest products compare to previous ones .

But the company is taking no chances , fighting back on multiple front . To cark downloaders who may only be seeking a sneak peek at the new software , the company ’s offer barren on-line test drives of Vista and 60 - day trials of Office 2007 .

To touch young mass , who are the most enthusiastic users of P2P , Microsoft is arrange comics up on the Web , mostly in foreign languages , decry software buccaneering .

And on Monday , the fellowship secrete statistic purporting to show that users download pirated software from P2P networks are at swell risk of infection infect themselves with viruses or spyware .

accord to an October 2006 report conducted by IDC and commission by Microsoft , most 60 percent of key author and crack tools downloaded from P2P meshwork contained malicious or unwanted software . Similarly , one quarter of WWW situation offering central source — software package that create alphameric strings that drug user can type in to activate their pirated Microsoft software — had such obscure software program .

The endangerment of P2P ?

Hartje claims that many pirates are irresponsibly uploading malware along with their crack commodity to BitTorrent .

“ They may not be running a clean shop , and do n’t care if virus are on the software , ” she says .

IDC investigator used popular antivirus parcel from McAfee and Symantec to notice malware . However , the researchers did not tell apart between more serious viruses and spyware and less harmful unwanted code such as adware . IDC also conceded that some P2P networks deploy built - in virus scanning that “ strip[s ] out most of the malicious computer software ” before it reaches users .

Some skeptics say that Microsoft ’s “ Department of Education ” movement is primarily an attempt to inseminate FUD — care , dubiety and doubt — in the psyche of consumers , a tactic the companionship has been called out for in the yesteryear , and which could backfire .

“ monition customer about virus and spyware in counterfeit software is a squeamish PR thing for Microsoft , but for the most part , I doubt that it ’s really efficient , ” enounce Paul DeGroot , an psychoanalyst at Directions on Microsoft , an independent consulting firm in Kirkland , Wash. , who applauds Microsoft ’s other antipiracy try .

Microsoft hope to scare consumers directly , he says , because efforts to guilt and attaint consumers into not download , have had small succeeder . Moreover , the company seldom target end exploiter of imitative package with suit for fearfulness of alienating client .

“ Our main concern is preventing plagiariser from putting counterfeits in the hands of unsuspicious customer , ” say Matt Lundy , a senior attorney at Microsoft .

The technology advances

P2P engineering science , meanwhile , has advanced greatly since Microsoft release Windows XP in later 2001 . At the time , P2P networks such as Napster and Gnutella were alone used to exchange music Indian file . Since that clip , Napster has been closed and re - opened as a lawful wage music service similar to Apple ’s iTunes . The second - contemporaries Gnutella has waned in popularity because of mature engineering and partial altering by the record companies , which have flooded Gnutella with decoy files masquerading as songs , Ishikawa says .

Enter BitTorrent , which tout flying file transfers and more reliable downloads than other P2P networks . BitTorrent was not the first P2P connection to host highjack DVDs and software program , but it was the first to make the trade of such respectable files practical . Moreover , BitTorrent claims it automatically cleanses its web of both virus as well as decoy files . The latter defeats related antipiracy crusade by the euphony industry .

BitTorrent ’s other groovy advantage is its ease of employment compare to “ darknet ” services used by more sophisticated pirates , such as cyberspace Relay Chat channels , secret FTP sites and Usenet newsgroups . For most Internet users , darknets remain hard to find — you ca n’t plainly Google them — and intimidating to use .

Microsoft ’s worst nightmare would total to decease if P2P software plagiarism becomes as permeative as the movie and music plagiarization . Already , the telephone number of songs trade illicitly on-line surpasses the number sell in stores or online at sites like iTunes , says BigChampagne CEO Eric Garland , citing medicine manufacture estimates .

Victory by acculturation ?

Faced with this situation , music and movie company are lead off to co - opt P2P. Record companies are using service like BigChampagne to scout medicine trends and sign up - and - come bands , while pic studios such as Paramount and Fox have linked up with BitTorrent to sell movies via downloads .

The software industry lags by comparison . Microsoft is allowing consumer to download and purchase Vista from its own vane land site for the first time . Otherwise , Microsoft has “ nothing new to foretell in regards to any Modern distribution channels , ” Hartje says .

BitTorrent did not return a call and an e - mail quest comment .

For Microsoft to ink a deal with BitTorrent to sell full software or even put up free trials would send out mixed messages , Ishikawa says .

“ If you ever require to litigate , do n’t place out any freeware , ” he enounce .

Still , people like BigChampagne ’s Garland point out that P2P software buccaneering today remains a drop-off in the bucket compare to video piracy , which involve similarly hefty single file . His grounds : download movies are just amusement , but commercial enterprise software is used to run troupe , do people ’s taxes and other important matter . For those , most users still prefer the security cover of technological support , access code to software localisation and updates — even manual of arms — that only buying the software can leave , Garland says .

“ Forget back door viruses or trojans , ” he says . “ There are some thing that are worth paying for . ”