Begin forwarded message:
From: Warren Magnus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: October 4, 2006 1:33:20 PM EDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [IP] more on Microsoft Plans For Automatic Hobbling of
"Pirated" Vista Systems
David Farber wrote:
Begin forwarded message:
From: "David P. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: October 4, 2006 12:34:10 PM EDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [IP] Microsoft Plans For Automatic Hobbling of
"Pirated" Vista Systems
I don't always agree with Lauren, but on this one, I do.
There must be a few people in the Microsoft leadership (Ballmer,
perhaps?) who have come to view their customers as enemies or at
least peons who must bow down to the power of Microsoft in all things.
Microsoft sees pirates - and it blames its customers.
Microsoft sees pirates, and it lays a minefield in the path of all
its customers, to blow up anyone unsuspecting enough to walk into
that minefield.
Microsoft behaves, in other words, like any power-mad dictator who
feels the need to punish the many for the problems it suffers from
the few.
Is this the only approach that might make sense? I guess it is
when your management adopts a paranoid mindset.
I'd suggest an alternative: think creatively about how to encourage
customers to see the value you deliver. Stop building your
success on "controlling the market" and "lockin" that delivers not
new value, but instead late, buggy crap with a few features thrown in.
Dave,
This is the usual anti-DRM argument and frankly I subscribe to this
position in general. However, having lost this argument numerous
times in the past with developers of other software, customer
compliance with copyright enforcement strategies has laid the
groundwork for this and proven that customers are totally OK with
this kind of corporate behavior. Consumers apparently have no problem
at all being treated like active criminals.
For years, Adobe, Microsoft, and everybody else who sells software
has used phone home registration schemes and lengthy serial number
keys. Some software won't even let you install on a second machine
unless you uninstall on the first machine (Adobe, I'm talking to
you). Users tolerate this without complaint and continue to vote with
their wallets. Users buy the software anyhow.
Further, I expect that despite the capabilities to throttle down or
even disable Vista systems, the mechanisms will be used to target the
big piracy players. East Asian copy houses that crank out pirated CD-
ROMs and publish stolen CD-keys along with them. Being able to shut
down the user might well limit demand for the big mass produced
pirate copies.
Setting the threshold to forgive small scale copying would mean that
a family could get away with installing the same serial number of
Vista on more than one machine. Microsoft has already shown huge
leniency with this kind of soft piracy with regard to Windows One
Care which carries a 3 machine license that doesn't check to see
whether there are really only 3 machines installed with a single CD-
key. Similarly the Student/Teacher Editition of Microsoft Office is
very soft on the enforcement of the 3 machine license limit.
-W
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