January 02, 2007
What exactly does software activation accomplish, anyway?
Hey, so happy new year, welcome to 2007, and all that other jazz that people say around this time of year. It was a great holiday; spent some quality time with Diana and the pups, visited some relatives in New Jersey, and totally ignored the phone and email. Awesomeness. Totally stress-free... with one small exception.
The one island of stress in an otherwise unbroken island of relax-itude was when my father asked me for help setting up his new laptop. You see, my dad doesn't have Internet connectivity. So when the time came to install all that new shrink-wrapped software he bought with the machine, I experienced a whole world of pain that I hadn't before: telephone software activation. You ever experience this? It's painful. Microsoft, at least, has it down to a science: you call them up, read of punch in the 6 groups of 5 digits, they read it back to you, then they read you the 6 groups of 5 numbers that you type in. At the end of the process (about 20 minutes... I kept track), "blammo" it's registered. Now, that's for Office. You need to go through it again for Windows, again for the OEM software that comes with the laptop, again for the other software that he bought... again and again and again. Of course, most of the places aren't open 24 hours - some of them don't expect you not to have Internet connectivity so they're not prepared to activate the software. One guy had to figure out how to do it and call me back. All at their expense, mind you.
So, here's my question. Why do this activation at all? The reason that we're always given is that it's a piracy-prevention measure. Now I contend that it doesn't for a number of reasons - for example, there are tons of groups out there that love to crack software for the intellectual challenge of the reverse engineering experience. But even if it does protect against piracy, is the cost associated with it worth the benefit? For example, one of the places that I called made a piece of design software that was used in combination with a mechanized wood carving tool. In order to support the activation process, my call cost them the following:
- toll-free connection charges for me to call in and activate
- long-distance charges for them to call me back with the activation code
- approx. 30 minutes of customer-rep time to deal with me
- approx. 5 minutes of the rep's manager's time to figure out how to register
So, is that worth it? If he wants to install the software on another machine (which he will), he'll have to call back and go through the process again. If his laptop crashes (which it will), he'll have to do it again. Each and every time, at significant expense to this company. Usually you don't hear this from security professionals, but I'll go on record - what's a little trust worth? In this case, it's worth hard dollars - and it's easier on customers. I'm wondering what the incentive is...
Posted by Ed at January 2, 2007 10:02 AM | TrackBack