A glitch with Microsoft’s activation servers appears to be disrupting many users's PCs, as Windows 10 erroneously reports their systems as either un-activated or downgraded from Windows 10 Pro to Windows 10 Home.

More info Microsoft answers and PC WORLD article

Makes you miss the days of Windows 2000, before all this activation nonsense. Perhaps product activation is a bit irrelevant these days. It doesn't really stop piracy but instead just causes more headaches for users with valid licenses. The fact that it sounds as though it continuously phones home regardless of activation status is another issue in itself. Once a product is activated, it should no longer have to communicate with the activation server unless hardware drastically changes or you reinstall Windows in which you should be able to backup your activation status by a generated hash from Windows itself by hardware status, BIOS strings, etc. That way you can't port it to other computers but still easily be able to reinstall and reinstate your activation without having to reconnect to the server and possibly having issues doing so. Eh, pipe dreams. Then again, I'm sure someone would devise some sort of activation crack to bypass activation via a saved file for restoration so Microsoft still wouldn't be ahead of the piracy game.

Maybe there isn't an easier answer for Microsoft to cut down on piracy but also make it easier for users not to run into future issues like this. Then again, I wonder how much the company is losing via paying overtime having employees fix the activation issue.