One of the major questions tech pundits were asking themselves when Office 2013 came out is “can the license be transferred to another PC?” Why would you want to transfer the license of a $150 software suite? A PC dies, you upgrade, it get’s stolen, etc.

Microsoft has now confirmed to Computerworld that Office 2013 software licenses will not be transferable and that it is only licensed to work on the first PC it is installed on. This is a bad policy for consumers buying the licensed legal copy and Microsoft hopes to entice you to move to their subscription based Office 365 offering instead of the traditional buy-once-use-for-3-year-software package.

Some people will pirate software even if it is cheap and affordable but many consumers do the right thing and buy legal licensed copies of their software. Unfortunately  anti-consumer policies like this may encourage good law abiding software users to seek alternatives and move to pirated versions.