Macromedia’s New Activation Software to Premiere with the Release of Contribute 2

 
May 29, 2003
July 16 ? Macromedia has traditionally taken a strong stance against piracy, and their latest announcement concerns a new policy that will protect their own intellectual property while making life easier for their users: Activation.

What is activation? It?s a one-time process that verifies a user license and records it on Macromedia?s servers. When a user first installs their product, immediately following the serialization process, they will be asked to ?activate.? While the product?s serial number will be recorded along with an anonymous hardware identifier and the product and operating system name, version and language, no personal information will be passed on to Macromedia. Activation is an easy process that works from within the product. Customers will have a thirty-day trial period to activate their products, after which activation is required in order to use the product. Product registration continues to remain optional.

One of the most interesting things about Macromedia?s brand of activation is that they?ve actually extended the End User License to allow for a primary and secondary machine within one license (as most people use one machine and one laptop to do their work). Also, they?ve taken into account the notion that users may move to new machines, so they allow for a license transfer to another machine. (Macromedia has said that there is a limit on license transfers per license, but they have not divulged that limit.)

Erik Larson, Director of Product Management at Macromedia, noted, "The most significant innovation is the transfer license function that we?ve implemented, which allows users to upgrade their machines or move the software from machine to machine without a phone call to Macromedia. But most importantly, we are being very flexible about the policies we are setting around product activation. Our approach is to allow users to use our software as they always have, by expanding the End User License Agreement to allow for a secondary installation. This better meets our customer needs."

The most controversial aspect of Macromedia?s policy is the fact that they?ll be using an improved and customized version of SafeCast software from Macrovision. Intuit used an earlier version of SafeCast for activation in their release of TurboTax 2002. In Intuit?s case, the activation policy did not go over well with their customers, and one customer actually sued Intuit for their lack of disclosure about activation (http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,109720,00.asp).

Larson explained why he expects things to be different for Macromedia. He said that the application for license management is clearly named and documented, so there should be no question in the customer?s mind as to what is happening. Also, with Intuit, the license manager ran continuously regardless of whether TurboTax was running. With Contribute 2 the process shuts down after Contribute shuts down. With TurboTax, uninstalling the product did not uninstall the license manager. With Contribute 2, when you uninstall the application all associated activation technology is also uninstalled.

Macromedia?s activation system will pioneer with the release of Contribute 2 in August. (Note: The use of activation currently only applies to individual customers. Those doing volume purchases will not be required to activate.) For more information, go to http://www.macromedia.com/software/activation/.

To learn more about Macromedia?s activities until now against piracy, you can read Steve Wozniak?s recent Logged In column, "The Macromedia Anti-Piracy Program": http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/logged_in/swozniak_piracy.html.


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