Product activation is a

license A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...

validation procedure required by some

proprietary software Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern copyright and i ...

programs. Product activation prevents unlimited free use of copied or replicated software. Unactivated software refuses to fully function until it ''determines'' whether it is authorized to fully function. Activation allows the software to stop blocking its use. An activation can last "forever", or it can have a time limit, requiring a renewal or re-activation for continued use.

Implementations

In one form, product activation refers to a method invented by Ric Richardson and patented () by

Uniloc Uniloc Corporation was a company founded in Australia in 1992. History The Uniloc technology is based on a patent granted to the inventor Ric Richardson who was also the founder of the Uniloc Company. The original patent application was date ...

where a software application hashes hardware serial numbers and an ID number specific to the product's license (a

product key A product key, also known as a software key, serial key or activation key, is a specific software-based key for a computer program. It certifies that the copy of the program is original. Product keys consist of a series of numbers and/or letters ...

) 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. Alternatively, the software vendor sends the user a unique product serial number. When the user installs the application it requests that the user enter their product serial number, and checks it with the vendor's systems over the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...

. The application obtains the license limits that apply to that user's

, such as a time limit or enabling of product features, from the vendor's system and optionally also locks the license to the user's system. Once activated the license continues working on the user's machine with no further communication required with the vendor's systems. Some activation systems also support activation on user systems without Internet connections; a common approach is to exchange

encrypted In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can deci ...

files at an Internet terminal. An early example of product activation was in the MS-DOS program D'Bridge Email System written by Chris Irwin, a commercial network system for BBS users and Fidonet. The program generated a unique serial number which then called the author's BBS via a dialup modem connection. Upon connection, the serial number was validated. A unique "key" was returned which allowed the program to continue for a trial period. If two D'Bridge systems communicated using the same key, the software deliberately crashed. The software has long since had the entire activation system removed and is now freeware by Nick J. Andre, Ltd.

Microsoft

Microsoft Product Activation Microsoft Product Activation is a DRM technology used by Microsoft Corporation in several of its computer software programs, most notably its Windows operating system and its Office productivity suite. The procedure enforces compliance with th ...

was introduced in the Brazilian version of

Microsoft Office 97 Microsoft Office 97 (version 8.0) is the fifth major release for Windows of Microsoft Office, released by Microsoft on November 19, 1996. It succeeded Microsoft Office 95 and was replaced by Microsoft Office 2000 in 1999. A Mac OS equivalent, ...

Small Business Edition and Microsoft Word 97 sold in the Hungarian market. It broadened that successful pilot with the release of Microsoft Publisher 98 in the Brazilian market. Microsoft then rolled out product activation in its flagship Microsoft Office 2000 product. All retail copies sold in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

, and

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island coun ...

, and some sold in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...

and the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

, required the user to activate the product via the Internet. However, all copies of Office 2000 do not require activation after April 15, 2003. After its success, the product activation system was extended worldwide and incorporated into

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was release to manufacturing, released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Wind ...

and Office XP and all subsequent versions of

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...

and

Office An office is a space where an organization's employees perform administrative work in order to support and realize objects and goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a position within an organization with specific ...

. Despite independently developing its own technology, in April 2009 a jury found Microsoft to have willfully infringed Uniloc's patent. However, in September 2009, US District Judge William Smith "vacated" the jury's verdict and ruled in favour of Microsoft. This ruling was subsequently overturned in 2011.

Blocking

Software that has been installed but not activated does not perform its full functions, and/or imposes limits on file size or session time. Some software allows full functionality for a limited "trial" time before requiring activation. Unactivated software typically reminds the user to activate, at program startup or at intervals, and when the imposed size or time limits are reached. (Some unactivated software has taken disruptive actions such as crashing or vandalism, but this is rare.) Some 'unactivated' products act as a time-limited trial until a product key—a number encoded as a sequence of alphanumeric characters—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 Technical support (abbreviated as tech support) is a call centre type customer service provided by companies to advise and assist registered users with issues concerning their technical products. Traditionally done on the phone, technical suppor ...

to deactivate the copy on the old machine before reactivating it on the new machine. Software verifies activation every time it starts up, and sometimes while it is running. Some software even "phones home", checking a central database (across the Internet or other means) to check whether the specific activation has been revoked. Some software might stop working or reduce functionality if it cannot connect to the central database.

Criticisms

*It can enforce

software license agreement An end-user license agreement or EULA () is a legal contract between a software supplier and a customer or end-user, generally made available to the customer via a retailer acting as an intermediary. A EULA specifies in detail the rights and res ...

restrictions that may be legally invalid. For example, a company may refuse to reactivate software on 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, goes insolvent or gets absorbed, its purchased product may become unusable or incapable of being (re)installed unless an activation-free copy or final patch that removes or bypasses activation is released. *Product activation where there is no straightforward way to transfer the license to another person to activate on their computer has been widely criticised as making second-hand sales of products, particularly games, very difficult. Some suspect companies such as EA to be using product activation to reduce second-hand sales of their games in order to increase sales of new copies. *As the transfer of an activation request usually happens encrypted or at least obfuscated, the user cannot see or check if additional data from his/her machine gets transferred, creating privacy concerns. *Malfunction of the activating mechanism can delay users from getting started using newly-licensed software. *Malfunction of the verification mechanism can cause vital software to suddenly stop working until re-activated or patched. This can happen in response to detected changes of installed hardware, or other software, of the operating system.

References

External links