Acustica Audio still does not allow license transfers and violates European laws

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

A friend today told me the user is authorized to "crack" the software if the protection is invasive. Go figure.

that's not really what the law says. it basically says that it is legal to bypass protection that puts unreasonable restrictions on the consumer. for example, if you rip CSS-protected DVD's, you're technically violating the law, even though you own the DVD and you're creating a copy for your own use. AFAIK it is also permissible to bypass protection if the goal is compatibility (i.e. you can't forbid anyone from using third-party printer cartridges, even if the manufacturer disagrees) or, say, preserving software history (running old software on an emulator).

and i think this is how it should be. the goal is not to make cracking fair game, but to allow licensed user to actually use his product in a way that does not infringe on his rights as a consumer, and to allow preserving usage for things that can't be used legally any more. i fully support such laws. you can't just say "i say it should be thus" and expect it to be a valid agreement between yourself and the user.

This is not the point. A lot of things could be fixed since bigger companies have more resources for overcoming them, while small developers should accept this idiocracy.
My bank is changing my contracts unilaterally and continuously after we both signed them, and if you really care about your rights you should never accept what you agree when you buy an iPhone, you register on Instagram or Facebook. It's easy to say that a developer should "do" a thing, when simply creating a time expiring license set back everything to a different rule, no rights to sell items. As you can see, you "think" you have rights, but the bigger and the smarter wins. Your war is against someone like you, who is basically trying to starve.

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

I wish some more developers would chime in. It'd be interesting to know where they all fall on this law.

One of them suggested the "expiring license trick". That's interesting. Anyway we'll not follow the shortcut, I have more interesting things to do in my day than explaining it is a perfectly legal solution. As side note, if a developer doesn't allow subscription transfer it could be legal. Think about it.

[cfanyc]

Mr Z,

posting publicly about schemes intended to bypass the requirements of the law
is not helping your case with existing customers, with prospective customers, or
in a future litigation (if such happens).

Also: what strategy for bypassing the requirements of the law you think
is legal means zilch. Legal is what the court will decide is legal. And courts
are not idiots. And they routinely fine huge companies (eg Google, BP) astronomical sums,
and they also routinely send principals (eg Uber europe, Maddof) to prison.

So , I suggest that it is better to spend your energy to re-instate the license transfers because it is
2 years too late already.

[ATN69]

AA is like the United Airlines of the software industry, and with Sean Spicer as a spokes person.

[Fleer]

They of all people understand what it means to run a business. Talk to them. You'll find they're actually quite collaborative.

What makes you say this? I know in the US, professional politicians are exactly that. Professional politicians. They don't live in the private sector in almost any way.

Experience. It's way too easy to label these people as non-responsive. I for one know several of them and also know they're deeply interested in finetuning legislation by interacting with entrepreneurs. We may all easily deride EU and other politicians. But when we do, we're neither intelligent nor cooperative. It is the simpleton's way, I'll admit that. But also quite stale and uninteresting. Much better to interact and work at it together.
Remember, "quand les dégoutés s'en vont, il n'y a que les dégoutants qui restent".

[Armagibbon]

Simplest thing is to tie licenses to accounts and re-installing and updating prompts re-activation. Licenses live in the account and big daddy dev can decide whenever he wants to kill it. Like if the license was bought by some thieving shithead who sells it off to a patsy? That patsy now won't have a functioning license in their account because daddy was a responsible businessman who kept track of what licenses he sold and to whom so he can use a kill switch on that bad boy when shit hits the fan.

You don't even have to skirt the law to do it! Wowee what a bargain!

Even if licence transfers are legally enforced, iirc trading stolen goods is illegal everywhere in the same way. You surrender that shit and you're not entitled to compensation just because you paid for it. No stolen license for you! Gotta get your money back from the jackoff that stole it right?

