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

[robotmonkey]

I can't speak for IKM
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.

And that's the problem, right there. I have no time nor will to engage in all of this just to use software I have already paid for. Often these things happen at the most inconvenient times and take literally weeks to resolve due to slow support. The fact is that when I'm faced with that kind of problem, I would rather download a cracked version from net and be done with it than waste my time justifying why I need to activate software I have already paid for.

And just to be clear, I usually do try to resolve those matters in a proper way. But the limit where I find it too tedious and/or inconvenient is very quick to come. Often I'm just too busy to waste my time on such problem. The fact is that if a dev wants to use CP that puts software at the mercy of some external factors outside of the control of paying customer then it must always work 100% time 24/7/365. I have absolutely no tolerance for anything less.

[jancivil]

Well, lookit. Now they offer ten auths. So the first several things I have from them are down to seven, I just looked.
What's the actual policy? I think if I got down to two left I would think to reup. Do you have to be in an actual emergency?

I remember when NI limited auths to two computers and you managed them, deleted them yourself to free one up. I don't know their stated policy but I had a bad time with Kore2 a couple years back which required a whole lot of reinstalling, and I never ran up against a failed auth; so I think de facto there is no limit. I don't buy the argument the vendor will make that people will distribute as very reasonable in terms of real business, but who am I to say. I think they are known to respond pretty quickly.

I'd rather use a dongle.

[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.

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.

What are you talking about? Mike said:

Many companies are doing it [requiring customer to call support for activation] in the same manner.

You quoted what Mike said, and responded with:

[...] it's not a justification to say, "everybody's doing it," because everybody's not doing it.

By "it" I can only assume you're referring to the same "it" that you quoted Mike as referring to: customers need to call in for support and activation.

My point was simply that your "everybody's doing it doesn't make it right" statement applies equally to a.) vendors imposing burdensome C/R, and b.) persons outright stealing usage licenses. I realize you were only referring to vendor behavior, but my point is that those two things are connected, "a" is a side effect of "b".

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.

You most certainly are "in this together" when your choices as a consumer are directly affected by how much a vendor is affected by piracy. It may mean you pay $200 for a product instead of $100. It may mean you need to shell out another $50 for a dongle, then another $100 per year for "dongle insurance". It may mean U-he goes out of business someday because the revenue is not sustainable... or, God forbid, has to adopt some sort of more restrictive copy protection that leaves you in the cold (been there). Every lost sale directly or indirectly affects you in some way. That doesn't mean you have to light a candle every night for the vendors, or go lead a crusade against torrent sites, but it may mean you need to at least be open to compromise between your requirements and the vendor's. Of course, that's just my philosophy and approach, considering a lot of these vendors are relatively small operations that I'd like to see stick around for a while... like samplemodeling, or scuffham. The vendor lets me do XYZ with this paid for license, in return I will jump through hoop ABC. You have every right and obligation to run screaming from ABC, of course, if that's what you need to do.

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.

You just made my point. The dongle is the authorization mechanism. Or in the case of elicenser or whatever, the elicenser guardian-gateway-kernel-driver-rootkit thing is the authorization mechanism. In that context, "deathorization" to move licenses around makes perfect sense -- you're telling the active authorization mechanism: "this license blob should now be considered valid for this runtime environment".

Typcial C/R does the one-time authorization, then may scan for hardware changes on software startup to make sure the authorization is still valid. If my hardware never changes then "deauthorization" has no meaning. It's a lazy authorization compared to dongle or elicenser... So yes, much more functionally limited, more burden on you when you have to manage the authorizations in a non-seamless manner etc.

You're main criticism seems to be that "license blob" is not ubiquitous across all CP schemes. Or, it's the lazy C/R mechanism that is the source of the downstream pain of reauth and everything that goes with that. Yes! You could argue that there should be some industry standard C/R that involves an open standard elicenser type license management -- well, I guess in that guess you don't need C/R at all, just license management. That would be nice, to be honest... really nice, actually... but I wonder what the synchrosoft or iLok or whatever licensing costs are for vendors? I wonder if all those UVI sample libs are so damn expensive because of the iLok overhead? I bet it's far from affordable unless you're tied into a platform that already uses it (like a soundware developer using UVI engine)...

