Superwave is back, Tarkus released !?

[james0tucson]

Ok.
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... sc&start=0

Shit happens, even to developers. You'll take note the C/R protection has been replaced with a straight serial.

Shit happens ? Wasn't that Bernie Maddoffs defense ?

Are you for real ?

You know they kept on selling their shit with no means of installing it after purchase ? And this went on for years. That's not shit, that's fraud.

I know this is old, old news but I never saw a resolution to it.

The problem with your assertion is that YOU are not claiming that someone committed fraud against YOU. I remember a lot of speculation, but I don't remember anyone who was actually damaged, who seemed to be the least bit willing to take action.

I finally decided that the assertion that the company was taking payment for a product but not delivering it, was false. I never saw any real evidence.

[Dj Orbit]

With the new registration process this will never happen again as long as you keep the serial number in a safe place, if you update your computer you can just simply install the synths again using the new serial number and can install on as many pc's for your own use, chris has worked hard to get superwave back on its feet and has endeavoured to sort out new registrations for people who email him, although people felt aggreived about this i do believe that everybody deserves a second chance and now with the new registration process makes purchasing synths from superwave a no brainer! Hope this helps!

Thanks Martin

[xybre]

Best as I understand it, SW was using a challenge/response mechanism, so people who tried to reauthorize after the server went down couldn't validate. Of course this is why DRM sucks for legit users. A google search will return 5 million hits for superwave plugins that are cracked. So in the end the users got screwed, as with every other company that has had problems or disabled their license servers.

Since SW came back they've used serials, so that can't happen again (unless you lose your serial). I'm not saying it makes everything better for those people who felt screwed, but I don't think it was ever the intention to screw anyone over.

Now, there are some companies in recent KVR news that seem to truly have been trying to screw over customers and other businesses. There is no malice with Superwave that I can see.

edit: Dj Orbit beat me to the punch one some of my points

[james0tucson]

In the past, I had emailed them dozens of times and NEVER got a response - and neither did anyone else - for YEARS. That is why the before and after.

Mike

I look at it this way: What do you think would happen to YOU, if YOU made a site to take money and deliver nothing, advertised it on KVR, and engendered so many complaints that it became a serious problem?

Do you think the admins of KVR would leave your ad up? Put a warning on it? Take any action whatsoever?

I want answers, simply because I was subjected to the drama for so long.

One of the big questions I want an answer to: if so many people were literally ripped off by this guy, why was there never the smallest legal action? We had the guy's address, nobody even went there to see if he was alive or dead. Supposedly there was clear evidence of criminal fraud, but nobody ever so much as filed a police report, or even got a refund via a credit card company (a perfunctory action that's automatic if the merchant cannot contact the account holder).

There are many elements to this drama that never made one bit of sense to me.

[jupiter8]

Ok.
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... sc&start=0

Shit happens, even to developers. You'll take note the C/R protection has been replaced with a straight serial.

Shit happens ? Wasn't that Bernie Maddoffs defense ?

Are you for real ?

You know they kept on selling their shit with no means of installing it after purchase ? And this went on for years. That's not shit, that's fraud.

I know this is old, old news but I never saw a resolution to it.

The problem with your assertion is that YOU are not claiming that someone committed fraud against YOU. I remember a lot of speculation, but I don't remember anyone who was actually damaged, who seemed to be the least bit willing to take action.

I finally decided that the assertion that the company was taking payment for a product but not delivering it, was false. I never saw any real evidence.

Ok. 29th of June 2007 you were of a different persuasion:

It's clear that the Superwave folks are committing fraud. I wonder what happens if someone actually presses this case? Can KVR be named as an accessory to the fraud, for knowingly advertising a fraudulent service? I know it's been reported and I know they've been asked to post a warning. This might seem like a small thing, but it's the kind of thing that destroys reputations, and maybe the kind of thing that leads to bankrupting fines and jail time.

[james0tucson]

Ok. 29th of June 2007 you were of a different persuasion:

Yes.

And after that, I never saw a shred of evidence. I also suggested simple approaches that might have led to some resolution for the victims, but nobody was interested.

It would have been as simple as this: Buy the product using a credit card. Notify the credit card company that payment was made, but the product was not delivered. The credit card company would then be unable to contact the merchant account holder, terminate the agreement, reimburse the customer for the fraud, etc.

