COMMENTARY--What benefit, exactly, are consumers meant to get from product activation?
There are things in life that annoy me, and all too often there's no satisfying payoff to my annoyance. I could well have done without finding out what Dr Claw (from Inspector Gadget) looked like, but lo and behold an acquaintance of mine sent me details just recently on a plastic toy Dr Claw. The whole essence of the character is that you never see his face, preserving his mystery. I won't spoil the surprise, such as it is, although I'm sure there's more than a few bored IT workers out there doing a Google image search as I say that.
My Dr Claw dilemma highlights a common problem with exposition; nobody needed to know more about Highlander's Quickening (or to see the third and fourth films at all, or the unedited second), or Star Wars' Force, but somebody had to let the cat out of the bag, much to the annoyance of everyone when it commenced with caterwauling. That intro might not seem as though it has much to do with IT issues, but damn, it feels good to go off on an annoyance rant every once in a while.
On the topic of annoyances, Symantec recently announced that the latest version of its flagship Norton Antivirus software will include product activation as a mandatory install routine. Not to be outdone, Macromedia will be following the same path with Studio MX 2004. Product Activation is, of course, a marketer's term for compulsory registration, and it's something that annoys me a very great deal, primarily as I've yet to see evidence that consumers benefit in any way at all from it, and yet we're the ones who bear the burden of actually getting it up and working.
Product Activation first really hit the IT scene in a measurable way with Windows XP, which can be activated one of two ways; via the Net, or over the phone. Both are a touch irritating; the Net service has been down the last few times I've had to install Microsoft's flagship OS, and that leads one inevitably to the phone. If there's anyone out there who has a particular fetish for writing down long strings of machine-voiced numbers, then maybe going through that chore could give you a particular thrill; for me it's just dull and needlessly repetitive.
From the software provider's perspective, product activation is a great idea, as it theoretically cuts down on piracy. That was pretty much Microsoft's take on the issue back when Windows XP launched, and it lasted for maybe a whole five minutes before warezed copies of the corporate, non-activated version started appearing. It's unlikely that the warezed versions are all that well patched, which makes them a tasty treat for any virus writers out there. That brings me back nicely to Norton Antivirus 2004, a product that relies on users having a valid subscription. How, exactly, do you have a valid subscription? By providing the nice people at Symantec with your credit card details. Unless you're into large-scale credit card theft -- and if you are, registering your antivirus software seems like a dumb step to me -- that'll give them your details, and from that, they can deduce whether the copy of the program you're running is truly kosher or not. So what, exactly, is the point of product activation in this case?
Now, I'll admit that it's quite a rare day indeed that I even go so far as to register anything, despite all the nice little cards that rattle around inside software boxes next to a single CD and hefty quantities of curious smelling air. I've yet to see a package that offers actual benefits to registering; the best packages will always charge for tech support, and the 'special offers' they tout all too often end up being slight reductions on the price of other things that I don't particularly need.
Then there's the marketing aspect of registration; every time you fill in a virtual or actual card, you're handing over marketing info, which, depending on the exact phrasing of the mystery clause 239(b) of the EULA you didn't read anyway, may be sold on to other companies for profit. Even for those companies who lay their cards on the table and won't on-sell your details, you've still given up some hefty information for them to use in their own correspondence and marketing spam. To make matters worse, you've also established a business relationship with them, so they could continue sending you 'offers' from now until the end of time.
What I'd like to see is a registration process that's essentially seamless and offers actual benefits for registration; a printed manual (something I've complained about before) would be a nice start. There are companies out there that do manage this kind of thing better than others, offering small communities for their program users to swap tips, templates and other relevant material, but again that often comes down to the generosity of the community users, not the companies themselves.
What do you think? Do you scrupulously register software, and have you ever benefited from doing so? Is Alex thinking far too much about the whole Dr Claw thing? Let me know at edit@zdnet.com.au.
Activation isn't the same as registration. Activation records that a particular serial number has been used, and (usually) ties it to a particular hardware (and possibly software) configuration. There's no reason why activation should identify you - unless it collects the hardware MAC address from your computer, and the separate registration process does the same.
The real worry is that we can't see exactly what information is transmitted when applications 'phone home' on installation or subsequent use.