If the dongle is lost or breaks...

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Cabinfever wrote:
Imagine if every piece of hardware you own was tied to a single dongle ? You lose your laptop then everything in your house from a DVD player to your fridge to your ipod is also trashed. Would you ever accept such a stupid system ?
You have some valid points in your post. Speaking of the above specifically, ironically I think many people do have all of their products on say one computer hard drive (that could crash or fail). There's various degrees of volatility to all of the elements of a virtual studio (well, even a hardware studio... let's not forget that sometimes gear BREAKS and sometimes it costs more to fix it than to buy a new one!).

That's not a justification and keep in mind that I realize there are pluses and minuses to every system. However, still, I have yet to hear someone suggest a system that protects a vulnerable product such as software as much as tying it to hardware (whether that is to a small USB key or to an audio interface or processor board/card). If I heard of something better I'd lobby my tentactles off for it. But, I really don't know any. Do you? (I mean, besides that we'd all LIKE to have just serial or no copy protection at all... sure we would! ;) ).

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princeofroles wrote:Squids, I think you made some valid points in your reply, but I disagree with the central thesis....it IS a marketing decision to use dongles. I worked for game companies for years, and some used copy protection, some didn't....and the rational was "we've got to protect our software at any cost" versus "we've got to promote goodwill among our users, and if some pirates steal our product, they probably weren't going to buy it anyway". This same marketing decision goes on in the music software business... I use Cakewalk Sonar instead of Cubase largely for that reason (as well as Stylus versus Groove Agent, etc.). You're correct that if I NEEDED a specific product, I'd have no choice but to break down and buy it....but fortunately for consumers, there are generally several comparable choices for most softsynths (how many Mini-Moog emulators are there? Drums? Brass? Bas? Guitars? answer to all: Several)...so that we as consumers get to pick what is important to us. Long live capitalism! :wink:
I wouldn't say it is a marketing decision, but it DOES affect your marketing. It's a trade off because you sacrifice one thing to gain another. Ironically, it could be more of a marketing DECISION to NOT do it for the reasons you describe. This is actually my general philosophy at SR. I know some sound developers that will never release an unprotected sample library ever again. In fact, they won't even ever let you have access to the raw waves either. They're sick of getting ripped off. I can understand that. So, why doesn't SR follow this? Well, I am not saying we won't with some products mainly to see the difference. But, we DO believe in goodwill (actually I even sacrifice it potentially with people misunderstanding me when I talk about why dongles are used... when I am not even one who uses them but on 2 products SR is involved with out of over a hundred SR products). We have a loyal customer-base who want the legit rights to use our sounds in their music and they even want to support us doing what we do. We're very thankful for that and we like to make things as easy and ideal as possible (even experimenting with multiple format conversion technology etc.), despite the vulnerability of it.

However, with that comes a certain amount of acceptance and risk that there will be people who are tempted to just copy or distribute bootlegs on ebay even or whatever else. The only justification I have from a business-standpoint is that every year Sonic Reality has only grown. As long as that continues and it remains cozy small business then we can probably afford to take these risks. However, companies that are 50+ people all over the world may not have that luxury. They may have to just look at battling piracy in the best possible ways (which, by the way, ALSO costs money... dongles are not cheap to implement! I am sure most developers would prefer not have to go to the trouble and expense).

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Oh man, I'm just tired of all this dongle talk. If you don't want dongles, just don't buy the software... nobody is forcing anybody to do it.

Developers invest money and time coming up with software so they're free to put it on the market they way they want, it's THEIR product. I won't tell anyone how to do their business, if I don't agree with what they do, I'll just stay away from them and give my money to someone else. And I would never not buy from them and give them hell about it on top of that!
Last edited by TeleJuan on Wed Apr 12, 2006 10:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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TeleJuan wrote:Oh man, I'm just tired of all this dongle talk. If you don't want dongles, just don't buy the software... nobody is forcing anybody to do it.

