Let's discuss dongled effects here.

Rather than in the first ten pages of every new effect thread when a dongle is required.

You can express your thoughts here, discuss, love, hate, or just point out how much you dont care.

Anyway, I think the poll results will be interesting too. For everybody ( If only to recall ourselves that some nice people can have voted in all categories )

And if you want this one to become a sticky : Just post STICK IT +1

Market research?

I had a dongle with Nexus. It also had my Arturia license on it. It never gave me any trouble, but I'd much rather have a license on a server like the Waves Cloud thingy. I sold both, so no more dongle.
Dongles get stolen, they break, they go out, and I'm pretty sure Steinberg gets a residual with every one bought...

I voted for *I will never buy a dongled product, whatever good I think a product might be*.

For example I love Xils-3 from Xils Lab. Im a heavy user of Xils-3 LE and would immediately buy the full version if there would be no dongle - a shame.

I think a Dongle is unnecessary for a good protection and just annoying for customers.

I have never felt that a product is so good that it is worth a dongle. There are too many great non-dongle products for me to consider iLok.

Where's the fish?

I think this thread will be at least interesting for those who have this approach, yes. Eventually usefull. Hopefully it will be interesting for a lot more people.

OOps the last option was : Dongled fish ?

Seems I forgot to validate it before pushing the red button. Sorry for that.

Anyway just post Fish and it will do.

On a serious note though, I don't really have a big issue with dongles. I don't know how I'd get by without my soundtoys, tube-tech and lexicon plugs now.
I can see why others may be against them, I'd prefer it I didn't need them but I'm not that tight fisted and don't really have any regrets about getting dongles.

I've got a separate dongle for Cubase and one for korg; usb stick for Waves sitting off to the side in a powered usb hub. I don't even think about them.

IBTiLok

Call me , but I'm somewhere between "don't mind 'em" and "prefer 'em over others (i.e., challenge/response)". I sorta like the way that Waves gives you the option of how/where you want to store your licenses, although I have mine on a USB stick (parked on a hub right next to my iLok2 and eLicenser dongles), so it's really not much different than before AFAIC, but it sure is nice to have the option to move the licenses to my HD or the cloud.

Why just effects? Doing some market research?


Personally, I think that dongles are a great way for developers to protect their property. Ha, you weren't expecting that, I'll bet. I'll be the first to admit that my dislike for them is kind of irrational... it goes way back to those awful Cubase dongles that had to be inserted into the parallel port and caused all kinds of problems with my system back in the day. I realize that these problems have all but disappeared nowadays (have they?).

Irrational, yes, but there you have it. And the biggest irony to me is that the consumer has to pay for the damn thing. Seems like it's a deal between the developer and the provider of copy protection - why make the honest customer pay for that? And don't give me that "if you can't pay 40 bucks for an iLok, you probably won't be able to afford 200 bucks for plugin x" bullshit. I spend way too much on music software for that to be true.

And look at developers who are doing well without dongles. There are ways to get people to pay for your product that are much more elegant. Most people like to think of themselves as being honest and forthright. Software "pirates" (which is a dumb term anyway) are not all brazen criminals. They want to do the right thing, but they are sometimes mislead. They steal software because they can't afford it, because they are not conscious of the fact that they're hurting another person by their behaviour, because it's very easy to do so, and sometimes because they have been taught that it's okay to do so. Give them an opportunity to go legit, and many will follow.

A *cough* friend of mine used stolen software when he was still at university. Ever since graduating, he has paid for everything he used. He bought a lot of the stuff he used illegitimately, just because he liked it and wanted to support the developers. Not representative, maybe, but one example at least. I'm sure he is not the only one.

Thanks for your input.

In my knowledge state, the only protection method that have never been cr.cked is the Ilok2 ( That is until now of course )

I also know -almost for sure- that some other dongled instruments have never been properly cr.cked

Well its a bit of another discussion, but otoh, it sometimes difficult to speak "protection" whithout never speaking of the direct cause of the protection.

Anyway whatever the reasons, you took the no dongle way, and its ok, this is why this thread is made for ( Sorry for the xils3 )

I've got mine on a RocketFish USB hub with a built-in suction cup - works great for attaching them to the lid of my laptop and out of my way.



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