What's up with the activation limit on IK Multimedia instruments?

[BERFAB]

Couldn't disagree more. IK is not the perfect company but their C/R is still pretty lenient compared to others who use C/R.

5 Activation + you can always ask them for more if u reach a limit with it. Their support respond to email pretty fast, usually less than a day for me.

Funny how IK is the kvr scapegoat because of their aggressive marketing. While other companies with more restriction on their license doesn't receive the same hatred from some of you guys.

And not worth supporting? A company that produces good quality plugin for cheap price is not worth supporting? Wow.

+1
IKM comes in for some very legit criticism from time to time, but their efforts to try to work with customers on their authorization issues is, IMHO, one of the best.

Many here remember when they introduced a dongle system with all their products about the time when CSR was first introduced. Needless to say, the KVR forums lit up in flames about the downside of this. Well, CSR, AT2 and a few other products actually shipped with dongles (I still have them), but within a matter of WEEKS after introduction, IKM pulled the plug on it. No more dongles.

Think about that for a moment. Thousands of boxes of product in inventory with dongles. The added cost must have been enormous. And yet, they listened to their customers.

Regarding the authorization limits--they are quite generous, and they have always had the proviso that more would be allowed if requested. I've never heard of a case where a customer was refused this.

Cheers
-B

[rasmusklump]

IK is the last company I trust when the time comes and they close the door, to issue permanent licences, so no way I will ever buy again form that company due to c/p (and other behaviour like the guerillia-marketing etc)

[yessongs]

daw problem led to me not being able to use my sample tank instruments and I had to reinstall my daw several times to get it right this weekend and still took till today to get it fixed perfectly and make the problem go away. Problem meant uninstalling and reinstalling sampletank as well because we did not know what the problem was. Do yourself a favor and always right click when installing software and press run as administrator. Of course that was all it was except when I installed my wave profiler it did not act properly in my daw and it confused my daw to think an in was an out on my sound card so I had to change drivers so I could run it again then switch back to my main driver and that fixed my problem and reinstalling sampletank also pulled off easily and it worked as soon as I got my daw acting right. Some pain in the you know what for sure. I am so happy it is all working better now. Ran through the expansion tanks and played on world cinematic and orchestral libraries and man this product has a lot of cool sounds in it with all I have I may never get around to listening to it all.

[BBFG#]

daw problem led to me not being able to use my sample tank instruments and I had to reinstall my daw several times to get it right this weekend and still took till today to get it fixed perfectly and make the problem go away. Problem meant uninstalling and reinstalling sampletank as well because we did not know what the problem was. Do yourself a favor and always right click when installing software and press run as administrator. Of course that was all it was except when I installed my wave profiler it did not act properly in my daw and it confused my daw to think an in was an out on my sound card so I had to change drivers so I could run it again then switch back to my main driver and that fixed my problem and reinstalling sampletank also pulled off easily and it worked as soon as I got my daw acting right. Some pain in the you know what for sure. I am so happy it is all working better now. Ran through the expansion tanks and played on world cinematic and orchestral libraries and man this product has a lot of cool sounds in it with all I have I may never get around to listening to it all.

Do yourself a favor yessongs and on each stand-alone icon, right click and go to 'Properties' and then on the page that comes up, click 'Advanced' and check the box that says 'Run as Administrator' too and then click 'Apply' of course. (In case you haven't done that already).

[Peter - IK Multimedia]

IK is the last company I trust when the time comes and they close the door, to issue permanent licences, so no way I will ever buy again form that company due to c/p (and other behaviour like the guerillia-marketing etc)

I wouldn't be worrying about IK in that aspect, 17 years and only growing stronger. I'd worry about companies that don't get featured in the huge TV ads of multibillion dollar companies (which didn't cost us a thing) or those that have a single point of failure or limited non-diverse business models, etc. Our CP is the least of anybody's worries, we're gracious about it now (as you can see from the posts above) and you assume we wouldn't be if anything were to happen - as unlikely that is unless there is some major issue outside of the control and our business sense/planning. Seems our actions (nary a denial of more authorizations documented here, changes to the parameters of the authorizations too, and upcoming changes you'll see soon) point to just the opposite of your assumption anyway.

[BBFG#]

I trust IKM to be IKM.

As far as the topic goes though, I remember being concerned about the activation limit when I kept having to re-install them and especially when I had to install on a newer drive. However, the activation remained with using the first one. So it really seems much ado about nothing. Other companies during my iLok/eLicense year took a great deal of hassle to re-authorize products with countless copies of emails to prove original purchase and waiting on their support to reply. This is much easier and overall given the time I've had to spend using IKM support, I would have to give them a much better than average rating in dealing with them.

