While Windows 2000 was officially launched last week, legitimate copies of the OS will not be on Hong Kong shelves until early March. This does not rule out the possibility of the existence of pirated copies of the final version, given that copies of the real thing were made available to corporate customers and the press as early as December. But Robertson maintained that these groups are especially aware of and concerned about the piracy problem, making it very unlikely that pirates could obtain the final version for mass copying through these channels. Microsoft is in fact taking a number of measures to curb piracy. For one, it is refraining from shipping Windows 2000 back-up disks for the OEM version bundled with desktops and servers, according to Robertson.
Some unscrupulous merchants unbundle the software and try to sell it separately for profit.
So we stopped shipping these disks, he said. If users need to reinstall the OS, Robertson said, the OEM vendors can either make their own branded back-up disks available or mirror the software onto the machines hard disks. Alternatively, legitimate users can obtain the disks directly from Microsoft after presenting their registration number. Microsoft last June tested anti-piracy technology in copies of Office 2000 that were sold in Mainland China, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Brazil and Canada. The so-called registration wizard technology forces users to register their copies of Office 2000 with Microsoft when they use the software.