MS/Passport/Reader

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 09:53:57 -0500 (EST)
From: Office of The Provost <provost () georgetown edu>
Subject: MS/Passport/Reader
X-X-Sender: provost@gusun
To: dave () farber net



Dave, a comical experience.  I tried to buy some e-books from Amazon that
require the use of Microsoft Reader to access them.  The following steps
occurred:

        -- order, pay for books
        -- get instructions how to download
        -- following instructions, get interposed page that says that I
                must download, install, and activate Reader first and
                that this requires me to use Passport.  I had an activated
                copy of Reader on the machine in question, but I went
                through the whole rigamarole, twice.
        -- continue to get unable-to-download messages
        -- wrangle Amazon support through several frustrating cycles (the
                kind of tech support that doesn't listen to what you
                say, so they tell you repeatedly to do what you've
                already told them repeatedly you've done)
        -- so finally the guy says, well you may be accessing the net
                through a firewall or a proxy server -- you have to
                turn all that off

Well, that didn't work either, and after complaining for days, Amazon
finally refunded my money (all of $18).  But what I thought funny and
instructive is that in order to protect Microsoft's intellectual property,
which it is against the law for me to do anything to undermine, disable,
reverse engineer, *they* require me voluntarily to disable the security
devices on *my* system (including any firewall designed to protect me
against damage arising out of weaknesses in Microsoft operating systems).

Jim O'Donnell
Georgetown University

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