I did find it strange that they implemented a fee for downloading sounds after a set time though. But again, this something I've learned long ago with all companies I've dealt with to download it immediately and back it up just as quick. Doing so just to make sure there were no download errors in the connection. Even the companies that only give me five days to do it have been willing to reset the time limit when I have had errors and in one case, a certain developer extracted the one problem file for me and sent it directly to me. So that hasn't been much of a problem either.

Like I said, I trust IKM to be IKM. Nothing more.

[neverenoughfunk]

I trust IKM to be IKM.

As far as the topic goes though, I remember being concerned about the activation limit when I kept having to re-install them and especially when I had to install on a newer drive. However, the activation remained with using the first one. So it really seems much ado about nothing. Other companies during my iLok/eLicense year took a great deal of hassle to re-authorize products with countless copies of emails to prove original purchase and waiting on their support to reply. This is much easier and overall given the time I've had to spend using IKM support, I would have to give them a much better than average rating in dealing with them.

I did find it strange that they implemented a fee for downloading sounds after a set time though. But again, this something I've learned long ago with all companies I've dealt with to download it immediately and back it up just as quick. Doing so just to make sure there were no download errors in the connection. Even the companies that only give me five days to do it have been willing to reset the time limit when I have had errors and in one case, a certain developer extracted the one problem file for me and sent it directly to me. So that hasn't been much of a problem either.

Like I said, I trust IKM to be IKM. Nothing more.

welcome back!!!


there are a few subliminal messages in your post!!!

[BBFG#]

Thanks!
Oddly enough, I didn't know I had been 'suspended' until what appeared to be the last two hours of it...

(Been off taking care of other matters and didn't even check my email for a time).
Can't even tell how long it lasted, but when I found out I wouldn't be able to log on until the next morning it somehow felt like a KVR Rite of Passage.
I'm just glad I wasn't selling anything on the Market Place at the time.

Back to the topic...

[tapper mike]

I can't speak for IKM

Here's the policy at where I work. You get to install the product on to up to two concurrent machines (running at the same time) If you need to replace the computer or computers in a reasonable time frame you get keys for them.

License abusers will buy a single user license then offer keys to other users in an illegal resell type of fashion.
To keep this type of piracy to a minimum we limit the amount of keys they can produce. If a legitimate situation arises where they need more there might be an installation issue that needs to be resolved because getting a new key isn't always the cure. The only way we know of the problem so we can provide a solution is for the person not to get a new key. That prompts the user to contact support where I find out where the source of the problem is and work to correcting it and then reset the account for new keys. 15 years ago I wasn't an employee. I was a customer. I had a problem the support tech helped me to resolve the problem and I got the program working again. 15 years later I'm helping people with both recent and past purchases going back to the beginning helping them get the program working right.

Many software companies operate in the same manner. If you present a reasonable case they can provide a reasonable solution. But you have to be the one who contacts them and conducts yourself in a reasonable fashion with them.

[BBFG#]

Many software companies operate in the same manner. If you present a reasonable case they can provide a reasonable solution. But you have to be the one who contacts them and conducts yourself in a reasonable fashion with them.

I've found this be true in almost every case.
There are times when, for whatever reason, there is a breakdown in procedure. Which is what happened to me concerning Cubase. I was trying to upgrade to 6 while they were preparing to release 7 and somehow, that meant I got lost in the shuffle. Even during my IKM tribulations, there was a point where they asked me to reinstall my DAW before attempting to reinstall the T-RackS and I used the time to do a fresh install of the OS/DAW and then IKM on a new SSD, which took me a week and our communication between got dropped until I got Peter to get it re-started. But at least it got re-started. Can't say the same for Steinberg. Even Korg gave me a down time to reauthorize the old usb key system of about 6 months (two incidents back to back), but at least the communication was consistent and was finally resolved. As with IKM, when all possibilities of resolution were exhausted, they waived fees for me to sell it. I consider that quite reasonable, considering the circumstances.

It's always been the case that the moment either party turns, the process turns also.

[ghettosynth]

I can't speak for IKM

Here's the policy at where I work. You get to install the product on to up to two concurrent machines (running at the same time) If you need to replace the computer or computers in a reasonable time frame you get keys for them.

License abusers will buy a single user license then offer keys to other users in an illegal resell type of fashion.
To keep this type of piracy to a minimum we limit the amount of keys they can produce.

There often seems to be some belief that customers don't understand "why" companies choose to use C/R. We do, it's not difficult to understand.

