NI have announced they will no longer activate discontinued products

[noiseboyuk]

That's actually not accurate. For example, as soon as you login to Native Access you accept our EULA. You can find the mention on top of your login screen.
Also I'm not sure anyone here has access to EULA they agreed upon back in 2000.

I'm presuming this is why the NI lawyers felt they were ok to go ahead with this, that by moving the goalposts when changing the EULA they concluded that no further action would be required on NI's part. I doubt that's very robust legally, but the point is that it would need to be challenged in court which they knew is quite unlikely due to the eye-watering costs involved for anyone wanting to bring a suit.

BUT. What does seem to have changed is the company has realised the knock on effects of this decision for their customers are much more significant than they initially realised. And in the end, if the motivation is genuine concern for their reputation and customer relations, that's a better motive than the threat of legal action anyway.

General observation - much of this thread is still arguing and positing things that are no longer relevant, given NI's change of stance. General prediction - this will continue.

[Matt_NI]

That's actually not accurate. For example, as soon as you login to Native Access you accept our EULA. You can find the mention on top of your login screen.
Also I'm not sure anyone here has access to EULA they agreed upon back in 2000.

I'm presuming this is why the NI lawyers felt they were ok to go ahead with this, that by moving the goalposts when changing the EULA they concluded that no further action would be required on NI's part. I doubt that's very robust legally, but the point is that it would need to be challenged in court which they knew is quite unlikely due to the eye-watering costs involved for anyone wanting to bring a suit.

BUT. What does seem to have changed is the company has realised the knock on effects of this decision for their customers are much more significant than they initially realised. And in the end, if the motivation is genuine concern for their reputation and customer relations, that's a better motive than the threat of legal action anyway.

General observation - much of this thread is still arguing and positing things that are no longer relevant, given NI's change of stance. General prediction - this will continue.

In all honesty, the legality of such decision isn't really why the product teams or myself are addressing this topic at all. We simply didn't realise this would have such an impact (even if obvious for you folks) and want to get everyone's feedback so we can find suitable solutions for all.

[Gamma-UT]

It's never going to get to court in reality, but unless the later EULAs explicitly cancel the right to a permanent serial number, courts would be more likely to determine that the provision in the original EULA still stands. It's not the case that the entire EULA simply overwrites the old one and courts (well those outside the US at any rate) tend to take the view of favouring the most optimistic reading for the person being handed the contract rather than the person who wrote it where something is indeterminate.

[Sascha Franck]

That's actually not accurate. For example, as soon as you login to Native Access you accept our EULA. You can find the mention on top of your login screen.
Also I'm not sure anyone here has access to EULA they agreed upon back in 2000.

Seriously, while I kind of appreciate that NI is adressing the issue ("kind of" because this could and *should* have been happening way earlier - at least *way* before pulling off this recent stunt), I'd appreciate it even more if you'd do your homework. Sorry, I don't want to sound rude or anything, but what you've just wrote is plain nonsense and won't even remotely hold any legal water.
Whatever the new EULAs look like today in Native Access is completely (!) irrelevant to older products.
And as far as access to older EULAs goes, they will pop up as soon as you install a NI product from an older installation medium. And these are the only EULAs valid for that very product, there's no way around it.

To give you a pretty blunt example: If you purchase something with a 3 year warranty, this is what you will get. It doesn't even remotely matter whether you change that to just 6 months for follow up products after one year, the original product will still have 3 years of warranty.

Besides, I absolutely don't understand why you bring up Native Access at all. I mean, the products affected are those that apparently can't be registered through Native Access.

[electro]

I wouldn't be surprised AT ALL if some of the people complaining and threatening to sue, aren't even effected by this.

Yes, like I said we can see the amount of activation on our end and it would be safe to say that a goof portion of people are not affected. With that said, I completely get where everyone's is coming from and why they don't want this to define how we deal with end of life.

What was behind NI's decision to kill off offline C/R activation via Service Center?

[Sascha Franck]

In all honesty, the legality of such decision isn't really why the product teams or myself are addressing this topic at all. We simply didn't realise this would have such an impact (even if obvious for you folks) and want to get everyone's feedback so we can find suitable solutions for all.

If you want suitable solutions for all, change large portions in the way you interact with your users, and, pretty much in return of that, how you consider their opinions of your products relevant.
You can take a bet that most of the outrage displayed in all these threads about NIs new stunt isn't caused by legal aspects. I'm pretty sure it's largely because of the way you treated people for years. Abandoning products left and right (both soft- and hardware), often with no viable alternative - that's just what everybody with some NI experience will be familiar with.
Add to this the partially abysmal product maintainance and development (we can happily discuss the Battery "event" - just as one example), heck, for starters, you might just want to ask anyone about NIs file browser attempts. Or about resizeable interfaces. Or about VST3.
And no, all these aren't things I'm making up, the relevant forums (including your own) are full of all that.
In a nutshell, there's plenty of users who aren't happy with the way NI treats them.
All those legal aspects are now only brought up because finally there's a handle to actually grab NI by their balls - which there wasn't previously.

Having said that, I don't think this case can be sufficiently settled by whatever "hey, what about you just chose a free library or other product?" actions. Might work with some people, but there might still be some folks bringing up the EULAs of the affected products at any time.
To me, it looks as if NI has absolutely no other option than to comply what's written in their EULAs.
And even in case you do, you would still have to seriously reconsider your "public relation" actions to avoid larger damage.

[bharris22]

That's actually not accurate. For example, as soon as you login to Native Access you accept our EULA. You can find the mention on top of your login screen.
Also I'm not sure anyone here has access to EULA they agreed upon back in 2000.