Developers invest money and time coming up with software so they're free to put it on the market they way they want, it's THEIR product. I won't tell anyone how to their business, if I don't agree with what they do, I'll just stay away from them and give my money to someone else. I would never not buy from them and give them hell about it on top of that.
That's the most sensible thing I've read in days. :tu:

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Well, I do realize the side of someone who WANTS the product but just doesn't like dongles. I don't like them either. But, I put up with them like I said for a lot of products I own as well. I don't influence what companies like Steinberg, Apple or Digi does but I do have some say with IK and a few others who value my opinion. The problem is that I don't know of anything one could suggest as an alternative solution to a dongle that still protects the software and would offer the same increase in "actual" legit users and thus sales! The goodwill argument only works on suckers like me with smaller sized companies. ;) Just kidding. But, seriously, given that software companies feel the need to protect their software and there's no denying WHY (we all know why) then what options are there? Keep in mind that even CHANGING a system is not something companies can just do with the snap of the fingers either. Dealing with thousands of products that use a certain system, contracts and commitments etc etc. It is NEVER as simple as it may appear on the surface.

I too get tired of unproductive dongle-talk. You'd be preaching to the choir if you were telling ME, el Squidsioso, the value of goodwill and all that stuff. But, you know the story with SR and our majority of sound products. When it comes to plug-ins from companies like IK, Arturia, Steiberg and also Ilok programs for Receptor and ProTools etc. I think it is tedious to complain unless you have some better solution than "just use a more vulnerable system". Whatever theories one may have about how you'd sell more if you did that are not holding much water when companies spend thousands of dollars in market research to study the differences. I mean, think about this. If it costs a company a lot of money to do it then there would have to be some really good incentive with market data to support it.

By the way, I correct. SR has only ONE product currently with a dongle and that's Miroslav Philharmonik. Although it is one of our hottest selling products so I wonder if that has something to do with it.

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Squids wrote:Well, I do realize the side of someone who WANTS the product but just doesn't like dongles.
Well, you're describing me, right there. But I bought AT2, it was my desicion so I won't give IK hell about dongles, it was me who attached it to my PC.

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Regrarding back-up licenses Squids wrote:
I did recommend the ability to buy additional licenses (same as multi-user licenses) so you could have multiple keys with the ability for more than one person to use it or for it to be in more than one place at a time or for back up. I will let you guys know when I find out what the possibilities are there.

I am looking forward to hear more about this.

Cheers,
Gordon

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I have a Carillon Computer, and rack mountable sound card, and finally got it all into a rack. I'm going to be doing some live dates, and it has me thinking.

It would be very nice to be able to mount a hub to the side of my rack that had usb slots to hold the dongles, and had a cover that could protect my dongles. Anyone know of such a hub??

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harmony gardens wrote:It would be very nice to be able to mount a hub to the side of my rack that had usb slots to hold the dongles, and had a cover that could protect my dongles. Anyone know of such a hub??
I don't know of one, but that sounds like a practical product for someone to make, albeit for a somewhat boutique market

e.g., "Dongle Vault"
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havran wrote:
harmony gardens wrote:It would be very nice to be able to mount a hub to the side of my rack that had usb slots to hold the dongles, and had a cover that could protect my dongles. Anyone know of such a hub??
I don't know of one, but that sounds like a practical product for someone to make, albeit for a somewhat boutique market

e.g., "Dongle Vault"
Yeah,, it would solve a lot of problems.

Where would we go to express an interest in such product being developed??

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"when the dongle breaks ..."

wasn't that on Led Zep 4?













:troll:

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"let the dongle be unbroken"
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"I got a dongle in my pocket!"

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in the dongle, the mighty dongle
the license sleeps tonight


:oops:
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harmony gardens wrote:
havran wrote:
harmony gardens wrote:It would be very nice to be able to mount a hub to the side of my rack that had usb slots to hold the dongles, and had a cover that could protect my dongles. Anyone know of such a hub??
I don't know of one, but that sounds like a practical product for someone to make, albeit for a somewhat boutique market

e.g., "Dongle Vault"
Yeah,, it would solve a lot of problems.

Where would we go to express an interest in such product being developed??
I'm barely a musician, let alone one who plays out [international translation: performs live], but:

completely speculating: not sure that there would be enough volume of sales for the major rack-makers to produce it as an add-on, even if it were pitched that more musicians are taking computers on stage (already obvious) AND that some of their software is dongle-protected

it would have to be a custom job for now, but considering the internet, maybe a few garage-industry metal-working guys who made good dongle-caddies could do a little business -- maybe the customer could supply the usb hub and specify the space needed for the hub and dongles?

maybe not the boutique stomp-box makers themselves, but the guys who make the chassis

or maybe Behringer

or maybe ask Peter Gabriel what his crew would do for dongle protection

but I'm also thinking, that just by the question being raised here on KVR, there might be some offline discussion and developments
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