In the USA, if you can show that the merchant acted in bad faith, you can get a summary judgment for triple the amount of the damages. Trouble with that, is Superwave is in the UK.

As far as I can see, nobody who was actually a victim ever took the slightest action for it. So today, years later, I see no resolution to the matter, and I have decided, in the absence of evidence, that the facts are not necessarily as reported during the drama.

[whyterabbyt]

One of the big questions I want an answer to: if so many people were literally ripped off by this guy, why was there never the smallest legal action?

here's a quick guess; because suing someone in your own country costs money. and suing someone in a different country is probably pretty much impossible.

[f0g]

James, how the company was set up in the UK was an INC.. NOT a LTD, so you couldn't bring them to trading standards OR small claims court.. The people in question also were pretty impossible to track down also. To do that you need to know where they are based and serve them papers / summons them to court etc.

It comes under the "fit for purpose" and "warranty" .. it was NOT fit for purpose as if you changed your PC , it stopped working .. and no where did it state in the contract when you bought it "it will stop working after X amount of time" . What they did was fraudulent , like it or not .. they sold a service / product then vanished... it's breach on contract put simply.

so knowing it wasn't legal and then tracking them down 2 VERY different things. Also the fact you have to know about UK law and how companies etc are setup. Much as I would have issues if I wanted to take legal recourse against a US company, it's far easier being based there.

[james0tucson]

James, how the company was set up in the UK was an INC.. NOT a LTD, so you couldn't bring them to trading standards OR small claims court.. The people in question also were pretty impossible to track down also. To do that you need to know where they are based and serve them papers / summons them to court etc.

It comes under the "fit for purpose" and "warranty" .. it was NOT fit for purpose as if you changed your PC , it stopped working .. and no where did it state in the contract when you bought it "it will stop working after X amount of time" . What they did was fraudulent , like it or not .. they sold a service / product then vanished... it's breach on contract put simply.

so knowing it wasn't legal and then tracking them down 2 VERY different things. Also the fact you have to know about UK law and how companies etc are setup. Much as I would have issues if I wanted to take legal recourse against a US company, it's far easier being based there.

You missed my point:

Buy something on a credit card. If that product or service is simply *not delivered at all*, the *merchant bank* takes action. All this talk about it being impossible or expensive to "sue" is irrelevant.

But that's not what happened, is it? It's something much fuzzier than this. Payment was taken, product was delievered, then product stopped working. That's a whole different situation that the one I was led to believe.

If it had been, it would have been extremely simple to deprive them of the ability to take payments via credit card, and I have personally had a credit card company be *very* aggressive over similar amounts of money.

But the truth is, it was something less serious than the clear-cut case of criminal fraud that it was made out to be in 2007, right?

[xybre]

It comes under the "fit for purpose" and "warranty" .. it was NOT fit for purpose as if you changed your PC , it stopped working .. and no where did it state in the contract when you bought it "it will stop working after X amount of time" . What they did was fraudulent , like it or not .. they sold a service / product then vanished... it's breach on contract put simply.

Many companies have deactivated license servers, small and large. I can only recall two instances where any sort of action was pursued. Once case was WalMart I think, and they provided something to the customers, digital versions of their purchases I believe.

What you're talking about is a license agreement, it constitutes a contract, but mainly outlining the products use by the user, and sometimes certain ways user information may be used by the company. There would probably need to be a guarantee that the user would be able to license the software more than once or that the license servers would be active indefinitely before any such claim of breach of contract could be made.

[james0tucson]

It comes under the "fit for purpose" and "warranty" .. it was NOT fit for purpose as if you changed your PC , it stopped working .. and no where did it state in the contract when you bought it "it will stop working after X amount of time" . What they did was fraudulent , like it or not .. they sold a service / product then vanished... it's breach on contract put simply.

Many companies have deactivated license servers, small and large. I can only recall two instances where any sort of action was pursued. Once case was WalMart I think, and they provided something to the customers, digital versions of their purchases I believe.

What you're talking about is a license agreement, it constitutes a contract, but mainly outlining the products use by the user, and sometimes certain ways user information may be used by the company. There would probably need to be a guarantee that the user would be able to license the software more than once or that the license servers would be active indefinitely before any such claim of breach of contract could be made.

There can't be a license if you don't receive the product to begin with.

But that was really never the case with Superwave, was it?