Are software publishers bound and determined to test the limits of customer frustration over copy protection? You'd think so, because every week seems to bring reader reports of yet another company that's found yet another way to treat its customers like outlaws.
The crux of many reader complaints is how the software publisher handles users who have exceeded their allotted number of re-installations. "I installed the $40-$50 program PDF Converter from ScanSoft," wrote one reader. "Then I upgraded the processor, and the system kept rebooting spontaneously. So, after two more reinstalls, I got a different motherboard and reinstalled PDF Converter for the fifth time. Oops. Install failed because apparently five installs exceed the number of permitted activations. OK, I e-mail customer support. Oops, you have to register with the customer service hotline to do that. What's another password? After two days I heard back. Photocopy the CD - yes, the CD -- and your purchase receipt, and ScanSoft will consider providing you with an additional activation."
The reader noted he did not have similar problems with considerably more expensive programs on the same system that are also copy protected. "Thanks a lot, ScanSoft," he wrote. "Why did I even bother to register the program? And will I ever deal with another ScanSoft program again? Never. They are on my short list of companies that I will never do business with again. And though I have copied the receipt and CD and will send it to them, I will never again use the product."
If reactivation hassles aren't enough to deal with, how about having the program regularly phone home to authenticate the license? "Pegasys is the maker of two good programs, the TMPGEnc MPEG encoder and TMPGEnc DVD Author," says another reader. "But their latest version, TMPGEnc Express 3.0, requires license validation over the Internet on a periodic basis."
The explanation of "Periodical License Validation" on the website of the Japan-based Pegasys isn't in the most elegant English, but that just makes the message all the more clear. The programs must be used on a system with an Internet connection so the license can be validated "from time to time." The company's statement acknowledges that its DRM might require customers to change security settings and just won't work in some environments. In other words, if you want to use the software, you have to accept the fact it will likely break a lot of stuff, and on a continuing basis. "I now refuse to buy their program, and I've written them as such," says the reader. "It's bizarre. I doubt they realize the impression they're giving."
Of course, even those product activation schemes that have been with us a while don't get any sweeter with age. A reader who had just moved his old copy of Microsoft Office and separate copies of Publisher and FrontPage to a new laptop wound up having to exchange the machine for another configuration. "When I got the new one I had to reinstall all the software, and that's when I ran into Microsoft's silly activation scheme. Not only did I have to activate the products, but I had to complete three separate activations, because of the different versions of the software I had on my system. Have you ever gone through Microsoft's phone activation? It's a trip! You have to spend close to ten minutes dealing with voice recognition software before you're told that the machine can't activate the software and it then passes you to a human being. And I had to make three separate calls, as Microsoft considers them three separate installations. All in all, it took about an hour to reactivate three products."
What made that hour seem longer to the reader was the question of why only honest customers have to endure such sessions. "I don't know why these companies think that these activation schemes are putting a dent in software piracy," says the reader. "All one has to do is log into any P2P network and search for pirated copies of just about any application. Frankly, I considered doing that rather than wasting an hour trying to reactivate my licensed applications. The way I see it, all that these silly activation schemes accomplish is to punish the customers who have legitimately purchased software licenses."
As software DRM grows ever more common and ever nastier, it means another new frontier of frustration is approaching. After all, if it costs an hour now to upgrade your copyright-protected Microsoft applications, how long will it take in the future when presumably all applications will demand customers jump through these reactivation hoops? The day is coming, if it's not already here, when honest customers have no choice but to move to open source. If that's what the software industry intends its activation schemes to accomplish, it may find the ultimate frustration is its own.
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