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

OMG, I will take the most restrictive C/R any day over shuffling disks...

[xamido]

And that's the problem, right there. I have no time nor will to engage in all of this just to use software I have already paid for. Often these things happen at the most inconvenient times and take literally weeks to resolve due to slow support. The fact is that when I'm faced with that kind of problem, I would rather download a cracked version from net and be done with it than waste my time justifying why I need to activate software I have already paid for.

And just to be clear, I usually do try to resolve those matters in a proper way. But the limit where I find it too tedious and/or inconvenient is very quick to come. Often I'm just too busy to waste my time on such problem. The fact is that if a dev wants to use CP that puts software at the mercy of some external factors outside of the control of paying customer then it must always work 100% time 24/7/365. I have absolutely no tolerance for anything less.

So basically you pirate somebody else's plugin because you can't wait 1 or 2 days for more authorization when you already use 10 authorization already.

So you pirate everything that use C/R?

And your hypothethical weeks to respond? Lol, IK have many flaws but slow support time is not their flaw for me. You can PM one of their rep here, send email or through their support page on their site.

Okay, i get it now.

I've own almost all of their product and i've never had to ask them for more authorization since i bought their first product 4 years ago. Some of your problem are hysteria due to a 'what if scenario'.

[robotmonkey]

So you pirate everything that use C/R?

And your hypothethical weeks to respond? Lol, IK have many flaws but slow support time is not their flaw for me. You can PM one of their rep here, send email or through their support page on their site.

Okay, i get it now.

If I already own the plugin it is not pirating in any way. And yes, even 1-2 days is too long. Often I'm so busy, that I have one weekend per two weeks when I can work on my own stuff. If something happens it is weekend ruined. CP should absolutely 100% never get in a way of paying users. End of story.

And no, there is nothing hypothetical about it. I have plenty of first hand experience due to my work and from my personal setup (though not with IK Multimedia). So I take any "promises" to resolve these matters without much fuss with a big grain of salt. Even the outrageous PACE Zero Downtime Protection often is more like can't work properly for several days protection.

[xamido]

If I already own the plugin it is not pirating in any way. And yes, even 1-2 days is too long. Often I'm so busy, that I have one weekend per two weeks when I can work on my own stuff. If something happens it is weekend ruined. CP should absolutely 100% never get in a way of paying users. End of story.

And no, there is nothing hypothetical about it. I have plenty of first hand experience due to my work and from my personal setup (though not with IK Multimedia). So I take any "promises" to resolve these matters without much fuss with a big grain of salt. Even the outrageous PACE Zero Downtime Protection often is more like can't work properly for several days protection.

I'll let the mod decide it's not pirating or not.

Btw you're hopeless, you actually just want to complain about C/R but instead cherry pick one company. The one company that actually have one of the most lenient C/R scheme.

A company that you don't even have experience with and start blabbering about your previous experience with other company.

[ghettosynth]

Well, lookit. Now they offer ten auths. So the first several things I have from them are down to seven, I just looked.
What's the actual policy? I think if I got down to two left I would think to reup. Do you have to be in an actual emergency?

I remember when NI limited auths to two computers and you managed them, deleted them yourself to free one up. I don't know their stated policy

I think that not knowing their stated policy is a part of their "deterrent" to copying. If they said "we never limit you", then people might, in fact, install for their friends knowing that there is little risk.

Do you remember the reasons that they gave for eliminating the process? I suspect that the real reason was to reduce support costs.

I'd rather use a dongle.

I don't really get all of the resistance. I understand a little bit if you're live. A dongle is something else to lose and managing USB ports in a live setting might be a hassle, but on a desktop, or even on a laptop in a home studio, I don't get it. Hubs are cheap. I have one JUST for dongles and it plugs into the parent hub that I use for other controllers. It's hidden out of the way. I know that most people here are not actually playing out so I don't think that playing live accounts for all of the resistance.

