That's hardly new to the computer industry; many workstation and big-iron manufacturers used to tie license keys to processor ID's (some still do).
That, in turn, is a strange legacy of the pre-system 360 days, where a bit of software was tied to one machine forever; the upgrade path that we take for granted today was nonexistent. When one needed more computing power, one bought a new piece of big iron and new software (and college tuition for consultants' kids in order to move your data over) since there was no binary compatibility from one model to another at all. It didn't represent a loss of functionality; there was no conception of that kind of functionality in the first place.
Microsoft is moving towards locking software to processor ID (prior to recently, Intel processors didn't implement a unique ID scheme), at least for the new wave of academic and otherwise discounted pricing. It's reminescent of the debate over dongles (a dongle is a device which attaches to a hardware port and contains a cryptographic key, which unlocks your license) at AutoDesk in the mid eighties and again in the early nineties.
AutoDesk, for what it's worth, found that the lack of dongles (when they removed the requirement) changed their sales figures not one bit; it's eminently possible to defeat the dongle through emulation, and anyone who would have bought a dongle to activate their AutoCAD software would buy an AutoCAD license without the compulsion of one. (Anyone interested can find an account of the first ten years at AutoDesk on www.fourmilab.ch - John Walker's Ant Laboratory :) ).
The moral of the story? Anything that you distribute as software can be stolen. Better to give your clients what they need and rely on them to pay you for it than not. Of course, if you write crappy and copy-protected software, you may end up having less theft, but not for the reasons you think.
marco
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> Marco Anglesio | Psychoanalysis is that mental illness <
> mpa at the-wire.com | for which it regards itself a therapy. <
> http://www.the-wire.com/~mpa | --Karl Kraus <
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