[JJ_Jettflow]

Just want to chime in here and say that in my dealings with Acustica Audio, I ran into some issues but in the end I feel that I was more than compensated for the mix-up and am more than satisfied with the customer support I received. I did not find their communications terse but then I also am smart enough to realize that AA is located in Italy and that the last time I checked, English was not the official first language there.

I believe Giancarlo said that if you didn't like the way he runs his company, then don't deal with him and I think ultimately that is what it comes down to. If his company suffers because of that, then that is his business too.

If I was not mistaken, I believe Giancarlo hinted at perhaps a subscription model and if that's the case, sign me up now.

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

Simplest thing is to tie licenses to accounts and re-installing and updating prompts re-activation. Licenses live in the account and big daddy dev can decide whenever he wants to kill it. Like if the license was bought by some thieving shithead who sells it off to a patsy? That patsy now won't have a functioning license in their account because daddy was a responsible businessman who kept track of what licenses he sold and to whom so he can use a kill switch on that bad boy when shit hits the fan.

You don't even have to skirt the law to do it! Wowee what a bargain!

Even if licence transfers are legally enforced, iirc trading stolen goods is illegal everywhere in the same way. You surrender that shit and you're not entitled to compensation just because you paid for it. No stolen license for you! Gotta get your money back from the jackoff that stole it right?

Your suggestion is exactly the actual situation. Licenses are tied to accounts, in the way you describe.

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

Mr Z,

posting publicly about schemes intended to bypass the requirements of the law
is not helping your case with existing customers, with prospective customers, or
in a future litigation (if such happens).

Also: what strategy for bypassing the requirements of the law you think
is legal means zilch. Legal is what the court will decide is legal. And courts
are not idiots. And they routinely fine huge companies (eg Google, BP) astronomical sums,
and they also routinely send principals (eg Uber europe, Maddof) to prison.

So , I suggest that it is better to spend your energy to re-instate the license transfers because it is
2 years too late already.

You are missing a lot of points here.
First of all I don't believe I'll be ever in JAIL because poshook cannot sell a 100-200 dollars SOFTWARE LICENSE. The case which leaded to the current situation in EU is a bit controversial by itself.

Secondly, I suggested a solution which I think is fair, we'll maybe announce it officially on Monday.

Third, we are speaking about the transfer of items between account, but poshook has several ways for selling his account, the whole computer or whatever with our current license model, so if you analyze the situation a little bit it is not black/white like someone is describing. You move it to a court and maybe you realize that the presumed violation is not obvious. For example we never denied a new license till today; possibly poshook could still generate a license to the new buyer, he has in his account maybe more license slots then the ones he bought (we added 3 new license slots to all acqua owners automatically, they bought 2).

4th, like I described, there are easy ways today used by software developers for fixing this case. They work because we are speaking about software. Basically we could stop license transfers at all, and we could be on the right side.

5th, we never denied anything to someone contacting us politely and making a request, even if they are not the norm. We do things on daily basis: sofware exchange, adding number of slots, and even item transfers. There is something officially not supported, but normally we try to satisfy the customer. So when you move things to a court, they are less black and white then what you would expect, because we HAVE cases of license transfer.

[dreamvoid]

Simplest thing is to tie licenses to accounts and re-installing and updating prompts re-activation. Licenses live in the account and big daddy dev can decide whenever he wants to kill it.

There is no "big daddy" - just laws and business ethics. I buy a lot of plug in licenses. These licenses are my personal property and are NOT under control of the vendor/developer or anybody else but protected by law, like my hardware I paid for too. For a payed software license the maker has to make sure you can use your license, as the usage is what you paid for. Because there are assholes using cracked software and criminals doing PayPal hacks or whatever, there is IMO absolutely no legal right to use the technical handling of licenses to blackmail people to surrender to a companies will. The opposite should be true: doing everything for the legal users to use their property as seamless as they can. Those users come again and buy more licenses. This said and read partly what was going on here, I wouldn't purchase a license from Acoustica Audio.

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

Which part don't you like, maybe the fact we try to satisfy the customer in every possible way?

