I’m travelling to Savonlinna this weekend and wanted to do some work on the way. I fired up my MacBookPro and started Joikuspot on my E75. Then something happened, Joikuspot told me that I’ve inserted a new SIM card to the phone and I would need to transfer the license of the program to the new SIM. No problem, I thought and clicked OK.

I had transferred SIM cards recently as I had my operator changed to Saunalahti from DNA. After Joikuspot went online to do the transfer, it returned with a message “transfer failed”. Nothing else, I was left there wondering what the problem could have been. Being the geek that I am, I thought that maybe they allow a certain amount of license transfers to the license per user. I had recently changed the license to my Nokia E75 from my previous phone as I had changed phones.

So, here I am, unable to change the software I own to a new mobile configuration (if you can call it that after a SIM change). Luckily we have received a few Joikuspot codes for ArcticStartup for a competition and we had few of those left over for our use. I managed to find one unused code and installed the software with it. So a happy end to my story, but this raises interesting questions to ownership of digital products.

First of all, licenses should be always people centric and they shouldn’t depend on machines or the amount of machines. Naturally, companies should check that only one machine is used at a time. However, in most cases where any user has to deal with these sort of licenses – they do not understand the logic behind the approval or denial process and neither do they have to. They own the product and they should be able to use it as they wish.

So why is this a big deal then? Well, everytime something like this happens it degrades the trust in digital services and products from ordinary consumers. And as long as this continues to happen, we won’t see the mainstream jump on this bandwagon of buying these wonderful apps and services.

While the products in general might be good, a lot of effort should also be put into thinking the logic for ownership of the product or service that is sold. In 2009 I should not have to worry about the logic of using software and what is expected from me when I receive a “transfer failed” message.

We still have a long way to go.