Microsoft Moves To Mandatory Registration

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By Lisa M. Bowman, ZDNN
February 10, 2000 7:15 AM PT
URL: http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2435946,00.html

New users of Office 2000 will get a taste of Microsoft Corp.Õs latest 
anti-piracy measure: forced registration. 

The company is inserting a new feature into an upcoming release of its word 
processing software that will cause the product to malfunction if a person 
doesnÕt register after launching it 50 times. Users of volume licenses, such 
as those working at big companies, wonÕt have to register.

The so-called Registration Wizard doesnÕt require users to give any more 
information than their country of origin, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) said. And 
they can register anonymously through fax, phone, e-mail or snail mail. 

The company clashed with privacy experts over Office 97 last spring, when it 
was discovered that some Word and Excel documents contained code numbers that 
could identify the source of the document. Microsoft quickly issued a patch 
and now says Office 2000 documents will not have a similar identifier. 

The Registration Wizard has been part of a two-year-long pilot program, which 
was designed as an aggressive move to combat software piracy. 

ÒCounterfeiting is a big problem. What makes it even more difficult is the 
Internet,Ó said Jackie Carriker, who works on MicrosoftÕs anti-piracy efforts.

The Web makes it easy for pirates to buy and sell software, sometimes to 
unsuspecting consumers. In January, the company succeeded in taking down 100 
sites that distributed counterfeit copies of Windows 2000, a product that 
isnÕt scheduled to launch until next week. The number of counterfeit 
distribution sites has grown to 2 million in 1999 from 100,000 in 1997, 
according to industry trade groups. 

Microsoft also is adding new anti-piracy features to Windows 2000, including 
a hologram that covers the entire CD-ROM and a new certificate of 
authenticity.