15 January 2002
My pet peeve these days is Microsoft's activation. It's clearly aimed at stopping "casual piracy" but there are some problems with their model.
First, they are extremely profitable at their current price point. I'm not saying that the right and wrong of it all is based on whether MS has a lot of money or a little - clearly piracy and stealing are wrong. The issue I'm trying to raise is the question about whether MS has chosen an approach that is appropriate to the problem they have. They aren't proposing to cut the prices in half in order to stop piracy.
Second, the process of activation is slow and cumbersome and represents a tax on businesses, sort of an honesty tax, which their research shows most customers don't deserve. They've chosen to assess this tax from every user, but only honest users will ever go through activation. Microsoft has one set of statistics for how long it takes, claiming 5-7 minutes of phone time. Users report a different experience, something on the order of 11-15 minutes. MS counters that 80% of activations take place on the web and that they've never had the volume in the call centers that they expected.
Third, I think that the decision to completely lock out the software on failed activation is a bad decision. If it was coded to give a person 1 day or 2 hours before locking up, users could choose when to call MS without putting their work at risk.
Fourth, I think that the use of activation signals a clear change in basic strategy for Microsoft. Large corporations and individuals don't just buy products, they buy into the supplier's business strategy. Until now, it was at least possible to pretend that Microsoft believed that the key to their long term success was continually making tools that people could use to do their work better, cheaper, and faster. Now it's clear that their business strategy is to get as much cash from users as possible, without regard for the impact on business and individuals.
Microsoft counters that activation is not new, that Novell and other companies have used it for years, without the public outcry that has met activation. That's a good point, because those are products that are sold, by and large, to large businesses with IT support staffs. Windows and Office, on the other hand, are --- or at least have been -- consumer products, widely sold to individuals and small offices without access to the technical staff to deal with activation issues.
And finally, their model is that since only 40% of office is licensed, then if we create a technological barrier to piracy we'll get more money. That's just linear thinking. People won't put the second copy of Office on the second pc, and they won't use the second pc either. They'll modify their resource allocation to meet their own needs and expectations. Microsoft acts as if people will spend more for their software if they can't steal it - and I think that the software is way overpriced already. People won't spend any more then they do now.
One of the most enlightening examples of protecting intellectual property I ever saw was the example of the paperback book. Can you imagine a person standing at a copier and xeroxing a 300 page paperback? I can't, because the cost of stealing it is higher than the cost of buying it. If Microsoft wants to make the cost of stealing software higher, they might think about reducing the cost of buying it as well.
A parting thought, for those of you still using Office 97 or Office 2000. MS is calling Office XP "old," saying that 18-24 months is about the right amount of time for a product before a follow-on comes out. Get ready for Office YP, or whatever is next.