A New Day for Corporate DRM

“A New Day for Business” is the way Microsoft is billing this Thursday’s rollout of the business versions of Vista and Office. But I wonder if corporate customers won’t eventually look back on the end of November 2006 as the point when they ceded control of their organizations’ networks to the anti-piracy efforts of big software publishers.

A fair amount of attention has been given to Microsoft’s SPP (Software Protection Platform), the DRM technology debuting in Vista that combines the best — or the worst, depending on your point of view — of Windows XP product activation and Windows Genuine Advantage verification. But I haven’t seen nearly as much discussion about Microsoft Volume Activation 2.0, the corporate piece of the SPP anti-piracy technology, in part no doubt because it’s still rather unclear how it’s going to work. And, outside of the Gripe Line (see “Adobe License Manager and Acrobat”), I’ve seen even less discussion about the interesting coincidence that November has also marked Adobe’s introduction of its own anti-piracy technology for corporate customers, the Adobe License Manager.

Of course, the average consumer may feel that it’s only fair that Microsoft and Adobe make volume license customers deal with the same kinds of DRM-induced problems the rest of us must struggle to avoid. As a number of readers have pointed out, it’s also true that required license servers of one sort or another have been around for some time in high end and niche software markets. But having to deal with a different anti-piracy system from each mainstream software publisher, as it appears will soon be the case, will turn the already difficult job of managing a company’s software assets into an impossible one.

“It’s not really ‘license management’ until the day these systems, like the article says, will also tell you when you are OVER-licensed,” wrote one reader it response to Adobe’s ALM plans. “Then at least the potential exists for these systems to make money-saving suggestions. Until that day comes, these are Piracy Control systems!”

Some software customers think that corporate activation schemes will ultimately be to their benefit. “It is about time,” wrote one reader. “Trying to manage hundreds if not thousands of seats of all the software corporate America uses is near impossible. Put the responsibility back on the software manufacture to provide the tools to keep us compliant. This allows corporations to use the software shared by users who only need the software intermittently. Autodesk, Bentley and others use this method.”

But what are the consequences to the customer’s business when one of these license servers fails? “You’ve never had one of those servers crash and stop working, have you?” wrote another reader in response to the above comment. “I have, and that made a mission critical application stop working until I reinstalled the server. Not a good thing at all.”

While Adobe’s ALM will at least be voluntary at first, readers are already finding themselves having to make hard and complex decisions about Microsoft Volume Activation 2.0. “They were in here the other day and we asked them whether we should use KMS or MAK in our branch offices,” says one reader. “After droning on for an hour about how great something called VAMT will be when it ships real soon now, it dawned on us they didn’t know the answer either. I guess Melinda and Bill aren’t rich enough yet.”

Since the one certainty about anti-piracy technology is that it will cause more problems for honest customers than it will for any software pirate seriously determined to defeat it, disasters are inevitable. Imagine the consequences if a spyware purveyor or even a terrorist organization learns how to seize control of these licensing servers for their own ends. And who is going to be responsible the first time entire corporations go into “reduced functionality mode” because of a buggy DRM update?

“Making the software so it can be disabled remotely without a mechanism that allows me to control the cause of the disabling is one-sided, greedy, and unethical,” one reader writes. “I wouldn’t have a problem with this if I could control the installation through usage of one-time install passwords or something else that I could control and generate. Adding the fact that I have to pay to regain use of my previously purchased license is just a bit over the top. Companies in the computer industry listen: All Computers Fail! It is only a matter of time. If you punish me for this fact I will remember that you are demanding money while you hassle me.”

What’s your take? Is this new day for corporate DRM a bad business, or just more of the same? Call the Gripe Line with your comments at 1 888 875-7916 or write me at Foster@gripe2ed.com.

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