MS Whistler copy protection climb down begins – in Germany?

With Whistler Microsoft plans to introduce a new form of copy protection involving compulsory registration and resulting in 'single use' software. But there are signs of revolt among the troops - at least in Microsoft Germany.

In today's edition of the Financial Times Deutschland, Microsoft Germany spokesman Tomas Jensen is quoted as describing Microsoft Deutschland as a special, sensitive case, and suggesting that although the rest of the world may be forced to put its hands up to the new "product activation" system, Germany could be let off. But later in the day Jensen seemed to be saying he'd told the FTD nothing of the kind, just that no decision had been made, and that Germany was a critical market for Microsoft.

Which from where we're sitting doesn't sound a heap of a lot different from what the FTD said he'd said in the first place. The new copy protection procedure has appeared in the Whistler beta, but there's been no public commitment by Microsoft to actually introduce it - so 'no decision has been made,' anywhere, is a perfectly rational line for managers to take.

And we'll translate that stuff about the importance of Germany. Germany was, as the FTD notes, the nearest thing to a stronghold for OS/2 that IBM had, during that OS war. These days it's strong for Linux, and if Microsoft gets too insensitive and kicks German users around too hard, a revolution in one of the company's biggest and most prosperous markets is a perfectly plausible scenario.

On top of that, you may recall German court skirmishes over the legality of Microsoft trying to prohibit the resale of OEM versions of Windows. So if Microsoft did try to use copy protection to enforce single use, single machine sales of Whistler (and indeed Office 10, which will likely use the same system), the German courts are perfectly capable of unpicking the whole deal.

Nor is it a massive leap of the imagination to foresee other European countries following up on this, as various investigations crank on and various governments mull the benefits of open software.

The sensitivity is not however limited to Europe - many people in the open source movement see the big opportunity as coming when Microsoft finally goes a step too far, and the users start just saying no. Microsoft undoubtedly wishes to enforce universal product registration that locks single users into single software packages on single machines, but although the company isn't known for its tact and diplomacy, it could quite likely be sufficiently concerned for its revenues to think twice on this one.

As it stands, the system being tested with Whistler generates a code during installation. Via a phone or Web registration process this is then used to unlock the software. But here's the kicker - the code itself is generated by a combination of the product key (as per existing software) and a unique ID produced by the particular machine the software is being installed on.

The intention is that the unlock key you get back from Redmond is only valid for one machine, even if we're talking a no-name you built yourself and installed a full retail copy of Whistler on. It's not absolutely clear what is used to generate the machine code, but it seems likely to be a combination of bios, graphics and various other bits of hardware kicking around in there.

So if you swap out some of your hardware and try to reinstall the software, the unlock key quite probably won't work, and you'll have to phone up Microsoft and argue the toss. That is of course if the system works and is hard to get around.

Given the experience of compulsory registration of Office 2000 victims, one could doubt that it will work, even without your knowing about the kerfuffle over Whistler build 2410, which was initially pulled because of, er, problems with installation keys. And even if Microsoft can get it to work technically, the inconvenience that'll be caused to some companies will probably get them looking for wrinkles to rip the protection out.

If Microsoft does go with the system it apparently doesn't intend to use it on volume purchased software, which lets larger businesses off, but that's of no help to people who buy software in smaller quantities, who'll shout long and loud. We reckon Microsoft will back off this time - but they'll be back. ®

Related Link

Financial Times Deutschland story, auf Deutsch, natürlich