Just how easily can world-class DRM get torn to shreds? I had lunch with the Asia-Pac manager of one of the top-tier security software companies last week. He said "about 10 minutes after" his company's 2007 suite was released, a crew somewhere in China had cracked its digital rights management protection. Pirated copies appeared on the net soon after. It's the same deal for any major piece of software. You've got to say that if a security company can't keep it's product safe from copyright-busters, who can?

The upshot is that anyone who's inclined to break the law can still easily find any major commercial software through any of the big peer-to-peer services. The real effect of tighter DRM like product activation has been to eliminate casual piracy in homes and small business - where many people had previously taken the approach of, "heck, the software costs so much, what's wrong with installing a copy of my work office suite/antivirus software/whatever on my home PC, or that branch office PC?".

Tighter licensing has also made upgrading or switching PCs a hassle.

But it's nicer to see some realistic approaches on this front recently. McAfee and Symantec have introduced three-user licenses for their respective 2007 security suites (included in the base price), acknowledging that many homes have two or three PCs these days. And Microsoft has relented, a little, on the super-tight licensing surrounding Vista. With more and more open source alternatives getting more and more attractive, watch for this trend to continue.