WGA Goes Down Over Weekend

This is the screen that greeted Windows users this weekend as Microsoft's servers that control Windows Genuine Advantage went down sometime Friday (or earlier according to some reports.) Anyone trying to register a new copy of Windows or running an install or update requiring WGA verification was unable to do so.
Although this problem seems to now be fixed, it highlights inherent problems with Microsoft's anti-piracy strategy. Even when working "correctly," a number of legitimate Windows users experience problems with WGA. If Microsoft's claims of WGA error rates to be "under 1%" are true, that still means for every one million users of Windows up to 10,000 legitimate users are accused of having an illegal copy of Windows on their system. Whatever the cause of these problems, it seems like a poorly designed system.
ArsTechnica has a good article posted today regarding this issue.