Which companies have user-friendly copy protection schemes ?

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Reefius wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2019 12:13 pm
Boone777 wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 5:56 pm And suddenly all my Ilok plugins don't work for no apparent reason.
I've had the same problem a while ago. For me it was because I connected an USB bluetooth adapter to my computer, causing iLok to think it was another PC. After removing the bluetooth adapter all my licenses were available again. So I deactivated them, reconnected the bluetooth adapter and then activated my licenses again.
Problem solved :)

Bottom line: did you recently connect any new hardware to your PC? Especially anything network related like a wifi or bluetooth adapter. If so: disconnect, disable iLok licenses, reconnect and re-enable licenses to fix the problem.
Thing is on another portable install (Reaper) on the same pc they work. But not on my main install. The only thing new I plugued is a joystick. I'll try and see.
MXLinux21, 16 Gig RAM, Intel i7 Quad 3.9, Reaper 6.42, Behringer 204HD or Win7 Steinberg MR816x

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When that happens with ilok it can often be fixed by resyncing your licenses. put the ilok in, open ilok manager and log in, right-click the ilok on the left and select synchronize. :phones:

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plexuss wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2019 2:17 pm When that happens with ilok it can often be fixed by resyncing your licenses. put the ilok in, open ilok manager and log in, right-click the ilok on the left and select synchronize. :phones:
synchronize is greyed out.

I used to battle to get eveything working and eventually it worked but after 10 years of plugin hunting I have no fun with this anymore. They will be forgotten and replaced by easy installed and great plugins like Klanghelm and TDR for instance.
MXLinux21, 16 Gig RAM, Intel i7 Quad 3.9, Reaper 6.42, Behringer 204HD or Win7 Steinberg MR816x

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Soundspot plug-ins may be worth a mention, many on big sale at time of writing
Seem to have changed their copy-protection recently, older files were just full installer as DL
Newer have a serial which you can activate on or off line easily. All are saved to your account for future use too.
Can't vouch for the quality, see they're , shall we say...not the most popular KVR
https://www.soundspot.audio

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Boone777 wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2019 5:25 pm
plexuss wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2019 2:17 pm When that happens with ilok it can often be fixed by resyncing your licenses. put the ilok in, open ilok manager and log in, right-click the ilok on the left and select synchronize. :phones:
synchronize is greyed out.
In the iLok Manager did you log in first? Reboot and try it? You can open a support ticket with iLok for help. They helped me a few times. Only if you want to try and sort it out... :phones:

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As I see it you can go ahead with opening tickets and reboot this and that and repeat the whole thing when it occurs the next time, or you can just use other plugins like TDR. Then you can deal with music instead of tickets.

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dermage wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 8:26 pm
hotmitts wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 8:14 pm
JunSev wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 6:02 pm I have to say that there is a very legit and understandable reasons to know what sort of copy protection is used in different softwares..
.. this is an important topic and source of information.
I don't know if I should call it user-friendly, But I take a peaceful and relaxed breathing when I find companies with key file/serial based CP (without need to be tied to a machine that might fail or other very possible case), I love that and my investment will be there always.
Heartily agree! So which Companies would you buy Plug-ins from preferably ?


As far as the USB thing goes, USB drives are a good idea but they often fail. That ain't a problem but in Waves case I think you might be penalised because they should be transferred back to the 'Cloud' in order to be used again ? I may not be correct in this but it's what I heard.
I haven't heard this to be the case with Ilok so that shouldn't be a problem I hope ?!
Wit ilok you lose the "activation" when you either lose or break an ilok key or you wipe your hard disk or you mainboard breaks with soft (computer) activated license. You have to contact each developer of whom you lost an activation.
Same goes for elicenser afaik.

The worst are developers which give only one activation like waves, exponential audio, most (?) from slate, metric halo, mcdsp, drms etc. I dont buy any of these, because even if you only need 1 activation, in the case of broken hw you are fckd, at least until you reached every developer for a new activation. I also try to avoid developers with custom challenge and response. And if I do buy, i make sure, they allow remote deactivation of a license through their web panel, in case I lose an activation.

Btw ilok cloud is the only solution which is temporarily activated and you dont lose it in case of hw error. BUT you have to be always online, or it won't work. Big no-go!
Having recently moved laptops and dealt with pretty much all of these methods, the main difference with iLok and eLicenser (the soft versions at least, don't have dongles) is that with iLok, you have to deactivate on one machine to put the activation back in your account, and then reactivate/transfer it over. For eLicenser you can't deactivate something once it's licensed, but you can ignore the old activation and generate one for a new e-Licenser every... 90 days I think? So if an old machine goes down you can eventually regenerate an activation for a new one rather than it vanishing a la iLok.

