Plugins You Won't Buy Because Of Their Copy Protection / Issues

[gaggle of hermits]

Id never let some copy protection stop me from getting what I want.

i remember back in the day, universal audio deliberately corrupting the CD bitstream on their discs as a form of copy protection. that did stop me getting what i wanted because half the time the CDs were unplayable in a regular CD player.

ironically, they'd often rip successfully to mp3 in a computer's drive (even though the data corruption was meant to mess up the computer's drive – a lot depended on who made the drive and how robust it was when it had a lot of errors thrown at it).

i also have some plugins that can no longer be authorised because the C/R server has gone dark or because they were machine locked and the company has stopped supporting them.

I have hardware that wears out and no one to repair it anymore.

You win some. You lose some.

This isn't an investment, it's software tools. Things need replacing.

i'm just pointing out that copy protection can indeed stop you getting what you want. some whataboutism isn't going to help you.

[equisonus]

Hit’n’Mix RipX needs to call home every 5th time it’s started or it gets deactivated. On the 4th run with Internet switched off user gets warning that they need to go online, else they will not be able to use it. It’s a stupid choice of copy protection for a software whose stem unmixing tool is based on the free open source Demucs. Getting that instead of RipX DeepRemix might be a better and free option.

What??

Oh dear , that was on my radar. Damn, rubbish system.

And they also don’t give you the chance to sell your unused RipX and that’s against the EU law, but of course they are happy to sell their plugins to EU customers. I was thinking about what was the chance to make them comply with EU law…

[vitocorleone123]

Id never let some copy protection stop me from getting what I want.

i remember back in the day, universal audio deliberately corrupting the CD bitstream on their discs as a form of copy protection. that did stop me getting what i wanted because half the time the CDs were unplayable in a regular CD player.

ironically, they'd often rip successfully to mp3 in a computer's drive (even though the data corruption was meant to mess up the computer's drive – a lot depended on who made the drive and how robust it was when it had a lot of errors thrown at it).

i also have some plugins that can no longer be authorised because the C/R server has gone dark or because they were machine locked and the company has stopped supporting them.

I have hardware that wears out and no one to repair it anymore.

You win some. You lose some.

This isn't an investment, it's software tools. Things need replacing.

i'm just pointing out that copy protection can indeed stop you getting what you want. some whataboutism isn't going to help you.

I’ll just point out that it seems to have stopped you, not me. So you crying about it won’t help anyone else.

[gaggle of hermits]

whoosh. seriously, how many times can you miss the point?

[Frankie.T]

What happened with Waves it's a real world example on how bad it can turn if you don't have the control of your purchases (ilok, servers, CR...)
Now you must go SUBS if you want newer versions, and this may be a problem for newer daw, os that may require a more recent version

[equisonus]

What happened with Waves it's a real world example on how bad it can turn if you don't have the control of your purchases (ilok, servers, CR...)
Now you must go SUBS if you want newer versions, and this may be a problem for newer daw, os that may require a more recent version

What Waves Audio did is money-grab.
Sadly that’s still possible that a company that’s not using iLok, login, C/R authorization decided out of the blue to move to subscription model and from their next version to switch to a new authorization method eg. login. Sadly we are at the mercy of all these developers, doing their best to extract the maximum possible profit.

[Frankie.T]

Unfortunatly what you say it's true. There are more hope if a devs decided to stay more customer friendly, to continue that way. In any case, at least we still have a fully working installer with a proper SN to use, that should works hopefully for the coming years. Ofc when something like that happens searching for a proper alternative it's a good move imo

[equisonus]

Thankfully I don’t have a single Waves plugin and was mostly buying plugins that have simple key/keyfile offline authorization for the last three years with the only exception of Steinberg Cubase, WaveLab, SpectraLayers, iZotope RX and Nugen Focus bundle which require online authorization (but no Internet required to be useful before next reinstall). I’m only using about 50 plugins so I’ll probably stick to the same strategy in future - avoiding software that needs sub, iLok, online access to function. I hope that Waves Audio learn their lesson the hard way

[yobare]

Ik multimedia.

[rod_zero]

With how things are going I might just use my DAW native plug ins and call it a day.

[musicproducerdee]

anything with iLok. Although I might make an exception for UVI Falcon, if I do.