There are two things that I don’t get about the Geniune Windows “Advantage”. Firstly, this is indeed spyware. If anyother company, lets pull one randomly out of the air, say Sony, installed a backdoor and was gathering information without the owners knowing then wouldn’t that be a cause for concern. Wouldn’t this be spyware ??
Secondly, why did they feel they needed to hide the fact that they were doing this ?.
I have always believed that owners of anything that you purchase, have unfetted use of their property in a legal manner. I also believe that it is not the property owners responsibilty to (a) continue to prove they own it, and (b) to police the ownership of anyone else using their property, whether legal or not.

I am also troubled by the word “Genuine” and what that means.

As part of the program, customers worldwide will be invited to install WGA Notifications through Automatic Updates (AU) to confirm that they are running genuine Windows. Customers who are running genuine Windows and opt-in to the program will not see any messages. Customers who are using a non-genuine version of Windows will receive a message during logon that their copy of Windows appears to be non-genuine and will be directed to the WGA Web site to learn more.

“Genuine” in Microsoft terminology can have a malleable meaning, which looks to me that it has already started doing. I believe they need to clearly state what “Genuine” means, how is it derived and the owner be given a degree of confidence over what compliance means.
Microsoft have alway played hard and fast with the truth on many matters, I am hoping that a class action suit can bring some clarity to this situation.