Microsoft Owns Patent to Restricting Your Software
Microsoft wants you to pay to play.
Yesterday Microsoft was awarded with a patent to “restrict software and hardware usage on a computer.”
The patent documentation describes a scenario where Microsoft hopes its method will apply: “One problem inherent in open architecture systems is they are generally licensed with complete use rights and/or functionality that may be beyond the need or desire of the system purchaser. Consequentially, the purchase price of these systems being indifferent to usage scenarios means users with limited needs pay the same rate for these systems as those with universal needs.”
Could this be referring to Microsoft’s Anytime Upgrade scheme, where the user can upgrade from a lesser version of Windows to an upper tier (such as moving from Windows 7 Starter Edition to Home Premium)? It seems so, as the document goes on to describe: “According to another aspect of the invention, a consumer initially purchases a computer with restricted functionality at a price that is less than the price that would be charged for a computer with full functionality. Subsequently, the user can, at an additional cost, acquire a digital key that allows the restrictions to be removed, upgrading the computer to full functionality.”
That’s just the simple and straightforward part of the patent though, as the more complicated bits come when it begins talking about controlling the types of applications or even hardware that users can run.
“In exchange for payment, a software or hardware vendor will acquire a digital signature(s) for the appropriate program files from the supplier of the program files … so that the next time he or she attempts to execute the application or driver the appropriate signatures will be in the digest catalog and the program files will be loaded.”
Could other software and hardware start employing “anytime upgrade” technologies into their products? The idea of only paying (licensing) for what you’d use sounds economical, but we’re pretty sure enthusiasts won’t like being restricted in any way.
It seems like so many corporations are trying out "tiered" methods now. It's now all about delivering less, and then charging more for "normal."--Ed.
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It does however add another layer of technical issues. "Requiring digital signatures" doesn't sound too different from DRM.
I dread how reliable this will be; even flagship steam on it's day doesn't work perfectly.
I reckon that's good news... More pissed off windows/mac users = more people thinking of switching to linux... more to pay for software = more people thinking of switching to open source... more people using open source = perhaps Adobe will finally notice that they have been blind for the past couple of years...
On the side though - let's restrict everything... close-source everything, tier everything and charge for everything...
Now this is a real-life situation:
I wanted to "catch up" with IT Crowd a while ago. clicked on the link on channel4 site, downloaded something only to find out it does not work in linux... ok then... started windows, downloaded the same thing... only to find out that I need to upgrade IE6 to IE7 (I don't use IE - hence why I still had an old version, heck... I don't even use windows - why would I upgrade it anyway?) Ok... upgraded.... it also upgraded the .net framework and some other stuff... it took about 20 minutes to install all that... then WMP10 upgrade... that took 15 minutes on its own... then finally I've managed to install the software... Fine... Got it up and working finally... Started to download the content as I wanted to do some work as well in the background so I thought I will just watch it in Kaffeine or VLC while working... Speeds were ridiculously slow though... like 5-15kB/s... I've basically stopped all that... went back to Linux, and launced vmware, spend another 30-something minutes to "meet their silly requirements" and then started to download the content in vmware... 2.5 hours later I had my episode on my harddrive... Double clicked it in Linux and........ nothing... "DRM protected content"... went back to vmware double clicked the same file in that windows - opened the WMP10, downloaded some codecs, then downloaded some "DRM whatever files"... then started to play but the quality of the media was crap... something along the lines of 320x200 or something... Got pissed off, killed the vmware, downloaded a whole serie using bittorrent in decent quality in less than 2h and watched the bloody episode... the way I want it, in the player I wanted, in the OS I wanted, WHEN I wanted... Doing what I wanted. So if anybody asks me to use DRM I will either slap them on their faces or FORCE them to install 20 different software packages, films and other stuff on a single windows computer and then ask some IT genius to say what he thinks is this computer doing when idle? Why the CD drive is gone? (SecuROM), why WMP takes forever to open? (DRM) Why some codecs cause it to crash? and so on so on and so on... Yeah - I say good luck with DRM... If worse come to worse I will get back to writing my own programs as I did in 1994 - back in a day I did not have time to watch IT Crowd... nor the internet connection - so if I wanted a tiny little database DOS utility - I had to write one myself...
I agree, this will all help energise the open source community to finally deliver something the masses can use/understand/configure. Plus, it helps keep netbook prices low for those who must have Microsoft products (which is currently most of us) - at least in some minimalist cheap form anyway.
Yea sounds really good, NOT. So what happens when they start using it in reverse ? You know, give you the usability then remove it ? next thing they will giv eout the full package with a code they expect you to enter to restrict your own usability after a 6 month trial and charge you teh earth when you dont. Sounds daft i know but thats basically what opt out mail shots do.
Mactronix
IBM has been doing this forever with their servers. They would sell you a quad cpu system with 3 cpus disabled (so you only pay for 1) and you can enable them as your load increases. I think they did it by sending a key to unlock the functionality. It makes sense from the vendor side as there is no extra labour involved in an additional sale and it makes sense to the customer as there is no downtime involved in upgrading the server.
Seems odd to think that a patent over something so general (and that has been use by others for a long time) can be granted.