I'm presuming this is why the NI lawyers felt they were ok to go ahead with this, that by moving the goalposts when changing the EULA they concluded that no further action would be required on NI's part. I doubt that's very robust legally, but the point is that it would need to be challenged in court which they knew is quite unlikely due to the eye-watering costs involved for anyone wanting to bring a suit.

BUT. What does seem to have changed is the company has realised the knock on effects of this decision for their customers are much more significant than they initially realised. And in the end, if the motivation is genuine concern for their reputation and customer relations, that's a better motive than the threat of legal action anyway.

General observation - much of this thread is still arguing and positing things that are no longer relevant, given NI's change of stance. General prediction - this will continue.

In all honesty, the legality of such decision isn't really why the product teams or myself are addressing this topic at all. We simply didn't realise this would have such an impact (even if obvious for you folks) and want to get everyone's feedback so we can find suitable solutions for all.

But shouldn't that play at least a part in the decision? The EULA language is very clear, and NI agreed to provide alternative methods of activation for every single person who owns a license for one of these products (including me). As another poster noted previously, if you are not even going to consider the effect of the EULA language on your obligations in this case, why should any user think that NI will ever consider itself bound by any EULA language, whether in previous EULAs or in the current EULA? For that matter, why should users ever consider themselves bound by NI's EULA language?

Not that I would ever do this, or have the technical knowledge to do so, but by saying you are ignoring the EULA language regarding NI's obligation to provide continued authorization of the product, you are opening the door to a claim of anticipatory breach of the EULA. NI should not be heard to complain, then, once cracked versions of all these products start flooding the internet.

[Vertion]

It’s very simple. We as customers buy our audio tools to own. Any kind of additional controls to our access of our audio tools is done through trust alone.

If someone said, “If you wanna keep using your audio tools, you gotta keep paying me.” Then my ability to use them is conditioned, and they never feel like they could ever be mine.

If someone said, “You are no longer allowed to use your audio tools, simply because I said so.” Then they were never mine to begin with, and I lose all access to them. If I paid, that investment vanishes.

On the other hand, I can buy a hardware synth, and there are no such issues of ownership and control for me to worry about. Mine from start to end, paying only once.

A smart company might spin it that such abandoned plugins are simply released as unsupported freeware, not unlike the softsynth Surge. Turning a betrayal into a celebration.

But what do I know?

[0degree]

Although I'm not affected (this time) it really worries me about some other products which I might lose access to. What happens if NI decides that Absynth 5 or FM8 are too old and troublesome to maintain (hello non resizable UIs...) and just cuts them off?

[HypersonicNinja]

Although I'm not affected (this time) it really worries me about some other products which I might lose access to. What happens if NI decides that Absynth 5 or FM8 are too old and troublesome to maintain (hello non resizable UIs...) and just cuts them off?

Agreed, it's a big part of the reason why I chose not to upgrade to the latest version of Komplete in last year's "Summer of Sound" sale.

[Broken]

Any software NI are no longer going to support should have the CP removed and be offered for free download.

While I agree this is something we could investigate for our own products, the list we provided also contains Kontakt libraries from other vendors. We wouldn't be able to provide free downloads for 3rd party instruments as you can imagine and most of the products (if not all) have already reached end of life on the manufacturer's side.

Yes, I was referring more to software than libraries. And even then I think it's only really worth offering a free download on discontinued products that don't have an upgrade path. After all, it's not like NI haven't given plenty of opportunities to buy upgrades at a steep discount.

[Gamma-UT]

Although I'm not affected (this time) it really worries me about some other products which I might lose access to. What happens if NI decides that Absynth 5 or FM8 are too old and troublesome to maintain (hello non resizable UIs...) and just cuts them off?

That's been a reality with NI since forever. But you can at least keep them going on machines that don't receive updates - that is, using a slave PC or Mac as an outboard sound module.

The problem with this announcement is that it's all about the copy protection and nothing to do with the core function of the product. NI can't be bothered to keep the C/R service running and, until it ran into resistance publicly, was unbothered about providing a workable alternative.

And who knows what will happen to Native Access when management decide that's too onerous to maintain and they need some other system for their new products.

[0degree]

Although I'm not affected (this time) it really worries me about some other products which I might lose access to. What happens if NI decides that Absynth 5 or FM8 are too old and troublesome to maintain (hello non resizable UIs...) and just cuts them off?

That's been a reality with NI since forever. But you can at least keep them going on machines that don't receive updates - that is, using a slave PC or Mac as an outboard sound module.

The problem with this announcement is that it's all about the copy protection and nothing to do with the core function of the product. NI can't be bothered to keep the C/R service running and, until it ran into resistance publicly, was unbothered about providing a workable alternative.

And who knows what will happen to Native Access when management decide that's too onerous to maintain and they need some other system for their new products.

Yes, agreed. By "cutting off" I meant cutting off from activation and making them useless. I don't expect them to support ages old plugins

[revvy]

For me, I've not lost anything yet but I now look at my Kore libraries and worry. And yes, it does make me less likely to buy NI in future.

And to that bizarre guy who keeps slagging off customers who own old shit for being tight - I own old stuff by NI, like Kore, that cannot be somehow updated. But I also have bought newer NI stuff too, just last weekend in fact. See, not mutually exclusive.

[JJ_Jettflow]

Although I'm not affected (this time) it really worries me about some other products which I might lose access to. What happens if NI decides that Absynth 5 or FM8 are too old and troublesome to maintain (hello non resizable UIs...) and just cuts them off?

So you can't see the difference between current products and obsolete products? When was the last time any of the products they are discontinuing were available to purchase? Most of them are older versions of current products and the others have not been available for some time.