One surprise that's come out of my recent discussion about how to make DRM fair is how many readers prefer hardware anti-piracy devices -- i.e., dongles - to software product activation. One reader had a particularly articulate explanation for why that would be.
"The key to people liking dongles is that they then put the software into the category of what Larry Lessig calls 'unregulated use,' as distinct from 'fair use' and 'regulated use,'" the reader wrote. "The latter is what product activation tries to do. The key thing is that there is no necessity for an ongoing relationship with the vendor once the product has been purchased. Like a book, you can carry it around with you, lend it to a friend, use it on as many different computers as you need -- one at a time. This latter restriction is not onerous, because you can only be at one computer at a time.
"Another key benefit of dongles is that the software vendor cannot 'End-Of-Life' your product against your will, or remotely revoke your right to use or reinstall it," the reader continued. "I run a lot of down-rev software precisely because it lacks the bloat of newer versions. Now that USB dongles are mainstream, perhaps software vendors could offer a service to license their software to a dongle you already have. This way, you could get all the software you use keyed to the same dongle and move it from place to place. I think the 'per user' model for software licensing should have more attention paid, rather than the 'per-machine' model which is prevalent in the industry now."
11:59:00 AM 
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