[Armagibbon]

Simplest thing is to tie licenses to accounts and re-installing and updating prompts re-activation. Licenses live in the account and big daddy dev can decide whenever he wants to kill it.

There is no "big daddy" - just laws and business ethics. I buy a lot of plug in licenses. These licenses are my personal property and are NOT under control of the vendor/developer or anybody else but protected by law, like my hardware I paid for too. For a payed software license the maker has to make sure you can use your license, as the usage is what you paid for.

Yea well licenses are contracts that get a little funny when it comes down to who really owns what or has rights to use what and how.

Big daddy is the licensor. In whatever capacity that grants them rights to end it, that's what they've got. Could be different how that is for every country. Not gonna pretend to know.

[Armagibbon]

Simplest thing is to tie licenses to accounts and re-installing and updating prompts re-activation. Licenses live in the account and big daddy dev can decide whenever he wants to kill it. Like if the license was bought by some thieving shithead who sells it off to a patsy? That patsy now won't have a functioning license in their account because daddy was a responsible businessman who kept track of what licenses he sold and to whom so he can use a kill switch on that bad boy when shit hits the fan.

You don't even have to skirt the law to do it! Wowee what a bargain!

Even if licence transfers are legally enforced, iirc trading stolen goods is illegal everywhere in the same way. You surrender that shit and you're not entitled to compensation just because you paid for it. No stolen license for you! Gotta get your money back from the jackoff that stole it right?

Your suggestion is exactly the actual situation. Licenses are tied to accounts, in the way you describe.

Hey if that's how it is, then I don't get why transfers aren't possible. I was reading the thread and picked up that you wouldn't allow license transfers because someone could use bogus info to buy it and sell it off cheap. Like you couldn't do anything about it after the fact? But if it works like you say, that stops it dead.

I mean you know what licenses are the bad ones and you can just invalidate em. Some limp wristed douchenozzle steals paypal info and grabs a license? Boom. Turn it off and the guy who installs it misses out on all the updates and can never re-install without buying it legit. I dunno what the problem is...

[cfanyc]

Mr Z,

posting publicly about schemes intended to bypass the requirements of the law
is not helping your case with existing customers, with prospective customers, or
in a future litigation (if such happens).

Also: what strategy for bypassing the requirements of the law you think
is legal means zilch. Legal is what the court will decide is legal. And courts
are not idiots. And they routinely fine huge companies (eg Google, BP) astronomical sums,
and they also routinely send principals (eg Uber europe, Maddof) to prison.

So , I suggest that it is better to spend your energy to re-instate the license transfers because it is
2 years too late already.

You are missing a lot of points here.
First of all I don't believe I'll be ever in JAIL because poshook cannot sell a 100-200 dollars SOFTWARE LICENSE. The case which leaded to the current situation in EU is a bit controversial by itself.

Secondly, I suggested a solution which I think is fair, we'll maybe announce it officially on Monday.

Third, we are speaking about the transfer of items between account, but poshook has several ways for selling his account, the whole computer or whatever with our current license model, so if you analyze the situation a little bit it is not black/white like someone is describing. You move it to a court and maybe you realize that the presumed violation is not obvious. For example we never denied a new license till today; possibly poshook could still generate a license to the new buyer, he has in his account maybe more license slots then the ones he bought (we added 3 new license slots to all acqua owners automatically, they bought 2).

4th, like I described, there are easy ways today used by software developers for fixing this case. They work because we are speaking about software. Basically we could stop license transfers at all, and we could be on the right side.

5th, we never denied anything to someone contacting us politely and making a request, even if they are not the norm. We do things on daily basis: sofware exchange, adding number of slots, and even item transfers. There is something officially not supported, but normally we try to satisfy the customer. So when you move things to a court, they are less black and white then what you would expect, because we HAVE cases of license transfer.

you are full of BS. With all due respect of course...

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

Generally when someone doesn't know what to reply tries to call everything bs.

With all due respect, of course, nothing personal.