VSL has now refused to respond to any of my questions. And I quote:
Dear Roger,
I'm sorry to inform you that after speaking with the CEO of the Vienna Symphonic Library about your case, we've decided that we will not be able to respond to you any more regarding this topic because everything has been said already in the eleven emails that we wrote to you until now.
Kind regards,
Stefan Steinbauer
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I would happily make my e-mail exchange with VSL public, should anyone doubt the following: VSL's "eleven emails" in no way, shape, or form address the issues in question. They flatly refuse even to acknowledge that there is an issue to address. Now that, with my 21 True Statements, I have closed off all the ways in which they could sidestep the issues, they have refused to respond.
I ask that anyone who agrees with me send the following to
support@vsl.co.at
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In order to allay the suspicion that VSL’s business practices with respect to Licenses and USB Licensing Keys is unethical and that, by way of said practices, VSL is unfairly taking advantage of their customers, I ask that VSL review the following 21 statements. If any of the statements are false, I ask that VSL identify the false statements and explain why they are false.
(1) VSL has an ethical obligation to inform its customers regarding the nature of their purchase(s), including VSL’s policies regarding Licenses and USB Licensing Keys. Should VSL fail to do so, it has an ethical obligation both to take responsibility for that failure and to take steps to remedy it.
(2) VSL’s eLicensing system works in such a way that, once a License is installed onto a USB Licensing Key (in which case I will refer to the USB Licensing Key as “enabled” with the License), that License is then non-transferrable, meaning that the Customer who purchased the software (and the License) cannot on his or her own subsequently transfer said License to another USB Licensing Key.
(3) The above, (2), is true despite the fact that VSL’s web-site states the following:
“Use the eLCC software (eLicenser Control Center) to copy your licenses onto your USB protection device once you’ve received them with the product box or via email. Later on, you can also move the licensing information from one ViennaKey to another, but you can’t store the same product license on two ViennaKeys at the same time.”
Source:
(4) The above statement, in (3), explicitly allows that customers can in fact transfer Licenses from one USB Licensing Key to another, on the condition that they are not simultaneously in possession of two or more USB Licensing Keys enabled with the same Licenses.
(5) If customers lose their USB Licensing Keys, it is VSL’s contention that they have thereby lost their Licenses. They are unable to transfer their Licenses onto another USB Licensing Key since, for all VSL knows, they did not in fact lose their original key. Customers are then required to pay 50% of the cost of the software to purchase a new License.
(6) It is VSL’s expectation that customers will be informed of these policies solely through having read Item 6 of the Terms of License.
Source: Paul Steinbauer, Product Manager for VSL; personal e-mail correspondence with Roger Eichorn, 12 August 2011.
Source: Stefen Steinbauer, Sales Manager for VSL; personal e-mail correspondence with Roger Eichorn, 29 August 2011.
(7) Item 6 of the Terms of License states that, should a ViennaKey be lost, VSL is under no obligation to replace the Key. It then states that, upon learning of the loss of a ViennaKey, VSL reserves the right to block any Licenses that were stored on the ViennaKey. The third and final sentence of Item 6 states: “Lost or stolen Licenses cannot be replaced free of charge by Vienna Symphonic Library GmbH.”
(8) It is VSL’s contention that Item 6 is sufficient to ensure that its customers are informed regarding the policies outlined above, in (2) and (5). Nowhere else, whether on VSL’s web-site or in any of the documentation or communications that accompany purchases or are involved in the licensing process, does VSL state these policies: nowhere else does VSL state that the relationship between ViennaKey and License is such that to lose the former entails losing the latter.
Source: Stefen Steinbauer, Sales Manager for VSL; personal e-mail correspondence with Roger Eichorn, 29 August 2011.
(9) VSL intends customers to glean the policies outlined above, in (2) and (5), on the basis of the second and third sentences of Item 6, and their relation to each other. Customers are to understand the following: If, upon being informed of a lost ViennaKey, VSL “blocks” the License(s) on the Key, then those License(s) would have to be replaced. But in sentence three, we’re told that VSL will not replace Licenses free of charge. It is this “blocking of Licenses” that underwrites the move in Item 6 from discussing lost or stolen “ViennaKeys” to discussing lost or stolen “Licenses”: if the loss of a Key entails that VSL will “block” the License(s) it contains, then to loss the Key entails losing the Licenses.
(10) There is a prima facie conflict between Item 6 and VSL’s statement quoted above, in (3). In the above-quoted passage, VSL assures customers that they can transfer their License(s) from one ViennaKey to another on condition that they are not simultaneously in possession of two ViennaKeys engaged with the same License(s). It is natural to assume that this applies also in the case of having lost a ViennaKey, since in that case, the customer would not simultaneously be in possession of two ViennaKeys engaged with the same Licenses.
(11) Given (10), there is a prima facie conflict between (a) an apparently straightforward claim made by VSL on a prominent web-page, one likely to be visited by customers, and (b) an ambiguous set of claims buried in the Terms of License. It is far more likely that customers will read (a) than that they will read (b), in which case VSL will have misled them, violating (1).
(12) Item 6 does not outright state the policies outlined above, in (2) and (5). It says nothing to the effect that the loss of a ViennaKey entails the loss of the License, nor does it state how much money it will cost customers to acquire a new License. Rather, the policies in question are to be inferred from what Item 6 does say, as demonstrated above, in (9).
(13) As a matter of fact, VSL is unable to block Licenses in the manner discussed in Sentence 2 of Item 6. Were VSL able to do so, then the policy described in Sentence 3 would be unnecessary, for if VSL were able to block Licenses, then they would be able to block the Licenses on lost or stolen Keys, rendering the Keys useless, thereby eliminating the possibility that lost or stolen Keys remain in use (which is the rationale for the policies in question).
Source: Paul Steinbauer, Product Manager for VSL; personal e-mail correspondence with Roger Eichorn, 11 August 2011.
Source: Stefen Steinbauer, Sales Manager for VSL; personal e-mail correspondence with Roger Eichorn, 22 August 2011.
(14) Sentence 2 was inserted into the Terms of License because VSL hoped to develop the ability described. It remains in the Terms of License because VSL does not wish to pay for the Terms to be redrafted.
Source: Stefen Steinbauer, Sales Manager for VSL; personal e-mail correspondence with Roger Eichorn, 22 August 2011.
(15) As shown above in (9), Sentence 2 is required in order to underwrite Sentence 3. Yet as shown above in (13), the ability Sentence 2 attributes to VSL vis-Ă -vis ViennaKeys would render Sentence 3 unnecessary.
(16) Given (9), VSL’s inability to “block” Licenses stored on ViennaKeys entails that the Licenses on lost ViennaKeys are not in fact “lost”: it is only the ViennaKeys that are lost. A customer who lost a ViennaKey still possesses a valid License, but not the Key onto which it was downloaded. Thus, he has not lost the License.
(17) Given (9)–(16), Item 6 is ambiguous at best, incoherent at worst, and certainly an insufficient alternative to simply stating the policies in question.
(18) Given (17), it is reasonable to suppose that, even were a customer to read Item 6, they very well might come away from it without an understanding of the policies outlined in (2) and (5).
(19) It is generally the case that people do not read legal fine-print.
(20) Given (1) and (17)–(19), VSL has failed in its ethical obligation to inform its customers regarding the nature of their purchase(s); VSL has an obligation to take responsibility for that failure.
(21) As part of taking responsibility for their failure to inform their customers, VSL should provide those Customers who lost their ViennaKeys as a result of their ignorance of the releveant policies with the means to use the software they paid for.
