Reasonable people can disagree. On the subject of product activation, though, it seems to me the difference of opinion between software customers and software publishers is turning into a nearly unbridgeable chasm.
A software executive whom I know to be a reasonable man recently wrote to express his surprise at how vehemently some of my readers had criticized software copy protection. "I don't believe they are being reasonable," the software executive wrote. "Can product activation be improved? Yes. Will it ever be 100% safe from mistakes or causing some imposition on honest people? No. I have locked myself out of my car, but do I blame GM? No. But don't software companies -- that employ people and owe returns to their investors -- have a right to be paid for their product and to ensure the product sold is used in the manner for which it is licensed? Yes. Copy protection, software activation, car keys, clothing security tags, etc., are all just inconvenient reminders that some humans are not capable of obeying a social covenant or contract to respect the rights and property of others. It's life."
What is it about product activation that drives customers so crazy? Of course, there are a number of objections thoughtful readers have raised to copy protection. It can deprive customers of their rightful use of a product just because they replaced a hard drive. It leaves customers wondering whether they'll be able to re-activate a product when the company drops support for it. It punishes the honest users while doing nothing to stop the counterfeiters or anyone who spends a few minutes finding a cracked version on the Internet.
Those are all reasonable objections, but I think the passion many readers feel on this subject goes deeper then that. One reader put it particularly well. "I have always considered phone-home software licenses an information security risk because I don't know 'them,' nor do I trust 'them,' to send only their software's license information," the reader wrote. "And who knows if they modified their license at the last upgrade to include more information than I'm willing or allowed to give? Their traffic is not welcome on my network either -- and my network runs on my rules."
That's the real issue with product activation: trust. After all, software customers do have good reason to not be entirely trusting of the motivation of software publishers when it comes to their copy protection schemes. Intuit's debacle over the product activation in TurboTax 2002 really came about because users discovered the DRM software Intuit was using had spyware capabilities that would remain on their computers long after they'd finished with TurboTax. We may never know what Intuit's plans were for its product activation code, but it was a clear breach of TurboTax customers' trust.
Of course, software publishers can counter that they are perfectly justified in distrusting customers too, because software piracy is a very real problem. Product activation may not be the perfect solution, as the software executive noted, but "keeping the honest customers honest" no doubt does prevent some illegal copying.
How can this mutual lack of trust be bridged? Perhaps if product activation weren't quite so one-sided, it would be a little easier for customers to have a little faith. Why shouldn't customers get something -- support or the next upgrade, for example - in exchange for going through the activation process? Or would that be too reasonable?
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