.

T A B L E__T A L K Do free Web page sites like Tripod and Geocities foster "community"? Talk about what qualifies as an online community in Table Talk's Digital Culture area ___________________ Search barnesandnoble.com for great technology book bargains ___________________ R E C E N T L Y Have my shoe talk to your refrigerator By Janelle Brown Neil Gershenfeld foresees a world in which computers get smart by infiltrating the physical world (01/26/98) Addicted to eBay By Stephanie Zacharek The auction site is the perfect place for Web users to get back in touch with the world of things and stuff (01/25/98) The unbearable realness of virtual being By Andrew Leonard "My Tiny Life" is the best book yet on the meaning of online life (01/22/99) Floppy with your Frappuccino? By Deborah Claymon Starbucks, flying under the radar with Circadia Coffee House, woos the tech crowd (01/21/98) Let's Get This Straight By Scott Rosenberg @Home's purchase of Excite poses a new challenge to AOL and leaves Microsoft on the sidelines -- for now (01/20/99) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE 21ST FEATURES ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - - 21st Log What is Netscape on?

MICROSOFT HAS YOUR NUMBER | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - Here's how the registration plan is supposed to work: During installation of Office 2000, a "registration wizard" generates an identification code for the computer that is based upon the particular hardware configuration of that computer. Users must then contact Microsoft via phone, e-mail, fax or even snail mail, give Microsoft the ID code, and in return gain a confirmation code that unlocks the program for future use. Users are allowed to install the program on a second computer, such as a laptop; but for any other installations, they must call Microsoft and obtain a new code. Microsoft says the scheme is flexible enough to work even if changes are made to the hardware configuration -- such as a new hard drive or motherboard -- or if reinstallation of the software is necessary. According to Microsoft, there have been "no negative reactions" to the "registration wizard." But critics spy all sorts of potential problems. For one thing, if you reformat your hard drive, you'll need to reregister before reinstalling. For another, the Microsoft phone centers that will handle registration requests are notoriously difficult to deal with. As Deegan notes, the staff at such phone centers operate according to the parameters of set "scripts." "I see all kinds of little complications," says Deegan. "People calling the phone centers with perfectly legitimate situations that are outside the scripts. They'll get caught in registration hell." The new policy, says Deegan, is a classic example of Microsoft's indifference to consumer needs. "All too many times they have instituted policies which are extremely self-centered and without sufficient consideration for the customer," says Deegan. "They pay lip service to the idea of serving the customer, but it's only lip service, it's just rubbish for the customer." The restrictive terms of software licenses have long aggravated many computer users. There's a gut feeling that it is abusive and unfair to impose after-the-fact registration requirements after one has already spent hundreds of dollars "purchasing" a piece of software. If you buy a book, or a compact disc, runs the argument, you own it. So why is it that, when you buy a piece of software, you are only buying the right to use the software, not the software itself? Unfortunately for consumers, that gut feeling is not supported by current law. Peter Brown, a partner with Brown, Raysman, Millstein and Felder and former co-chairman of the American Bar Association's committee on computer law, states that "the owner of a copyright has an exclusive right to distribute and they can impose whatever terms they think are appropriate. It doesn't mean people will buy it but the law says it is yours to distribute it as you see fit." Microsoft, says Brown, is fully within its rights to impose any form of registration requirement it desires. It's hard to imagine anything that would rile consumers more than making the registration process for new software more cumbersome than before. Why, at a point when Microsoft is under as much public scrutiny and sustained criticism as it is now, would the corporation want to plunge ahead with such a scheme? Microsoft's answer hinges on one word: piracy. John Duncan, product manager for Microsoft Office, explains, "Piracy is a huge problem. We're trying to take a stand for the entire industry. We plan to make it an open technology that smaller companies could use. To say that piracy is not a problem ignores the effects it is having on small software companies -- there's no sales for their products ... Ultimately, it will hurt innovation in this industry." Drew Sharp, Microsoft Australia's product marketing manager, told the Australian information technology journal I.T. that one in every three installations of Office is illegal. And Duncan cites statistics purporting to show that for the software industry as a whole, "software piracy caused the loss of more than 600,000 jobs and $11.4 billion in revenue worldwide in 1997." Even if those statistics are accurate, the onslaught of piracy doesn't seem to have forced Microsoft into the poorhouse. Last week, Microsoft announced "record" revenue and income for its most recent quarter -- $1.8 billion in net income, derived, in part, from continuing strong sales of Office 97. But clearly, that's not enough -- at least not enough to need to worry about making the lives of millions of software users just a little bit harder. SALON | Jan. 27, 1999 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - E-mail Andrew Leonard.