Many software companies operate in the same manner.

Customers get this as well. Further, I think that it's reasonable for some types of software, e.g. enterprise engineering software, but, not for consumer products. So, it's not a justification to say, "everybody's doing it," because everybody's not doing it. Of course, I know that you didn't say "everybody", you said, "many", but it's a logical fallacy in any case. The fact that others are doing it doesn't make it right. It has simply become the status quo. Companies like Uhe respect their customers and take on the responsibility of managing their piracy problems themselves.

If you present a reasonable case they can provide a reasonable solution. But you have to be the one who contacts them and conducts yourself in a reasonable fashion with them.

And this is the crux of the problem. As a customer, I now have to explain myself and rely on the company believing my story, sorry, I'm not willing to do that anymore. It's time consuming, irritating, and problems often happen at inconvenient times. Moreover, my story is always legitimate, but now I have to convince you that it is? Your piracy issues are your problem, not mine. I change my computers quite a bit and I've had hard drives fail and this often seems to sound fishy to the idiots who answer my tech support calls. I find it insulting that you are asking me to trust his judgement for software that I've paid for.

One step that I think companies could take that would improve the situation is to give me the ability to manage my installs without asking for your assistance. That is, if you allow two (or whatever amount) concurrent installs from the same key then I should see this clearly in my account, and, I should be able to de-authorize an install and see the change in real time. This would easily take care of the changing computer problem. You could handle the crash problem reasonably well by allowing one "key recovery" per year or so (like Waves) and require customer support for anything beyond that.

I know why companies don't want to do this, it's because they WANT to be involved in the process of installing and the fact that it inconveniences their customers isn't as important to them as it should be. Deauthorization fell out of favor because it gives pirates information and eliminates this company intervention. The "we want to babysit" attitude is the copy protection equivalent of the irritating greeters at best buy.

While this is better than nothing, the right solution is that I want the company to give me the key in a tangible way such that it is not on my computer. I don't want to ask you for a new one or call you to get "help" that I don't need, I want you to give me my key and let me move it from old computer to new computer or to reinstall it on a new computer after a computer has died without involving support.

For me, the key must be external. I don't care if you put it in a dongle, a key file that is not linked to a particular computer, or a simple serial number. I don't care if the dongle limits my ability to run the software on more than one machine because I purchase all of my software legally and respect the license limits. Use whatever technology you want to use, I'll still judge on that, some solutions are better than others, but if you make the key external, I'll consider your products.

For me, as of now, the policy is hardcore for any new plugins. It's simply not worth it to me to bother with such nonsense for one or two plugins, I wouldn't do it for even Uhe plugins, and his work is as compelling as it gets. I'll continue to upgrade Komplete, but I won't consider any new plugins that do not have an external key of some form. I don't mind registering to authorize the dongle, but, once authorized, I must be able to install to a new machine and simply move the dongle, keyfile, or serial in order to run the software.

[tapper mike]

Well my software company works with commercial network licenses which can have tens of thousands of users . (like school districts) And individuals and everything in between.

A single user license agreement authorizes only the registered user (purchaser) use and support of the program on up to two concurrent machines. It doesn't mean that (in the case with some abusers) a purchaser then goes out and sells or gives unlock keys to individuals who are not the registered user.


In a corporate or organizational environment where the registered user is responsible for multiple single user licenses or network licenses the amount of keys is determined by the amount of licenses on said account. discount prices for volume license purchases. If you really really need more licenses...buy them.

[BBFG#]

I do wish all the companies added this info under system requirements before you buy them and didn't make you scour their site to find where they've hidden the info. Buying for simultaneous multiple computer use would be easier to figure out if they gave those kind of breaks and did it up front. As it is, I like the register your computer way the best (like XLN does) but wish they would allow three since I often download only to a portable tablet to take back to the computers I really use them on.

[kbaccki]

Many software companies operate in the same manner.

Customers get this as well. Further, I think that it's reasonable for some types of software, e.g. enterprise engineering software, but, not for consumer products. So, it's not a justification to say, "everybody's doing it," because everybody's not doing it. Of course, I know that you didn't say "everybody", you said, "many", but it's a logical fallacy in any case. The fact that others are doing it doesn't make it right. It has simply become the status quo.

Your "everybody's doing it" argument also applies to the community of digital license holders who don't think for more than 2 milliseconds about sharing their digital license with whoever wants it.

"The fact that others are doing it [sharing their digital license] doesn't make it right. It [sharing digital licenses] has simply become the status quo."

Companies like Uhe respect their customers and take on the responsibility of managing their piracy problems themselves.

