Okay,
I realize that Microsoft has gotten alot of bad publicity about their anti-piracy "Product Activation" scheme that the software giant has been incorporating into its recient products which include all the flavors of Windows XP excluing the corporate editions, Office XP, Server 2003, and Office 2003.
What is Product Activation?
Product activation essentially ties the software to a single PC, forcing the user to comply with the software's End User License Agreement (EULA).
When you install a product that requires activation, you will have about 30 days (or startups) before you are forced to contact Microsoft and activate the product. Activation can be done through the Internet, or by phone. If you make changes to your hardware, you may need to re-activate the product before you can use it again.
What is wrong with activation?
There are serveral things that I do not like about Microsoft's Product Activation.
5. It's a pain for legitiment users. Installing software is complex enough without activation, but now it will become even more complicated. Adding product activation into the mix will make installation more complex, unreliable, and frustrating for users.
4. Server down-time. Do you really belive that Microsoft's activation servers will be up and running 24 hours a day, 7 day a week, 365 day a year with no down time? Not likely. Even if product activation works flawlessly 98% of the time, that still results in problems for hundreds of thousands of users. And, of course, the activation servers will be prime targets for denial-of-service attacks. The telephone activation alternative requires that you read a long string of characters to the phone operator, and then receive another long string of characters back.
3. It does not work. Microsoft Product Activation has already been hacked. Anyone who really wants to hack it can do it. For example the Blue List hacking group created an application called, "XPKEY.EXE" which generates new product keys for Windows XP, thus "fooling" the activation server, and activation these illegitement copies.
2. Microsoft claims that software piracy is responsible for the high cost of all of their software. If that's the case, shouldn't Microsoft be lowering their prices instead of raising them?
1. The number one reason that I do not like activation is that Microsoft could use it as a ploy to force users to upgrade. In other words two or three years from now when "Longhorn" has been released Microsoft will probably simply refuse to give out any more "conformation IDs". With out the conformation ID you cannot use Windows! Windows XP will become useless, users will be forced to upgrade to "Longhorn" or whatever Microsoft creates.
Simply put, Product Activation offers no benefits to Microsoft's customers. None. Microsoft, however, wants you to believe that crippled software will actually benefit end-users.
Microsoft has spent a significant amount of money to create a copy protection system that, does not meet its stated goal. As a by-product, honest consumers will be inconvenienced, and possibly denied the right to use software for which they own a license. And large-scale software piracy will continue, and perhaps increase over current levels.
