Another FM video with cracked Sylenth. ...and Martin Garrix.

[highkoo]

We also sometimes need people to think that stuff works. When we updated our product range in April, we kept the leaked serials from DOA alive - for a while. Those versions blacklist them shortly before x-mas for instance. It's a feast for us.

Urs is on that next level, guys.
Just take notes.

[chaosWyrM]

i hate to break it you, but u-he plugs are as easy as any to get and use with no problems.

The current lineup hasn't been cracked. As I posted before, if things has bugs then we don't bother to deal with things. The most current crack of our stuff are the x-mas 2012 beta versions, which are not optimised well and buggy as hell. No real release version has been cracked in ages.

Part of our strategy is to improve the stuff over time. We need cracks in order to build better protection. That's why we do public betas. Somehow the crackers think that these make sense to crack. And then they apply the same crack on teh release versions, which has a stronger protection #fail

We also sometimes need people to think that stuff works. When we updated our product range in April, we kept the leaked serials from DOA alive - for a while. Those versions blacklist them shortly before x-mas for instance. It's a feast for us.

Thing is, we can *prove* that our stuff works, and I recently did in a thread that got derailed by trolls. We can even measure the conversion rate with Google Analytics.

However, social engineering is certainly part of our strategy. We want more developers to hop onto it.

i understand what youre saying, and i have no doubt you see them as "not optimized and buggy" but if the user thinks its smooth as glass, well then they dont care if its not optimized and buggy. conversion rates are good, and im not debating your observations, but surely you understand that you cant *prove* it works. i can tell you right now my sisters bf has a perfectly fine working diva i know for fact he didnt pay for. so in that specific case...it didnt work.

there is not now nor has there ever been an effective copy protection system. they simply dont work. trying to make it impossible to do is an exercise in futility, always has been, always will be.

the proper and proven to be far more effective approach is to make the legit purchase the one people want.

[Urs]

A quick screeny of a two years old version, which is the most recent carck that is still talked about

http://www.u-he.com/img/WarezBlah.png

Thing is, those guys don't even know what's happening. It works. Then it doesn't. And then it works again for a while. And then it doesn't, but this time it doesn't come back in that song. But another instance works, sort of… And so on. And at some point, they'll pull the trigger and buy. Because the pirated version is less comfy to use than the legit one. QED

We could make this much, much better and "get everyone". But that would take more time than we have on our hands, for a questionable amount of increased cash flow. We slowly implement more ways to get them, but as the last batch hasn't been cracked at all, not even half way, I guess we'll leave it at that. If worse comes to worst, we'll release an unbeatable soundset for free which only works in the latest version. They're either not that interested in our stuff (hence don't use it) or they'll bite their hands off if they don't "upgrade".

Patience is the key ingredient in working copy protection.

[chaosWyrM]

on a side note...you know who people dont pirate from? hg fortune.

True, no crack since 2012. But about 20 between 2006 and 2012, according to a quick search on a certain forum.

i didnt say cant...i said dont. that seems the be the main point being missed.

a quick search on a popular site will return 0 hits for hg fortune...a full page for u-he however.

im not trying to argue with you...i hope its not coming across that i am. the issue interests me and i never get to talk about it with someone in your position.

[Urs]

surely you understand that you cant *prove* it works.

Thing is, we target only power users, not people who just show off with their hard drive full of crap. In actual fact, the more power users we get who use "cracked" versions, the better. At some point we'll bring the demo crackle back, or post a frightening black spot in the middle of the UI. If a guy managed to use Zebra for half a year, then we guess that Zebra has become a core part of his setup and a key element in a song. He's gonna be a good customer, once invited to buy.

As long as enough people click that black spot, we can be sure that our protection method works. It opens our website in their default browser with a special URL. We know which product stopped working and why. We can furthermore track the visitor from landing page to shop and thus we can track the conversion rate.

What more proof do we need?

[chaosWyrM]

surely you understand that you cant *prove* it works.

Thing is, we target only power users, not people who just show off with their hard drive full of crap. In actual fact, the more power users we get who use "cracked" versions, the better. At some point we'll bring the demo crackle back, or post a frightening black spot in the middle of the UI. If a guy managed to use Zebra for half a year, then we guess that Zebra has become a core part of his setup and a key element in a song. He's gonna be a good customer, once invited to buy.

As long as enough people click that black spot, we can be sure that our protection method works. It opens our website in their default browser with a special URL. We know which product stopped working and why. We can furthermore track the visitor from landing page to shop and thus we can track the conversion rate.

What more proof do we need?

ah i think we misunderstood each other. yes i can see how you can prove it HAS worked...but if it doesnt work you cant prove anything. im certainly not saying that the cp never works...obviously it does...sometimes.

[Urs]

if the user thinks its smooth as glass, well then they dont care if its not optimized and buggy.

If a user doesn't care for new features and bugfixes and thus sees no incentive to ever upgrade, then he's not going to be a good user, and probably not really a lost sale.

To clear things up - there are earlier versions of our stuff that take a really long time to stop working one way or the other. Some people may have even been lucky enough to get a permanent. But, those people can never upgrade, they can never download the latest preset banks and hope for them to work. If they're happy with that, good on them. They're certainly not people I worry about too much, and neither should anyone of you.

[Urs]

ah i think we misunderstood each other. yes i can see how you can prove it HAS worked...but if it doesnt work you cant prove anything. im certainly not saying that the cp never works...obviously it does...sometimes.

Fair enough, I can agree with that.

