01-25-2004, 01:00 AM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,228
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Product Activation And Similar Protection Schemes Robs Users Of Purchases
If everyone played by the rules and didn't "share" music with everyone that asked, didn't provide cracked software or make copies of software CDs, there would be no need for protection schemes like activation. However, some people don't play by the rules so companies are forced to come up with ways to protect their intellectual property rights.
Software makers have taken to some form of product activation which locks the software to either a particular piece of hardware, email address, name or some other unique identifier. You give the software maker your identifier and their server sends you back a key based on that identifier. If any of those items change, say you get a new PC or change ISPs and get a new email, you have to get a new key. Most companies are completely understanding about this and offer a new key with little or no fuss.
That is, as long as that company is still around. Chances of anything serious happening to Microsoft in the foreseeable future that would cause their activation servers to disappear are pretty small. Factoring in a long enough time period for this to occur would make any current software titles irrelevant anyway. You aren't going to try installing Office 2003 on any computing device you own in 2015 anyway.
But what about the smaller companies? IA Style is being absorbed into HTC and sent the following info to their customers.
Quote: We will stop selling products online on January 30, 2004, including those for both Pocket PC and Smartphone platforms. We will continue to provide support, including responding to email questions, until the end of April of 2004. Our website at www.iastyle.com will continue to function for providing and changing registration codes until the end of August 2004. After August 2004, User Manuals and FAQs for IA Style products will still be available on our website.
So, after August of 2004, you will be unable to acquire a new registration code. :evil: This to me is completely unacceptable. Software for Pocket PCs should easily last 2-3 years and I don't think 4-5 years is out of the question, especially the price that is being asked for some packages. Companies with these types of activation schemes should have a plan that in the event of their demise, buyout or simple abandonment of a particular market should have a back door mechanism to allow their customers to access the products they purchased.
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01-25-2004, 01:32 AM
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Swami
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 4,303
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Right on Ed. There are just so many reasons why DRM systems are awkward and unforgiving, but this aspect is not usually considered. Unfortunately, short term thinking abounds with this kind of thing. �If we are going to be around for a long time, we don�t need it and we are going to go under, then I don�t care about the �customers�.�
How many firms are going to design something into their software that assumes that they won�t be around forever?
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01-25-2004, 01:40 AM
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Sage
Join Date: Aug 2004
Posts: 718
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Five years? I say that if a company goes out of business and is not going to transfer ownership of the product or continue selling it, then the software should become freeware. A registration code should last forever, not just 5 years.
If a company has a code system based on system ID or other changing parameter and they require new ID's if the computer system, PDA or whatever is changed, then before they quit the product, they should issue new codes to registered users that work anytime, anywhere to replace the system-specific ones.
Recently, the author of HTTPMail, a Hotmail plugin for Pocket Outlook had gone on vacation and temporarilly pulled their product from sales. Unfortunately, that person didn't tell anyone and we all assumed that they bailed. Since their software uses a serial based on a PocketPC's system code and, of course, I happened to be installing it to a new PocketPC at the time, I thought I was out of luck. I didn't care about the$5 I spent on it. I cared that it was a useful piece of software that I would have lost. Fortunately, they came back and I was able to get a new serial number. But the issue is clear. If that person had quit the software or died or whatever, I would expect a serial number to be released that would work on all systems or a version of the software fully enabled that didn't require activation. Even after their dead and I'm quite serious here. If a single person is producing a product, then put aside the code or a "master" registration number that can be used in case of something bad happening to them. It doesn't matter whether you are a one person show or Microsoft. If you decide to go into business and sell stuff and take money from people, you need to make sure you do things right - not treat it like some lark. Provide for all possibilities. If you are not willing to do all that work - and you want to mess with all those restricting paranoid registration techniques - then don't bother starting it.
We buy their software with the understanding that we won't illegally share or use it. The least they can do is guarantee that the software won't become useless on future systems if they quit selling it.
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01-25-2004, 02:14 AM
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Thinker
Join Date: Oct 2003
Posts: 473
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As always, this issue involves a fine balance between DRM (protecting sales) and the inconvience it poses for users. Unfortunately, I've found the registration processes that provide the most protection are the most annoying to use. These include various ebook readers who's registration codes are locked to a specific device or change with each hard-reset as the program generates a new activation code.
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If a company has a code system based on system ID or other changing parameter and they require new ID's if the computer system, PDA or whatever is changed, then before they quit the product, they should issue new codes to registered users that work anytime, anywhere to replace the system-specific ones.
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If a company that provides these does go bust, I think they owe it to consumers to email users with their key-generator so they can continue to use their programs. Whilst I'm sure this will quickly "leak" to various semi-legal websites, if the company goes under / no longer support their software, then they probably won't be generating sales anyway right?