"Their" piracy problem? Piracy is a "we all" problem. It comes down to: how do you feel personally about your buddy saying, "yo throw me a copy of those 20 MP3s" or "email me a copy of the latest U-he synth"? Based on my personal experience with people of various ages and backgrounds, what we read in the newspaper, our interactions in forums like this, etc. etc. ... I believe we are still at a place where many many many people will just arrive at the following:

1.) Technically what I'm doing is illegal, but (insert justification here) ______________________ , so they won't miss a few lost sales... example justifications: "that nameless faceless corporation makes millions of dollars anyway", "their products suck anyway", "they don't care about me anyway", "their stuff is overpriced anyway", "all software should be free anyway", "I can't afford to buy this product anyway", and perhaps the best: "I really don't care what anybody thinks anyway, I'm just going to do what I want to do", etc. etc. Not to mention the addon qualifier "plus, everybody else does it anyway".

2.) I don't want my buddy to think I'm a square when I don't cough up free copies of my software. I've actually been in this position -- a musician friend asked for a copy of some VST several years back, and I had to just tell him "as a software engineer myself, I can't in good conscience just give you a free copy of this thing that would otherwise cost you $100, because that could just as easily be my $100 thing that I made." And yes, I felt like a total dooorrrrork making a moral stand of sorts like that. It's much easier to just cave to peer pressure because "everybody else does it".

Now, if "many many many people" translates to $1, or $2, or $3 million in revenue for a small software company, then we all have a very big problem. Not the company alone, we all do. Free Software For All will only succeed in an economy where The State provides any and all provisions; in a free market it's a sentence for a slow and painful death.

It's also a fallacy to attempt apples-to-apples comparisons between U-he and any other small, medium, or large business. U-he may have to worry about feeding 2 or 3 or 4 mouths. IK may have to feed 15 or 20 mouths. What works well for one company does not make it a blueprint.

C/R, as much of a PITA it can be sometimes, is (generally) a simple and lightweight mechanism for getting people to stick to the license they agreed to. That's it: attempt to control the casual piracy. 5 activation in a year is kosher, but if you need 15 or 20 or 50 or 300, I'd really like to understand why... in particular to make sure you're not just taking advantage of me and my business. It doesn't mean you will never get more than X installations, it means if we think you're taking advantage of us by sharing a single key with 10 of your friends, for example, we want the opportunity to defend out business against your loose morals. Oh, and sorry if that's insulting to some (or perhaps many) in concept, but in practice we're running a business with expenses and a payroll, not a key generation charity.

Now, you could argue that some vendors go overboard with the red flagging and the enforcement... but certainly not all vendors. Making blanket statements about all C/R based on the bad experience of a handful of vendors is unfair to all those other vendors who are generally permissive, but need a simple mechanism to avoid the outright theft on a grand scale of the very stuff their livelihoods depend on. Everybody's heard the horror stories of vendors outright accusing legit owners of piracy and whatnot, but on the other end of the spectrum you have a company like IK which, as this thread has pointed out, is VERY permissive. You want to run the same Miroslav or Sampletank content on 20 different computers? You could literally do that. In that regard lanket statements about C/R, and more so lumping all C/R vendors into the same poop bucket is unfair, IMO.

Let me tell you, I don't know where you work, but I've worked for some very large brick and mortar financial institutions, and even in those environments there is unlicensed software being used. Trust me on this. In one such company a high priority email went out to all managers and their staff saying "we need a list of every piece of software being used on every single computer because an internal audit has concluded we're using a crapload of unlicensed copies of stuff floating around". Even MS delivered JPGs or GIFs or whatever that were tagged with pirated copies of Photoshop or whatever it was. Loosey goosey sharing of digital content and tools is pervasive. It's not going to lead to the fall of Western society, and certainly some (like the broken music industry) will try to twist the facts and figures to their advantage, but I also don't think it's just something we can write off as unimportant, overblown, inconsequential, whatever. It has a consequence on me because I consume these MP3s and VSTs and ebooks and whatnot too.

One step that I think companies could take that would improve the situation is to give me the ability to manage my installs without asking for your assistance. That is, if you allow two (or whatever amount) concurrent installs from the same key then I should see this clearly in my account, and, I should be able to de-authorize an install and see the change in real time. This would easily take care of the changing computer problem. You could handle the crash problem reasonably well by allowing one "key recovery" per year or so (like Waves) and require customer support for anything beyond that.

