Product activation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Product activation is a license validation procedure required by some computer software programs. Specifically, product activation refers to a method where a software application hashes hardware serial numbers and an ID number specific to the product's license (a product key) to generate a unique Installation ID. This Installation ID is sent to the manufacturer to verify the authenticity of the product key and to ensure that the product key is not being used for multiple installations.
As a trial, Microsoft first used product activation in some versions of Microsoft Office 2000. Some copies sold in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Hong Kong, New Zealand and the United States required the user to activate the product via the internet. After its success, the product activation system was extended worldwide and incorporated into all subsequent versions of Windows and Office. This practice has become a subject of debate, primarily because it was one of the first widespread uses of a product activation system in a general consumer product.
An 'unactivated' product usually acts as a time-limited trial until a product key is purchased and used to activate the software. Some products allow licenses to be transferred from one machine to another using online tools, without having to call technical support to deactivate the copy on the old machine before reactivating it on the new machine.
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[edit] Software using Activation
Some software that requires users to activate online or by phone includes:
- Microsoft Windows XP and later
- Microsoft Office 2000 Service Release 1 (SR-1, some versions) and later
- Xandros Desktop OS 4.0 (Home Edition, Home Edition Premium, and later); product activation is only required to make the Xandros Networks apt-based download tool functional
- Adobe Acrobat 7 and later
- Adobe Illustrator CS2
- Adobe Photoshop CS and later
- Adobe Premiere Pro
- Norton Antivirus 2004 and later
- Norton Ghost 9.0 and later
- Norton Internet Security 2004 and later
- MYOB
- Intuit TurboTax (product activation was subsequently discontinued after complaints over its activation process)
- Quicken (depending on country/edition)
- QuickTax
- DivX Pro
- Microsoft Flight Simulator X
- Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
- Half-Life 2
- Earth 2160
- ERain Swift3D 4
- Macromedia MX 2004 series (includes Macromedia Flash, Dreamweaver, and Fireworks) and later
- Various TMPGEnc programs
- Final Draft (a software application designed for writing screenplays)
- All current Spectrasonics synthesiser packages
- All current Native Instruments packages
- HTTP Router
OEMs can use SLP to tie the product activation to the BIOS so that Product Activation of Windows in those computers will be skipped if a unique serial number matches the number in the BIOS.
[edit] Criticisms
The major criticisms of product activation schemes are that:
- If a computer is stolen or destroyed, the activations on it may be completely lost. It is only by the good will of the company to provide new activations. This makes backing-up to guarantee prevention of substantial loss impossible.
- Activations can force users with multiple computers to keep track of which purchased software instance is installed on which computer.
- It can inconvenience the end-user, particularly if phone calls are necessary to complete activation or technical problems, such as firewall blocks or activation server downtime, prevent the activation process from completing.
- It can enforce software license agreement restrictions that may be legally invalid. For example, a company may refuse to reactivate software an upgraded or new PC, even if the user may have a legal right to use the product under such circumstances.
- If the company ceases to support a specific product (or, for example, goes bust) then that purchased product may become unusable, or incapable of being (re)installed.
- Although many activation schemes are anonymous, some are accompanied by mandatory registration which require providing user's address, phone number, and other personal information before the product is activated.
