Acrobat Activation Agonies

There has to be a better way. Even if you have some sympathy for software publishers wanting to protect themselves from piracy, anyone who has experienced the aggravation that a flawed copy protection scheme can cause knows that the industry's DRM approach just isn't working. That's certainly what one reader has learned from the tortured experience he's had with Adobe Acrobat activation over the last month. (To

There has to be a better way. Even if you have some sympathy for software publishers wanting to protect themselves from piracy, anyone who has experienced the aggravation that a flawed copy protection scheme can cause knows that the industry's DRM approach just isn't working. That's certainly what one reader has learned from the tortured experience he's had with Adobe Acrobat activation over the last month.

(To hear this reader and others sound off on the vagaries of Digital Rights Management in general, listen to my "Failed DRM" podcast here.)

"Being a software developer I usually don't gripe much about the DRM stuff, as it comes with the territory," the reader wrote me weeks ago. "But here is one for the record books when it comes to stupid IT designs as far as the activation issues I encountered with Adobe. I upgraded from Acrobat 7.0 to 8.0, because the demos and features looked great. After installing it, I didn't really use it for a few months. Then I went to use it and it said it was not activated."

When the reader went to the menu, he was puzzled to see both the "Activate' and "Deactivate' buttons turned off. "Seems stupid -- shouldn't one always be highlighted?" the reader wondered. "After calling in, Adobe told me to run the repair function. I did, and it worked for one day, and then it was deactivated again and both buttons were off again. I called again and waited on hold forever to be told to uninstall and reinstall. So I uninstalled and it deactivated. I went to reinstall and it said I did not have an original product to upgrade from. Wow, like I'm supposed to keep all hundred-plus key codes I've ever had from Adobe. So after about 3 more people and a lot more time on the phone I got around the installation and activated again with a temp key. Then within hours it deactivated again."

The reader then entered a support nightmare from which he is yet to awaken. For weeks on end, tech after tech would tell him to run the repair function and reinstall. When that wouldn't work, the techs would begin speculating as to what changes he should make to him computer to placate the activation gods. "Gee, the guy would say, why do you need to mirror your hard drive?" the reader wrote. "Then they send me to another and the guy says, gee, if you upgrade or restore your drive, or change your configuration, or backup to Ghost, or use a RAID array, or use a disk defragger, the activation doesn't like it. Then they start asking why I need to do these things, which is none of their business."