Discussion: Consumer Software Activation and Try&Buy

Consumer Software Activation and Try&Buy over the web are the two most powerful and pervasive usage models of machine locked copy control as demonstrated by the models almost exclusive use by the worlds top software publishing companies including Microsoft, Symantec, Adobe and Intuit. Other forms of digital distribution and online license management are very popular and in common use, however these two simpler forms of machine locked copy control have proven to be the only realistic options when large numbers of consumer customers are involved are large scale site or OEM licensing of software.

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Contents
1. Summary of common types of digital copy control for software publishing.
2. Criteria for evaluation of Activation and Try&Buy technologies
3. Table comparing popular Activation and Try and Buy Technologies.
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Summary of common types of digital copy control for software publishing

Software Activation: A simple system of copy control that requires that the software phone-home to a copy control server and verify that the limit of the count of devices that can be used for each software licesne has not been exceeded.

Consumer Try& Buy:

Criteria for evaluation of Activation and Try&Buy technologies

Transparency to end customer experience.

Scalability

Impact on customer services: Quality of customer hardware change detection

Flexibility across distribution channels.

Ability to contain overinstallation

Impact on publishers code integrity and impact on code fix count/ management

Ability to withstand concentrated hacking attacks.

Ability to contain instances of successful hacking.