Good or Bad, Change Is Change

I've talked about Humble Bundle before, so I'm not going to bother explaining what it is again.
On Thursday, the Humble Weekly Sale (featuring Team 17 games) launched and included a changed feature. Specifically the system for redeeming Steam keys was changed into something more efficient, and more locked down. Previously you would press a button and the key, as text, would be given to you for manual activation with Steam. Now you give Humble Bundle access to your Steam account for the redemption of keys, and pressing a button automatically redeems it to your account for you. One click and go.

This change makes it a lot easier to redeem keys on Steam, which I suspect most people do, so this is a plus for them. It is also a plus for the developers and publishers who have partnered with Humble Bundle because this system locks down the resale and trading of Steam keys. It is a minus for the users who had been reselling and trading the keys for their own gain, which, to be clear, is at least akin to software piracy. The license you purchase from Humble Bundle is a license for your own personal use, and does not give you any permission to sell, trade, or perform any other personally beneficial transaction. To do so is to violate the license and the law.
This puts Humble Bundle in an awkward position, as its system is what was enabling this piracy to happen. With the change though, it will be much more difficult to achieve this, though not necessarily impossible. Technically one could simply unlink their Steam account and link another, in order to activate the game on it. This should have an appropriately chilling effect on the resale of the keys, but, as some have been pointing out, it may also limit the gifting of keys to friends and family.
My best guess of that situation is that gifting to friends and family is just close enough to personal use that it would fall into a gray area where some rights holders are okay with it, and others are not. Not sure if it would legally full under fair use though. Anyway, that, in theory (I've not tried it) should still be possible by the unlinking and linking of the appropriate Steam accounts. As the recipient is a friend or family member, that should not be too difficult to do, as compared to selling a game to a stranger, but having to get their Steam account information to continue
Well, I support Humble Bundle and am against software pirates, so I declare this a good change, even if I would prefer to keep getting text Steam keys. It could even lead to more developers and publishers partnering with Humble Bundle after all, now that there is some additional security against unauthorized resales.
One issue though, that should be taken as an experience to learn from (as I'm sure the Humble Bundle team has) is that when you make a change like this, post the announcement and explanation of it either before or at the same time as the change launches. Waiting four hours before providing that information is giving four hours to Internet trolls that will take control of the situation away from you. Control the information about your company, always, so that it can be positive and informative.

Huh. This turned out longer than I had planned.... See you next week.