I’ve long had problems with anyone who tells me to do anything.
But telling me I can’t use something I bought with a product that is already mine really galls me. And I still can’t believe we all allowed this to happen.
Here’s the deal. For the past few years Microsoft has required users to activate their software, either automatically over the Internet or by phone. The first is simpler: If your computer is connected to the web then it’s as good as done. The second is more fiddly: It requires you reading out a bunch of digits to a charming, albeit automated, female.
She then reads you back a bunch more digits which you enter and voila! Microsoft allows you to use your own software on your own computer.
Unless, for some reason, Microsoft doesn’t like what you’re doing, in which case you have to go, cap in hand, to the phone and patiently wait to explain your case to a real person, who will ask you searching questions about where you spent your last holiday and may, or may not, give you a new ID code.
This was what happened to me the other day: I had to install a new operating system, which meant reinstalling all my old software.
Which meant what seemed like hours, but were probably minutes, on the phone to someone called, I think, Rafa Benitez.
When Microsoft introduced this in 2001 there was a bit of an outcry — but it was mainly about the wrong thing. We were all upset about the possible privacy issues, but we should have been concerned about something else: ownership.
I own the software. I bought it. It’s mine. In the same way that a book I bought is mine. A computer is mine. Furniture is mine.
Of course, it’s not, strictly speaking. If you read the license that comes with your software, it will explain that all you’re buying is the right to use the software on one, maybe two computers. In other words, you don’t own the software.
Now this didn’t really matter when Microsoft and others didn’t really restrict what you could do with their software. The license was just a bit of legalese you ignored.
But when you can’t install software you paid for on the same computer you’ve been using it on, then you realize you may not quite be the king of your own castle you thought you were.
I dug around for the license on my copy of Microsoft Word. It was in a window the size of a postage stamp that couldn’t be resized. The text ran to more than 10,000 words. That’s the length of an MA thesis.
The relevant bit is this:
Before you use the software under a license, you must assign that license to one device. That device is the “licensed device.” A hardware partition or blade is considered to be a separate device.
A blade, by the way, doesn’t mean a knife. It’s a small server. A partition is when you divide one hard drive up into small drives—not physically, but by fooling the computer into thinking it’s got more than one hard disk inside it.
This is a good thing to do, by the way, because it makes it easier to organize your stuff and to back it up. And this is what I have on my computer. Just one hard drive, divided up into partitions. Which is enough to convince Microsoft that I’m a pirate, trying to steal their software. Hence the 20 minute phone call reading out numbers and having them read back to me.
Now this is not a big deal for a lot of people. Either it never happens to them because they don’t reinstall their operating system, or move computers, or whatever. And maybe for those who do it once or twice they don’t mind the odd phone call.
And I have to say the Microsoft agents are always very nice about it, even if one gets the feeling their linguistic dexterity doesn’t extend beyond the script in front of them.
The trouble is that we’ve allowed companies to turn the tables on us: to force us to prove our innocence to them. I’ve had the same runaround with my Apple iPod, which wants to delete all the songs when I connect it to the same computer as before, with lots of songs I’ve downloaded from iTunes, with my Audible audio books account.
Stuff I thought was, well, mine, it turns out isn’t.
Of course, these things will get sorted out after a few emails and tweaks. But I’m not quite sure what happened that got us here.
But are things changing?
Microsoft’s new operating system Windows Seven, for example, requires you to activate your copy within three days. If you don’t you’ll get bugged once a day, and then, on day 27, once every four hours. By day 30 you’ll get bugged every hour.
If you’re still around after month one, then things will get nastier. The messages will start appear in different parts of the screen, and will be more menacing — “You may be a victim of software counterfeiting!” one says. Another will be a “persistent desktop notification on a black background,” which sounds like something out of a Halloween movie. Another will be a random pop-up window when you open other applications. Microsoft were coy about what this message may say, but I suspect it won’t be complimentary about your mother.
Of course, by now you’re either a hardened criminal and don’t care about this kind of thing, or so freaked out you’re convinced that your computer has been taken over by aliens, or pirates, or both.
Which is perhaps why Microsoft quietly dropped a feature of its previous Windows Vista, called “reduced functionality.” With Vista if you still hadn’t activated the product after 30 days the software would limit the time a user could spend in a browser and not allow you to play some games that come with the software. In other words, things would suddenly stop working.
This seems to have been quietly dropped. Now all you’ll get is the dark background and the sinister messages.
Now either Microsoft is getting it, or realized that crippling its own software wasn’t necessarily going to convince users it was a product worth activating.
And the thing about all this is that activation doesn’t deter anyone. The Internet is full of ways around this, so for people with no scruples this is not deterrent. For the rest of us it’s just a nuisance, and for casual users a further turnoff. All this is designed to whip into line, not the bad guys, but ordinary Joes who bought their software thinking that was all they had to do.
Now Microsoft argues that they’re protecting users from bad software. They point to a study in the UK they did which showed that more than a third of software they found at businesses was counterfeit.
They also point to cases of Windows Seven circulating online which contain viruses designed to turn the user’s computer into a robot, acting on behalf of a bad guy.
Well, yes. You can’t do much about the latter: If people are going to the trouble of downloading pirate copies of your software there’s not much anyone can do about it.
The case of businesses using counterfeit software is more tricky. I don’t think businesses necessarily do it intentionally, but I can’t see having strange, intimidating pop-up messages on the genuine version as the solution.
To me, activation is a sham, a carefully sugared pill designed to undermine the user’s rights. Microsoft makes clear to you that it owns the software. You’re using it on sufferance. If you haven’t jumped through our hoops we can do anything you like to your computer.
If we had to activate every product we bought — all right, licensed — we’d probably give up and live in tents. Imagine if we had to phone someone and read out 76-digit codes before we wore our new shoes, or drove our new car, or moved our tumbler drier from one part of the house to another.
Doesn’t bear thinking about.
© 2009 Loose Wire Pte Ltd
This story cannot be reproduced without written permission from the writer. Jeremy Wagstaff is a commentator on technology and appears regularly on the BBC World Service. You can reach him via email at jeremy@loosewire.org
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