Well it looks like we have recently had a spat of troubles with people being able to validate and install to major products online ... the new game BioShock and Microsoft Office & Windows.
Of the two problems the most troubling is the issue with Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage server flagging systems as being invalid installs that had were genuine and had validated in the past. Many businesses depend on their systems being able to run and with Microsoft suddenly because of server issues flagging 12,000 systems as invalid and disabling them. This makes one wonder why one would make one's business dependent on a system that can be deactivated remotely by the company that sold it to you with little recourse.
The other one being a game is only an irritation to the people that purchased the game and a bit of bad publicity of 2K Boston/2K Australia when purchasers of their new game Bioshock could not register and activate their copy of the game. The other issue was that the game is limited to two installs and un-installing the game did not release the license key for another install. The current solution that 2K has done is up the number of installs to five and make a utility that can be used to release the key for further installs. This does not totally solve the problem as many users had hit the maximum installs already by re-installing multiple times before the tool was release and so those installs are lost unless they call the SecuROM help line to get a special key to use.
There is still a bit of a fury about over the two issues, but things are not likely to get any better in the sort as few publishers seem willing to forgo online activation as a way to counteract "casual" piracy. It's possible somebody might release a AAA game or major software application without copy protection as a trial balloon to see how badly it gets pirated and this may switch the industry's thinking, but it's more likely for things to get much worse before it gets better.
