PSA: Plugin Visuals selling pirated soundsets

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

If developers do not start to provide any kind of protection for sound designers,it's more enthusiasm,than a business

To be truly effective, a copy protection mechanism must be onerous for the customer (e.g. iLok). Everything else gets pirated in the end. For my software products I choose to employ only very basic copy protection.

Although sound design and plugin development is only a part-time income for me, I believe it's very possible to earn a good living from it, even without copy protection.

My only aim is to make it difficult for genuine customers to stumble on pirated versions of my products, so they are not tempted down the dark path. It is frustrating to see links to pirated copies of my software appearing in Google's search results. IMO domains that are repeat offenders should be permanently removed from search engines, rather than copyright holders having to issue takedown requests again and again.

My idea was something simple - for example when i save sound bank to lock it with password and each individual user to have individual code,so when is illegally uploaded i will know which copy and owner is.
Or something simple like that,shouldn't be so difficult for developers to apply it,it's another story do they care about that
The bigger problem i think is that presets and sound banks are not intellectual property by default - nobody could copyright them and all pdf licenses are bubbles.
I guess sound design wasn't suppost to be bussines, but individual work of artists.
I personally am happy to do it for myself,don't care about business ,prefer to be donation man to man.
Cheers

[Cyforce]

The hole thing, not only this new (2) websites, is sooo frustating for sound-designers. Not only the Ebay issue since years, mainly the big websites "distributing" illegal copies in large scale... and now also people selling... this ilegal copies.

But sounddesigns can`t really do much about it. The content is very easy to share, mainly through filesize (compared to e.g. big sample packs), no copy protection possible... And even "trying" to (as someone mentioned kind of) marking every single copy, wont help. On one hand, not possible technical / or without a high amount of extra work-time, and even if still marked/numbers or so - if the one copy landing on such site, but the original buyer is from lets say Peru, Belarus or so - hard to send your lawyer to him, with different country/law sets in play. And on the other hand, if you sell your content via external distributors (Loopmasters, Producerloops etc) you can`t make/modify the content to deliver it to each customer yourself.

The only real option is, to make use of companies, who daily look for ilegal uploads and erase them (try to make them all be deleted)... cost money, but saves a lot of your own time (compared to doing it by yourself) and lowers the illegal distribution

I personally don`t understand the motivation of many of these people, who share/sell others content illegaly. Some call it even "promoting"... But how would they feel, if someone, "promote-steal" some of their paycheck?...

[Cyforce]

People who sell patch banks: subtly misspell one word per bank sold and track whose is whose. The pirate will not notice until it is far too late. Let's make these pirates a little par@ni0d, yu n0?

Little addon, about such things. I personally tried this way back in time myself, by adding/editing values of a soundset file (for Sylenth1 i think it was), but 2 core problems coming withit:

1) The amount of extra work, making, delivering, trackig if something appears somewhere etc (+ even if tracked/identified, you can`t do much about it, because it won`t count as proof for legal steps against the one origin customer in that scenario)

2) The content/soundset file may work... but only may. With even just a simple FXB with 4 numbers changed, worked fine in Logic, Cubase, Live in terms of loading the bank, but somehow not in other enviroments like MiniHost or so it was... meaning - customers (who may use a DAW which don`t work with such edited files) will have a bad experience, like "buy soundset -> loading it -> dont work -> unhappy customer" ....

[Biome_Digital]

The hole thing, not only this new (2) websites, is sooo frustating for sound-designers. Not only the Ebay issue since years, mainly the big websites "distributing" illegal copies in large scale... and now also people selling... this ilegal copies.

But sounddesigns can`t really do much about it. The content is very easy to share, mainly through filesize (compared to e.g. big sample packs), no copy protection possible... And even "trying" to (as someone mentioned kind of) marking every single copy, wont help. On one hand, not possible technical / or without a high amount of extra work-time, and even if still marked/numbers or so - if the one copy landing on such site, but the original buyer is from lets say Peru, Belarus or so - hard to send your lawyer to him, with different country/law sets in play. And on the other hand, if you sell your content via external distributors (Loopmasters, Producerloops etc) you can`t make/modify the content to deliver it to each customer yourself.

