Does Office 2007 have a ‘kill switch’ or not?
Plenty of alarming headlines about the ‘kill switch’ in Office 2007 based on the idea that Microsoft could partly disable a copy of Office 2007 at any time. As is often the case the headline doesn’t tell the whole story.
Office Watch has been covering the activation system and related technologies in Office for a long time, in fact even before it was tested in some countries back in 2000. We’ll continue that thread in this issue based on facts, not inferences or supposition.
Then and now we’re very concerned about the consequences of the anti-piracy measures for honest users caught in an over-zealous or rigorous system. There has always been a tendency for Microsoft to assume people are ‘guilty until proven innocent’ instead of the other way around.
We’re (in)famous for having a go at Microsoft when it’s justified but in this case we don’t think it is. Microsoft hasn’t done itself any favors in the way they’ve handled this and that, combined with Microsoft’s reputation makes some of the public concern is understandable.
The rumor is that Office 2007 has a ‘kill switch’; meaning at any time Microsoft could check that a copy of Office 2007 was legal and, if not, stop it working or disable most of the features. The idea isn’t that daft because Windows Vista has just that ability – even after you’ve activated the software Microsoft can decide that you have an illegal copy of their software and severely cripple it until you buy a new license. It was expected that a similar ability would be included in Office 2007 but that’s not happened.
The story came from the interpretation of a single Knowledge Base article about product activation in Office 2007. We’d seen the same article and didn’t see anything new in it from the policy for Office 2003 – but others saw a Microsoft plot.
As far as we can tell from reading Microsoft’s Knowledge Base there is NO ‘kill switch’ in Office 2007 – as contrasted with Windows Vista which certainly does.
To understand what’s going on you need to know Microsoft’s very specific meanings for three words: Activation, Verification and Registration.
This might seem very tedious (and it is) but it is important – Microsoft anti-piracy measures are getting ‘teeth’ with direct consequences for you if they believe you have illegal software. There are limited and, in our view, inadequate appeal mechanisms. Microsoft’s supposition is that their anti-piracy measures are an absolute good and flawless.
Activation
Activation is the process you go through for Windows or Office after installation. A dialog pops up when you first start Office and then the software checks with a Microsoft server to confirm it’s allowed to run on that computer (there are phone and fax options). Microsoft says activation been around since ‘Office 2000 SR1’ which isn’t strictly correct, the ‘Office Registration Wizard’ (as it was then called) was introduced for Office 2000 in countries like Brazil and Australia before spreading to North America for Office 2000 Service Release 1.
If you don’t activate Office (or it fails activation) then you can use Office fully for the first 25 times you start the program/s – after that the software falls into ‘RFM’ Reduced Functionality Mode when a very limited set of features are available. The ’25 start’ is down from the original 50 start limit.
Activation is a ‘one time’ event, it happens after you install Office and that’s it. Once activated, Office will continue to work on that hardware even if Microsoft deems that license key to be ‘pirated’ at some later stage. Office does not ‘phone home’ after activation to see if it’s still legal. The only time activation is done again is if you totally re-install Office on that computer from a fresh copy of Windows or the hardware changes to a large enough extent to be considered a ‘new’ computer (small and incremental hardware changes should not trigger activation).
The important point, in the context of the current rumors, is that once activated, your copy of Office will run fully on that computer and there’s no way Microsoft can remotely disable it after activation. That’s the key difference between the anti-piracy measures for Vista and Office 2007.
This system has worked for some years and despite some misgivings appears to work OK. Microsoft has tweaked the Activation Wizard so it is faster and clearer with a better separation between Activation requirements and Registration.
Of course, Microsoft could impose ‘Vista-like’ kill switch into Office at some point in the future but they’ve chosen not to do so … yet.
Registration
Registration in Microsoft parlance is the optional collection of customers name and other personal details. When activation was first introduced the registration option was part of the wizard and most people didn’t appreciate that is wasn’t required.
According to Microsoft, registration is good so that that can advise you of ‘important’ security issues, in practice it’s a good system for the company to do follow up marketing.
Registration 2
There’s another type of registration these days, that’s registration (using a Windows Live ID / Passport) to access some parts of the Microsoft Office site.
Validation
Validation is much more recent and involves a check on the Microsoft web site before you’re allowed to download some (non-security) extras for Windows and, more recently, Office. It requires the installation of an ActiveX control which verifies your Office license before each download. Failure to validate has NO effect on the way your Microsoft Office software runs (ie there is no change to ‘RFM’ for non-validation), it only affects your access to some downloads from Microsoft’s web site.
Tip:
Validation controls the download access not the installation once you have the file. At this stage there is nothing stopping you getting ‘validation required’ downloads from other sources, like a friend or other computer on the network. Downloading from Microsoft is recommended (so you can be sure the download is genuine and hasn’t been tampered with) but it’s not the only option.