It works often enough for me to not be depressed when a crack comes out. I think working cracks hurt my state of mind more than my wallet. Non-working cracks however seem to be good enough to finance an employee. Or our advertisement. Or both.

[chaosWyrM]

if the user thinks its smooth as glass, well then they dont care if its not optimized and buggy.

If a user doesn't care for new features and bugfixes and thus sees no incentive to ever upgrade, then he's not going to be a good user, and probably not really a lost sale.

To clear things up - there are earlier versions of our stuff that take a really long time to stop working one way or the other. Some people may have even been lucky enough to get a permanent. But, those people can never upgrade, they can never download the latest preset banks and hope for them to work. If they're happy with that, good on them. They're certainly not people I worry about too much, and neither should anyone of you.

i see...well that explains your position much better, and makes perfect sense. i might suggest that there is a fundamental difference between seeing no incentive to ever upgrade and the upgrade isnt worth paying for over the already working older version, but thats a different discussion.

[Urs]

i see...well that explains your position much better, and makes perfect sense. i might suggest that there is a fundamental difference between seeing no incentive to ever upgrade and the upgrade isnt worth paying for over the already working older version, but thats a different discussion.

Well, that's a flaw, but I don't think it matters in then long run.

I think that someone who has been using, say, Zebra 2.5.1 as a staple of his setup can stick to it for a few years, and why not. Nevertheless, if we look at where Zebra was 5 or 10 years ago and where it's now, I'd say that it's like a whole new software. Continuous development will eventually create enough incentive to upgrade. If using a pirated copy was a convenience, then that convenience won't last forever. And if the guy pirated it because he couldn't afford it back then, maybe he can five years later. As I said, patience is key.

I agree that no copy protection is perfect. We're sure that one day someone will come and find a way to crack our latest without triggering any suspicion on the time bombs. Like, when R2R found a surprising new angle to our stuff which we hadn't expected (on a beta har har). But then it takes us half a day to implement an antidote. Every crack makes our protection stronger, and I have a hard time imagining that loopholes are found easily.

[robotmonkey]

Facebook-effect, right?

This is why there needs to be a licensing process before people are allowed to access the Internet.

You can't be serious? It's amazing how many stupid and totalitarian ideas come out of the heads of CP moralists. I would rather have every software maker go bankrupt than introduce more totalitarian BS into society.

[gamecat666]

Quite a level headed approach, Urs.
It'd be all too easy to go into a frothing rage when talking about people stealing your work but you seem to have come to terms with the bad (and occasionally good) that comes of it.

[aciddose]

Facebook-effect, right?

This is why there needs to be a licensing process before people are allowed to access the Internet.

You can't be serious? It's amazing how many stupid and totalitarian ideas come out of the heads of CP moralists. I would rather have every software maker go bankrupt than introduce more totalitarian BS into society.

He only meant to say you'd need a license proving your sarcasm detector works before you can participate online. For your own safety obviously.

I would actually advocate for a process of testing for newborns where the ones shown to be defective would be shipped back under warranty and replaced.

[deastman]

Facebook-effect, right?

This is why there needs to be a licensing process before people are allowed to access the Internet.

You can't be serious? It's amazing how many stupid and totalitarian ideas come out of the heads of CP moralists. I would rather have every software maker go bankrupt than introduce more totalitarian BS into society.

He only meant to say you'd need a license proving your sarcasm detector works before you can participate online. For your own safety obviously.

I would actually advocate for a process of testing for newborns where the ones shown to be defective would be shipped back under warranty and replaced.

Your idea reminds me of A Modest Proposal.

[robotmonkey]

I think this shows a new level of GREED.
Pay nothing for your software, EVEN when you can clearly afford to pay for it.
He should be boycotted.

I doubt it has anything to do with greed. It is undeniable that the value of software is going down like everything else in commodified society. The value of music is also going down. It is because there are too much of both. Everyone can turn out music these days and there is loads of software out there. A lot of it is complete crap.

Ironically it is the music industry itself that is to blame and the same goes for software industry at least to some extent. Music has been treated as a factory-produced disposable commodity for years now. Most of the pop music these days exist solely to cash in. So it is no surprise that the general population see nothing wrong in downloading music. First, it is hard to respect anything that has a low perceived value. And second, the music factories are still turning out all that crap like always. Studies in moral psychology have shown that if we put price on thing like art and music that were valued in itself then people will loose all respect toward these things and start to treat them as disposable commodities.

With software it is actually the copy protection measures that actually lower the value of software most. The prime example being the app-store model that basically takes all the rights away from users and puts them completely at the mercy of developers. All kinds of C/R systems and dongles come after that. The simple fact is that as usage and ownership rights are taken away from users the perceived value of software goes down. If developers want to have intricate CP schemes that take all the control away from users, then fine, but don't expect me to see that kind of software as a valuable investment. The truth is that i see in app-store apps as much value as in a roll of toilet paper. And I am not willing to pay much more too. Apps that require persistent online connection come second, then C/R software. I just can't expected to shell out full price for apps that might not work in a couple of months or after a year or two.
The other problem is that there is so much software out there. This generates an insensitive to hoard a lot of stuff. So even if people buy some of that, they still might to pirate to some extent just check out that other nice plugin or whatever. New EQ's, compressors, synths, sample libraries are release every day and no one can buy it all. I'm pretty sure that a lot of pirated plugins will hardly ever get any use at all. Because in reality all you need is two to five synths and couple of plugins to make music. In hardware days this was well regulated by cost and space constraints but with software there are no such limits and people are very bad at self-control.