The only real option is, to make use of companies, who daily look for ilegal uploads and erase them (try to make them all be deleted)... cost money, but saves a lot of your own time (compared to doing it by yourself) and lowers the illegal distribution

I personally don`t understand the motivation of many of these people, who share/sell others content illegaly. Some call it even "promoting"... But how would they feel, if someone, "promote-steal" some of their paycheck?...

What companies do you recommend?

[arkmabat]

If developers do not start to provide any kind of protection for sound designers,it's more enthusiasm,than a business

To be truly effective, a copy protection mechanism must be onerous for the customer (e.g. iLok). Everything else gets pirated in the end. For my software products I choose to employ only very basic copy protection.

Although sound design and plugin development is only a part-time income for me, I believe it's very possible to earn a good living from it, even without copy protection.

My only aim is to make it difficult for genuine customers to stumble on pirated versions of my products, so they are not tempted down the dark path. It is frustrating to see links to pirated copies of my software appearing in Google's search results. IMO domains that are repeat offenders should be permanently removed from search engines, rather than copyright holders having to issue takedown requests again and again.

My idea was something simple - for example when i save sound bank to lock it with password and each individual user to have individual code,so when is illegally uploaded i will know which copy and owner is.
Or something simple like that,shouldn't be so difficult for developers to apply it,it's another story do they care about that
The bigger problem i think is that presets and sound banks are not intellectual property by default - nobody could copyright them and all pdf licenses are bubbles.
I guess sound design wasn't suppost to be bussines, but individual work of artists.
I personally am happy to do it for myself,don't care about business ,prefer to be donation man to man.
Cheers

Integrate them into a patented/copyrighted installer with a password. Add music to it that's copyrighted. Done. Yes, the soundbank can be extracted, but now they are reverse engineering your patented product.

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

entire sound design business is just enthusiasm :)Prefer to keep it this way and to enjoy doing it
Just note obvious issues,which could be fixed by developers and make designers work more protected.
My goal is to have fun making nice sound,not to discover new planets
Cheers

[Luftrum]

Pirating soundsets is one thing (and not a good thing either), but selling pirated soundsets is next level assholery.

Exactly this! Piracy doesn't normally crawl under my skin tbh, simply because it's out of my control anyway, but this kind of leeching does.

[Bastiaan from Tone2.com]

If developers do not start to provide any kind of protection for sound designers,it's more enthusiasm,than a business

To be truly effective, a copy protection mechanism must be onerous for the customer (e.g. iLok). Everything else gets pirated in the end. For my software products I choose to employ only very basic copy protection.

Although sound design and plugin development is only a part-time income for me, I believe it's very possible to earn a good living from it, even without copy protection.

My only aim is to make it difficult for genuine customers to stumble on pirated versions of my products, so they are not tempted down the dark path. It is frustrating to see links to pirated copies of my software appearing in Google's search results. IMO domains that are repeat offenders should be permanently removed from search engines, rather than copyright holders having to issue takedown requests again and again.

My idea was something simple - for example when i save sound bank to lock it with password and each individual user to have individual code,so when is illegally uploaded i will know which copy and owner is.
Or something simple like that,shouldn't be so difficult for developers to apply it,it's another story do they care about that
The bigger problem i think is that presets and sound banks are not intellectual property by default - nobody could copyright them and all pdf licenses are bubbles.
I guess sound design wasn't suppost to be bussines, but individual work of artists.
I personally am happy to do it for myself,don't care about business ,prefer to be donation man to man.
Cheers

Integrate them into a patented/copyrighted installer with a password. Add music to it that's copyrighted. Done. Yes, the soundbank can be extracted, but now they are reverse engineering your patented product.

That may sound like a viable option but what you need to understand is that most (a lot) of this scene releases are purchased with stolen credit cards. So the data you get from watermarks or other ways to ID a release is pretty much useless.
I've done my share of hunting down releases, having to deal with people who somehow blame you for their credit card being (ab)used to pay for your software, as well as emailing those who obviously shared your product, most of it being a real big timewaster as well frustrating to deal with.
The best way is indeed trying to get rid of releases yourself or hire someone to do it for you, and even then it's still a bit of hit or miss with DMCAs.

