WinInfo has posted some news concerning the new anti-piracy feature in Whistler:

As first reported in WinInfo Daily UPDATE, Microsoft will institute an anti-piracy measure in Whistler, the next version of Windows 2000, that will tie the Product Key to the machine ID of the first PC on which its installed. Dubbed "product activation" by the company, the feature is designed to reduce casual copying by requiring the Internet- or phone-based registration, or activation, of Whistler before it can be used. This process will create a unique identification code for that particular installation based on the Product Key that was entered and certain criteria from the hardware configuration. If the user attempts to install that copy of Whistler on a different machine with the same Product Key, the activation will fail. Whistler´s product activation feature is similar to that used by Office 10, which will debut a few months before the Whistler desktop versions.

Read more

Also the german PC Welt magazine has some news. It seems like the german version of Whistler contains not the anti-piracy feature.

Read more (German) | Babelfish Translation Service