I personally dislike registration processes that require emailing or a link to the software producer's server for activation (e.g. Pdamill, Rocketelite). My preferred system is where each user is allocated a unique serial number that is linked to their name (which never changes) or like pocketinformant, a number that works on the program regardless but belongs to the purchaser.
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01-25-2004, 02:31 AM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,228
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by DaleReeck
Five years? I say that if a company goes out of business and is not going to transfer ownership of the product or continue selling it, then the software should become freeware. A registration code should last forever, not just 5 years.
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In principle, I agree with you 100%. From a practical standpoint, I can't think of any app I have that, on the current version, is older than 5 years, though Forte's Agent is pretty close. :roll:
So while I'd like to see a "forever" option, I'd still buy knowing that for 5 years i'd be OK because beyond that, chances are very good I'd either be on another platform that no longer supported it, a newer version would have come out or a superior competing product would have caught my eye.
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01-25-2004, 02:41 AM
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Pontificator
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 1,264
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Turbo Tax required product activation starting last year. That was the main reason lots of users, including myself, switched to Tax Cut. If all of your data is in one of their files and you get audited years later, you would need to be able to reinstall the software on whatever PC you have to access that data. If for some reason they were gone, you would be up a creek. Of course keeping a printed copy of everything is probably a good idea anyway.
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01-25-2004, 02:51 AM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 93
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Software (Copyright) protection has been around since the first program was sold. Actually probably the second application sold when the discovered all the people stealing their first application!
In the days before CD and Internet installs it was all on Floppy discs. The companies used all sorts of sector manipulation schemes to keep people from copying them and other companies made software and hardware schemes to break the protection.
When CDs came out they backed off a little but when CD burners came out this shifted again.
Now I make my living as a programmer. Fortunately most of my programming is for the business community and we do not have problems with this sort of thing since the applications are written specifically for the customer.
Then I started writing ThemeMaker. Someone said I should sell them on the Internet so I tried it. The first ThemeMaker had a simple coding scheme to tie the registration in to the name. Then I wrote more variations of ThemeMaker and it started to acutally bring in some money. One day I did a search on ThemeMakerPro Plus and found over 160 links! I was floored! 99% of them were Eastern Europe and Asian Crack sites with little programs to gen the key for your name. For all the ThemeMakers! No matter what I did within a week they had a crack for it!
So I gave up! I removed all the Shareware programs and replaced them with what I call retail programs. Then made demo programs that had lots of major code removed so the features could never work and the DEMO screen always came up. No more crack site links!
But the effect of this is all the customers who bought and could have bought the Shareware version can no longer download the latest version when ever it came out.
Everyone seems to be getting down on the companies who want to protect their product when the real villians here are the people who steal and it is stealing not pirating, hacking, copying or any other cute term. We all wind up paying for the criminals in this world.
This site, these PPCs and this software are available to us all because of the Capitalist system that requires a profit for our work. People these days seem to think that if it is so simple to download code, music, etc to their computers why should we pay for it.
As long as we condon that acitvity companies will continue to keep putting copy protection on the applications. Be happy they do not insist you have a harware lock (dongle) for each application you buy!
:wink:
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01-25-2004, 03:09 AM
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5000+ Posts? I Should OWN This Site!
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 5,133
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I hate complex product activation. I know there are many people using software illegally, but I don't like "guilty until proven innocent". I still think that in a lot of cases, lower prices would mean more purchases and less piracy. At least, apart from the hard-core pirates that are going to find SOME way to copy it no matter what. Or wouldn't buy it even if they can't.
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01-25-2004, 03:29 AM
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Thinker
Join Date: Oct 2003
Posts: 434
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I agree with Kamware it's a difficult problem. Unfortunately, DRM schemes are becoming very mainstream with all the music and ebook downloads that are taking place every day.
I have a library of ebooks in the hundreds and shudder to think what happens when the DRM schemes are no longer supported. Same with some program activation schemes, too. the only DRM schemes I generally trust are ones that use a decryption key supplied by me, i. e. credit card number or Owner Name from the PPC.
These seem a reasonable compromise to me.
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01-25-2004, 03:58 AM
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Thinker
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 350
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I understand software developers/companies have to make money and the softare piracy is a serious problem. So I can understand that they have to do something.
Just don't treat me like a criminal and make me jump through hoops to prove the software I paid good money for is legit.
If you have to use some sort of DRM scheme, make it something I have some control over. jkendrick mentioned some good examples: my owner name, the credit card # used to pay for it, etc. This way, if you go out of business or decide down the road to stop supporting the software/media file, I still can use what I paid for.
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