A Chinese lawyer has filed a legal complaint against Microsoft for installing Windows Genuine Advantage on his computer. He has asked the Ministry of Public Security to file criminal charges against Microsoft.

Dong Zhengwei accused the company of hacking into people's computers. He said: "I respect the right of Microsoft to protect its intellectual property but it is taking on the wrong target with wrong measures.

WGA is installed as an automatic update. If it decides your copy of XP or Vista is pirated it paints your desktop background black and warns you that your software is likely to be an illegal copy. Users can change the background back, but it will return every hour.

The nagware has already been used in most of the rest of the world and proved deeply unpopular - especially because it flagged up a lot of false positives.

Microsoft launched the blackening alert yesterday as part of its global anti-piracy day.

The China Software Industry Association is also considering taking action against Microsoft.

Microsoft China said piracy was wrong and it was helping customers who might not realise they had bought illegal copies of its products. ®

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