Microsoft's WGA failure labels Windows customers as pirates

Over the weekend, millions of Microsoft customers who attempted to download software updates from the company's website were erroneously accused of running pirated Windows versions, thanks to a glitch in the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) system. As a result, users’ computers were stripped of features, including the Aero graphical interface and DirectX support.

The software giant blamed the error on an unspecified server problem, which has since been fixed:

"I'd encourage anyone who received a validation failure since Friday evening to visit this site now; after successfully revalidating, any affected system should be rebooted to ensure that genuine-only features are restored," Windows Vista product manager Nick White said.
The WGA failure highlights a major flaw in Microsoft's anti-piracy strategy. Sure, the company has the right to protect its intellectual property, but it should do so in a way that won’t degrade a user’s computing experience based on erroneous accusations. Microsoft hasn’t provided any explanations yet as to why the outage happened, or what they are doing to prevent it from happening again.