Microsoft Now Requiring Validation for Office Users

Silicon.com has a report out today that users of Microsoft Office will now have to prove that their copies of the heavily-used productivity suite are legal and without counterfeit in order to download templates, add-ons and other enhancements to the software. Or in other words, "after first introducing a voluntary way for users to ensure that they only used licensed and legal copies of Microsoft Office products, the software giant has announced it is about to make the scheme mandatory," meaning that "users who are caught using software that can't be proved to be 100 per cent legal won't get access to add-ons and updates from Microsoft."

The result? Silicon.com says that "as of Friday, Office Online templates downloaded from within Microsoft Office System 2007 applications have to be validated. As of January 2007, Office Update must also be validated by Office Genuine Advantage (OGA)." Evidently the "OGA scheme was [originally] introduced in April as a pilot."

This means that for customers, any end user that is "denied access to the applications because their versions of Office do not pass a validation test will need to prove [that] their software is valid before they can proceed."

According to Microsoft officials, the company will "continue to provide a complimentary copy of Microsoft Office to help qualifying customers who unknowingly acquired counterfeit versions of Microsoft Office 2003." However, users of the software "will need to 'fill out a counterfeit report, provide proof of purchase and send in their counterfeit CDs' to prove their entitlement to a free replacement copy of Office."

If customers "can't provide these details will have to pay a licence fee," according to the Silicon.com report. In this case, the cost to the customer would equal about "$359 for the Office Genuine Advantage kit for Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003, while the Microsoft Office Small Business Edition 2003 costs $269 and the Microsoft Office Student and Teacher Edition 2003 costs $139."

Microsoft was unable to provide Silicon.com reporters with comment at the time of the writing of the site's report.

According to Tony Lock of analyst firm Sageza, the "licensing changes were not unexpected. He [also] believes it makes sense for Microsoft to bring its licensing strategies for Office and Windows in line." (Windows users are already required to run a piracy check before downloading updates to such operating system components as the Windows Defender spyware detection service and Internet Explorer web browser.) He did note, however, that "I think most of the problems come from Windows and not Office."

The full original article, in its entirety, can be found at the following URL:
http://software.silicon.com/applications/0,39024653,39163684,00.htm