The whole thing's just sad really but I guess that's how it goes, most scene releasers / uploaders simply do it to build a rep and don't care diddly-squat about the people behind the stuff they release.

[bagpipe200]

Curious what "scene releases" and "scene releasers" mean in your post? I haven't come across that term before.

If developers do not start to provide any kind of protection for sound designers,it's more enthusiasm,than a business

That may sound like a viable option but what you need to understand is that most (a lot) of this scene releases are purchased with stolen credit cards. So the data you get from watermarks or other ways to ID a release is pretty much useless.
I've done my share of hunting down releases, having to deal with people who somehow blame you for their credit card being (ab)used to pay for your software, as well as emailing those who obviously shared your product, most of it being a real big timewaster as well frustrating to deal with.
The best way is indeed trying to get rid of releases yourself or hire someone to do it for you, and even then it's still a bit of hit or miss with DMCAs.

The whole thing's just sad really but I guess that's how it goes, most scene releasers / uploaders simply do it to build a rep and don't care diddly-squat about the people behind the stuff they release.

[arkmabat]

A scene is an organized group that steals software through a coordinated effort and then illegally distributes it. Reminder: you never know what you're getting. There's incentive for something like spyware, a computation offloader, or a crypto miner to be tacked onto the pirated software, and you may never know. Downloading pirated executables is really not worth the risk and they hurt developers trying to bring us good products. For example, Nine Volt Audio is gone forever as a result, who made the Taiko drum samples used in Tron: Legacy.

Article on a real-life example of injected spyware, unnoticed for nearly a year:
https://torrentfreak.com/piracy-release ... hs-131111/

[Cyforce]

What companies do you recommend?

https://tracksaur.com/

entire sound design business is just enthusiasm :)Prefer to keep it this way and to enjoy doing it
...

Well, if it's your income/job - then unfortunately you can't see it so relaxed

Pirating soundsets is one thing (and not a good thing either), but selling pirated soundsets is next level assholery.

Exactly this! Piracy doesn't normally crawl under my skin tbh, simply because it's out of my control anyway, but this kind of leeching does.

Some guys went even further. I remember a guy, who basicly took ~15 soundsets from others (Loopmasters, Zenhiser, some of mine, and others), cutted pieces of the demo tracks out, glued it into a new demo, and sold the preset package a "new" product - completely stating that everything is 100% his and he created everything etc. But even in such cases with good evidence, it`s hard to do much against it, when it turns out to be a teenager (international law, age, etc ....) who doesn't know the difference between stealing and doing something yourself ... or more likely pretending to be that kind of "unaware"...... sick shit, heavily frustating. Stealing others work is bad enough, but steal and re-sell is even more frustating and motivation-eating.

[Biome_Digital]

What companies do you recommend?

https://tracksaur.com/

entire sound design business is just enthusiasm :)Prefer to keep it this way and to enjoy doing it
...

Well, if it's your income/job - then unfortunately you can't see it so relaxed

Pirating soundsets is one thing (and not a good thing either), but selling pirated soundsets is next level assholery.

Exactly this! Piracy doesn't normally crawl under my skin tbh, simply because it's out of my control anyway, but this kind of leeching does.

Some guys went even further. I remember a guy, who basicly took ~15 soundsets from others (Loopmasters, Zenhiser, some of mine, and others), cutted pieces of the demo tracks out, glued it into a new demo, and sold the preset package a "new" product - completely stating that everything is 100% his and he created everything etc. But even in such cases with good evidence, it`s hard to do much against it, when it turns out to be a teenager (international law, age, etc ....) who doesn't know the difference between stealing and doing something yourself ... or more likely pretending to be that kind of "unaware"...... sick shit, heavily frustating. Stealing others work is bad enough, but steal and re-sell is even more frustating and motivation-eating.

Thanks for that. Have you had much success with them? I did use audio lock.

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

it's enough to change few parameters of someboby's hard work and everybody could claim that's new preset,which by accident is 'almost' the same as other ...
So it's more having fun making interesting sound and if somebody like it enough so to donate/buy something that's cool,otherwise just practicing your hobby
That's entire music 'industry' these days
It's nice when people support d art they love,but reality is u can't rely your hobby to give you a solid salary
Cheers