[ghettosynth]

And that's the problem, right there. I have no time nor will to engage in all of this just to use software I have already paid for.

So basically you pirate somebody else's plugin because you can't wait 1 or 2 days for more authorization when you already use 10 authorization already.

So first, I don't download anything, I wait for tech support to get back to me. That said, yes, two days is too long. This actually caused me problems with a small gig a while back. I had to reinstall on my laptop and I ran out of authorizations, Ableton took two days to get back, I had to DJ instead of play the live set that I had planned.

So, yes, two days is too long.

[xamido]

And that's the problem, right there. I have no time nor will to engage in all of this just to use software I have already paid for.

So basically you pirate somebody else's plugin because you can't wait 1 or 2 days for more authorization when you already use 10 authorization already.

So first, I don't download anything, I wait for tech support to get back to me. That said, yes, two days is too long. This actually caused me problems with a small gig a while back. I had to reinstall on my laptop and I ran out of authorizations, Ableton took two days to get back, I had to DJ instead of play the live set that I had planned.

So, yes, two days is too long.

Now that's a different issue. Ableton 2 license limit have always been stupid for me. But 10 from IK?

WIth that amount of authorization you just have to be smart and request another one at 8 or 9.

[jancivil]

Well, lookit. Now they offer ten auths. So the first several things I have from them are down to seven, I just looked.
What's the actual policy? I think if I got down to two left I would think to reup. Do you have to be in an actual emergency?

I remember when NI limited auths to two computers and you managed them, deleted them yourself to free one up. I don't know their stated policy

I think that not knowing their stated policy is a part of their "deterrent" to copying. If they said "we never limit you", then people might, in fact, install for their friends knowing that there is little risk.

Do you remember the reasons that they gave for eliminating the process? I suspect that the real reason was to reduce support costs.

I'd rather use a dongle.

I don't really get all of the resistance. I understand a little bit if you're live. A dongle is something else to lose and managing USB ports in a live setting might be a hassle, but on a desktop, or even on a laptop in a home studio, I don't get it. Hubs are cheap. I have one JUST for dongles and it plugs into the parent hub that I use for other controllers. It's hidden out of the way. I know that most people here are not actually playing out so I don't think that playing live accounts for all of the resistance.

Yeah, I believe the reason for NI abandoning the two auths is bottom line. I would imagine they got a lot of tickets behind it. I don't have a strong opinion as to calculating loss from that vs other things. All the NI things are cracked and I don't mean like a Cubase crack with issues out of it (there are fora which in addition to discussing more esoteric & detailed 'how to', and at least make a show of saying 'be legit', do allow discussion of cracks. FTR I have a license for everything.).

I've actually broken a dongle. I lost two dongles in my life as well. The broken dongle resulted in such timely support by both Steinberg and VSL that it's one basis for my preference. I've had one showstopper from CP and that was authorizations I lost for four days after being too ambitious in cache cleaning and the vendor's servers were down.
&, I quit using Nebula behind his ways (albeit it was not a crucial thing to me), serial key on disk somehow would fail to work mysteriously.

I see all of this emphasis on it and it's more like political talk to me, it's ideology. It isn't any of that to me, it's convenience and I support developers protecting their investment.

[jancivil]

The time I had no BFD2 for four days was about an authorization methodology that wasn't transparent enough to me. And no, I just looked at 'License Manager', it tells me only that everything is authorized. I had three computers at the time and four authorizations and believed it was three. (But it worked for more than a year until I cleaned some cache or preferences.) Used it on one machine at a time. License Manager generates a code which you upload then you wait for a response. NI seems automatic, this needed a person to hear my story.

I just realized that had IKMM not gone to ten, I would have been down to two of five on several things I use all the time. But I'm careful enough now to think, if I'm going to replace the systems drive I want a new batch, if down to two. If IKMM believes it cuts down on distribution, fine, I'm not hassled by this one so far.