I bookmarked this column by Bruce Schneier some time ago but am just getting around to discussing it here. It’s titled, Microsoft’s actions speak louder than words:

Initial news stories reported that Microsoft would make this upgrade available to all XP users, both licensed and unlicensed. To me, this was a smart move on Microsoft’s part. Think about all the ways the company would benefit. Licensed users would be more secure and happier. Worms that attack Microsoft products would be less virulent, so Microsoft wouldn’t look as bad in the press. Microsoft would win, its customers would win and the Internet would win. It’s the kind of marketing move about which best-selling books are written.

Then Microsoft said the initial comments were wrong; SP2 would not run on pirated copies of XP. Only legal copies of the software could be secured. This is the wrong decision, for all the same reasons that the initial decision was the correct one.

[…]

This decision, more than anything else Microsoft has said or done in the past few years, proves to me that security is not the company’s first priority. Here was a chance for Microsoft to do the right thing: to put security ahead of profits. Here was a chance to look good in the press and improve security for all its users worldwide. Microsoft says that improving security is the most important thing, but its actions prove otherwise.

Well, I agree, mostly. It would be nice if SP2 was available for everyone, in the interests of making the Internet at large a safer place.

But I think this may be a bit of a red herring, too. This block occurs for what I suspect is a very small group of people who are running truly pirated copies of Windows XP. These copies are downloaded from warez sites and use product keys that were originally intended for use on volume licensed copies. It does not include those that were sold through gray-market channels, or those where someone has activated an extra copy or two. Technically, those are pirated copies as well, but they will have no trouble upgrading to SP2.

Schneier hints at the reality underlying all this: Anyone running one of these specific pirated versions of Windows XP knows full well their copy is illegal. They get reminded of it every time they try to download an update. And I suspect that the overwhelming majority of people who run one of these pirated copies will be able to find a “cracked” version of SP2 at the same place they got their original CD.

I would be curious to see whether one of these volume-licensed copies of Windows XP will be upgradable to SP2 using a CD or a separate download. I don’t have a pirated copy of Windows XP to test with, however.