Do you avoid buying plugins with copy protection?

[MickGael]

I can't believe people prefer challenge response over dongles.

I don't get it either.

Once I lost 3 C/R plugins when developers went under, I began to see dongles in a new light.

[hibidy]

I dunno. I'm too much of a gear ho to get caught up in it. Whatever they use is what I use. I wish life was perfect and they were all keyfiles. That would be awesome! But I recently got filtershaper (keyfile) and revalver 4 (not ilok usb key like my waves) and I'm comfy enough.

[Hink]

It would be interesting to know how many of all those people (me including) speaking against dongles and CR really had any problems with those copy protections schemes or if it is just a general uneasy feeling about what could happen or whatever they read on the internet...

I for myself have an elicenser which has made no problems so far in nearly ten years.
I once had problems with Native Instruments CR which wouldn't authorize my system because I had no C:-partition in Windows (yes, it's possible, though I don't really know why it was like that). This of course is plain bad programming.
Re-licensing all the CR protected software on a new computer is of course a massive pain in the butt...

I started a thread in site stuff a few years ago bringing up the exact same point...it just turned into a dongle hate thread despite my pleas for it not to

[hibidy]

Here is where the "hate" comes from (not from me, just sayin......)

-some demos require it. If you don't have one, then you can't. I can understand people being disappointed by this
-pace (in particular) has had issues in the past. No matter what side you are on, you can't deny a percentage has had problems.
-Er, some computers don't have 600 usb ports
-the 25 buck ADDITIONAL transfer fee is an issue for some ( ilok )
-paranoia
-word of mouth. See "paranoia"

Again, it's cool whatever side you choose.

[fese]

Here is where the "hate" comes from (not from me, just sayin......)

-some demos require it. If you don't have one, then you can't. I can understand people being disappointed by this

I can relate to that. I am pretty sure I'd have bought products from say softube or slate if it weren't for the fact that I'd have to spend forty bucks or so on a dongle first. Luckily, the market is big today and there are good alternatives around.
Sure, in a perfect world there'd be no copy protection, but then I'd also be filthy rich and famous and ban<backspace><backspace><backspace>dating starlets by the truckload...