Not that I like either version of them... personally, I find that those ones are generally the worst overall, and challenge/response as in a lot of systems can also be problematic. I think that anyone who puts out something with C/R copy protection should be required by law to have some reserve in place that publicly releases a version with the protection removed if the company goes down/discontinues the product.

Directly to the topic, I actually keep a running list myself of which products I have take which kind of copy protection. A lot of them have been listed so far, but I'll post some that might be new:

-sinevibes are direct download/no serial
-WA Production at least some are no serial
-Sugar Bytes are serial I believe
-Audio Vitamins are serial
-Inear Display are serial
-Dmitry Sches used to be serial key, might still be for non-PA stuff

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ztrauq wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2019 8:24 am
....Directly to the topic, I actually keep a running list myself of which products I have take which kind of copy protection. A lot of them have been listed so far, but I'll post some that might be new:

-sinevibes are direct download/no serial
-WA Production at least some are no serial
-Sugar Bytes are serial I believe
-Audio Vitamins are serial
-Inear Display are serial
-Dmitry Sches used to be serial key, might still be for non-PA stuff
Good points, and thank you for sharing your list

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vurt wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 3:02 pm
sjm wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 1:50 pm Worst for me is NI. Get a BSOD whenever I try and install anything through Native Access and support is non-existent. Not happy.
ive never had bsod, but i did for a short time get failures when updating.
i went to "downloads" and found a couple of ni installers half dled, deleted these and smooth sailing.
cant remember the file extension but if eg your reaktor is failing, look for a reaktor file in the downloads folder.
Yeah I've worked around this by aborting the installation, extracting the contents from the installer and manually completing the installation. It's just about viable for a single product; I'm not doing that for all of Komplete though.

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jancivil wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 3:16 pm BSOD tends to indicate hardware issue and NA the canary in the coalmine. In any case that's a pretty extreme outcome just from software installation.
It's some incompatibility with Intel's IAStorA.sys. No other installers from any vendor have any issues and all of the NI installers exhibit this behaviour. So it must be something to do with how the installer is packed and what it does when executed - because as long as you don't run the installer itself, there are no crashes.

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A few years ago I went to a DRM FREE system, so not even a Serial Number any more. IMHO DRM only hurts the legit user and doesn't stop piracy from happening. I remember when NI spent over a million dollars for the DRM system on Reaktor 3, using a special Dongle. It was cracked in 3 days. :shrug:

Cheers, WilliamK

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sjm wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2019 11:47 am
jancivil wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 3:16 pm BSOD tends to indicate hardware issue and NA the canary in the coalmine. In any case that's a pretty extreme outcome just from software installation.
It's some incompatibility with Intel's IAStorA.sys. No other installers from any vendor have any issues and all of the NI installers exhibit this behaviour. So it must be something to do with how the installer is packed and what it does when executed - because as long as you don't run the installer itself, there are no crashes.
Afair NI Access auto-mounts an iso image to a virtual CD/DVD drive and installs from there. I bet the virtual drive's driver interferes somehow.

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plexuss wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2019 10:26 pm
Boone777 wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2019 5:25 pm
plexuss wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2019 2:17 pm When that happens with ilok it can often be fixed by resyncing your licenses. put the ilok in, open ilok manager and log in, right-click the ilok on the left and select synchronize. :phones:
synchronize is greyed out.
In the iLok Manager did you log in first? Reboot and try it? You can open a support ticket with iLok for help. They helped me a few times. Only if you want to try and sort it out... :phones:
I don't need to open tickets with a lot of other good stuff and I'm just tired of messing around and was expecting this to happen anyway. So my Ilok plugins will uselessly rot away while I seek alternatives. Because the transfer fee does'nt allow me to sell anything worth it.
MXLinux21, 16 Gig RAM, Intel i7 Quad 3.9, Reaper 6.42, Behringer 204HD or Win7 Steinberg MR816x

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Boone777 wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2019 1:38 pm I don't need to open tickets with a lot of other good stuff and I'm just tired of messing around and was expecting this to happen anyway. So my Ilok plugins will uselessly rot away while I seek alternatives. Because the transfer fee does'nt allow me to sell anything worth it.
Glad you have it sorted out. :party:

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WilliamK wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2019 12:29 pm A few years ago I went to a DRM FREE system, so not even a Serial Number any more. IMHO DRM only hurts the legit user and doesn't stop piracy from happening. I remember when NI spent over a million dollars for the DRM system on Reaktor 3, using a special Dongle. It was cracked in 3 days. :shrug:

Cheers, WilliamK
It's not about stopping piracy. It's about widening the timespan from the release to the first pirated version, in which the product has its biggest impact and the company can generate income. Good copy protection is also about turning pirates into customers.

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