I know why companies don't want to do this, it's because they WANT to be involved in the process of installing and the fact that it inconveniences their customers isn't as important to them as it should be. Deauthorization fell out of favor because it gives pirates information and eliminates this company intervention. The "we want to babysit" attitude is the copy protection equivalent of the irritating greeters at best buy.

Baby sit, yes, that's probably a good way to put it. The problem with deauthorization is that it's not enforceable without a software mechanism to actually enforce the deauthorization. I could just "deauthorize" my license 1000 times without actually uninstalling or moving it anywhere... all I'm doing is giving myself the ability to authorize 1000 times, which makes the whole process meaningless. If the process is totally unattended how do you know I'm not just selling an unlimited number of installs of a single key to whoever wants to paypal me $2 to do so? You would need an actual software mechanism to enforce the deauthorization... which makes the "authentication" side heavyweight -- the software needs to ask itself if it's authorized to run on this hardware at this time, and it would have to phone home to do so. Otherwise "deathorization" is meaningless -- you might as well just use a simple serial, and if you're just going to use a simple serial you might as well use nothing. It's much lighter weight to put the authorization on the install side, which necessarily requires some practical limits on the number of activations being requested.

Anyway... it's all just a poop sandwich, any way you look at it.

[ghettosynth]

Many software companies operate in the same manner.

Customers get this as well. Further, I think that it's reasonable for some types of software, e.g. enterprise engineering software, but, not for consumer products. So, it's not a justification to say, "everybody's doing it," because everybody's not doing it. Of course, I know that you didn't say "everybody", you said, "many", but it's a logical fallacy in any case. The fact that others are doing it doesn't make it right. It has simply become the status quo.

Your "everybody's doing it" argument also applies to the community of digital license holders who don't think for more than 2 milliseconds about sharing their digital license with whoever wants it.

Who's arguing that it does? You have no point. I said that "everbody's doing it" isn't an argument for a particular behavior and that same argument would apply to sharing licenses. So it's not exactly clear what point you think that you're making, but, what is clear is that it, in no way, is a rejoinder to my assertions.

Companies like Uhe respect their customers and take on the responsibility of managing their piracy problems themselves.

"Their" piracy problem? Piracy is a "we all" problem.

No, it's not. A vendor's piracy problem is no more my problem than my electric bill is his. We're not partners, we're not "in this together", we're not teaming up to stamp out things that eat into developers profits. He's selling a product, I'm buying it. The only sense that "we're" in it together is in a political sense, i.e., that our voting choices impact laws that affect all of us. I pay for my software and I obey the law. With modern software the product that I get in return for giving money to a vendor is a license to use their software. I am simply putting restrictions on the types of licenses that I will accept, and that is 100% in my purview, and moreover, that decision is not moved in any way by a vendor's need to control piracy. It's just that simple.

Making blanket statements about all C/R based on the bad experience of a handful of vendors is unfair to all those other vendors who are generally permissive, but need a simple mechanism to avoid the outright theft on a grand scale of the very stuff their livelihoods depend on.

Uhe doesn't need a "simple mechanism", does he? You see, therein lies the problem. Developers want a simple mechanism, but, simple solutions are inconvenient for the customer. Well, that's their choice, and it's my choice to not bother. The reinstall is bad enough, all of that reauthorization is too much hassle.

Baby sit, yes, that's probably a good way to put it. The problem with deauthorization is that it's not enforceable without a software mechanism to actually enforce the deauthorization. I could just "deauthorize" my license 1000 times without actually uninstalling or moving it anywhere... all I'm doing is giving myself the ability to authorize 1000 times, which makes the whole process meaningless.

We're not talking about the same thing. You're going to have to work a bit harder for this than what you're imagining. Waves does it just fine, the license gets moved between the local drive and the cloud. Elicenser doesn't have any problems with the process, I had no difficulty moving my Arturia license from the harddrive that it was on to the dongle. When that process was complete, the software did not run without the dongle. Here, propellerheads shows you how simple it is with their software.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR6whGHrbrg

Opcode was doing this in the 90s with floppy disks.

Sorry man, I like this. I like that my software license are EXTERNAL to my computer. They can be moved easily from one machine to another. Waves is absolutely my favorite right now because they allow me to use my own USB stick. Seriously, is that so damn hard? Make the authorization dependent on the USB stick ID, and not on the computer and require the USB stick to be in the computer before the plugin will run. I can use them on my laptop or my desktop, but not both at the same time, no problem. I'm not going to tolerate any "simple method" that requires developer intervention.

BTW: A lot of people on here won't buy with C/R, so I'm not quite sure why you're getting all up in my grill. Hell, I like dongles, most people hate them.