The more I think about it the more I like WGA and phone home approaches.
It seems to me that each and every copyright owner operating EULA based
approaches with duties and responsibilities regarding the EULA and/or
associated media needs to consider four main cases:
- responsible people behaving responsibly
- responsible people behaving irresponsibly
- irresponsible people behaving responsibly
and
- irresponsible people behaving irresponsibly.
It seems to me that a WGA approach says "Here are some sweeteners" to
those behaving responsible and "Here are some encouragements" to those
behaving irresponsibly.
It seems fair, responsibly and creating a culture of good practice?
It also seems to have an added advantage in that it avoids legalistic
issues (provided false negatives and false positives are kept to
reasonable levels)
Is it an issue of responsibility or a matter of trust? If someone
decides to steal MS products then they are a thief. They deserve
to be treated accordingly. However in many respects WGA and SSP have us
prove our innocence at every turn although we have never done
anything wrong. I have been paying MS a pretty penny to use their
products and they in turn have been adding what I consider to be more
and more invasive anti-piracy processes. The majority may think this is
acceptable to them, I personally don't.
When I moved to the world of MS-DOS years ago one of the selling features
was the absence of invasive copy protection techniques. At the time the
Commodore world had added plug in copy protection devices (dongles), disk
copy protection techniques and to put it plainly it became a headache and
nightmare for legitimate users. MS has slowly been moving in this same
direction and maybe they should look at where Commodore is now, learn from
the past and reconsider their direction.
I removed XP and Vista from my main PC on the week-end. I installed
Novell SUSE Linux Desktop. While there is a registration process when
installing this distribution, after you enter your license code you
simply use the system. There are no limits on the number of times you can
activate. I can move this copy of Linux to as many computers as I choose
as long as I only have it installed on one at a time. It does not phone
home to verify that I am not a thief. If I want I can even download the
free version, OpenSUSE and install it on every computer that I have
without any registration at all.
So far I have used Evolution (Outlook type program), Firefox 1.5 and 2,
Thunderbird, Gaim (AOL, ICQ, MSN compatible Instant Messenger program),
Open Office 2 (Office compatible suite), PAN (Newsreader) just to name a
few. While they operate slightly differently than MS products I have been
able to adapt quickly and have been able to do everything I did in
Windows in Linux just as well. I've found Linux to be more customizable
than Windows. Not to mention the better security and absence of
the large number of viruses and other malware in the Windows world. Don't
get me wrong, my intent is not to run down Windows only to suggest that
Linux is a viable alternative for many.
MS is free to decide how they wish to treat their customers and as
customers we can decide whether their terms are acceptable to us or
whether the competition offers something better. I like a lot of MS
products but their policies are unacceptable to me. I will vote with my
wallet and perhaps if enough of us do the same MS may reconsider their
direction. If not, well at least I personally will not have to put up
with the headaches of MS's anti-piracy policies.
