Unfinished business

Some gripes just won’t come to a neat conclusion. That’s particularly clear this week as I write my last The Gripe Line for InfoWorld and try to tie up a few loose ends that won’t stay closed.

One very loose thread has been our discussion of TurboTax and the product-activation scheme that Intuit chose to implement in the 2002 tax year version. I’m pleased to report that Intuit has been listening to its customers and has committed to making some changes.

Although it is not promising to get rid of product activation altogether -- which is what many would like to see -- Intuit will at least remove some of the more onerous aspects of the copy protection technology in the upcoming version. “What we’ve already committed to doing next year is that we will not have any product activation that is memory resident or that writes to the first section of the hard drive,” says Scott Gulbransen, Intuit's corporate communications manager.

Intuit is also examining ways it can better communicate the product-activation requirement to customers before they buy TurboTax. Gulbransen adds that product activation for the 2002 version of TurboTax will be free after Oct. 16 of this year, so customers who need to re-install their copy on a new computer or hard drive to file an amended return can do so without charge.

Does Intuit finally get it? Well, I have my doubts, especially when I see some of the things Intuit states regarding its policies. On the company's Web site, one example of TurboTax product activation's restrictions particularly caught my eye: “You activate TurboTax on your home computer and attempt to electronically file your tax return, but problems with your Internet connection prevent you from filing successfully,” the Intuit Web page reads. “The next day, you install TurboTax at work. In order to electronically file your tax return from your work computer, you must purchase a new product license by activating TurboTax on your work computer.”

I'm amazed that any company would tout this as a fair practice. You have a problem using TurboTax on one computer -- a problem that for all you know might be TurboTax’s fault -- and you have to buy another license to re-install it? By the time this column appears, I expect a number of Intuit customers will have lived out this scenario on or about April 15. So, no, I don’t think we’ve heard the last Intuit gripe, unfortunately.

Another dangling thread that's clinging to some better news, at least, is the dreaded Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA). When we last looked at this issue, you’ll recall that UCITA’s sponsoring organization had decided to carry on with plans to push for the law’s enactment in 10 more states. And they did so, despite the fact they failed miserably in an attempt to have UCITA approved by the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates at its February meeting in Seattle.