There's no way to disable a working eLicenser as long as it doesn't get connected to the internet, while a cellphone will have to get online by definition to be used.

... but a dongle could be time-bombed, and a periodic phone-home can be mandatory. See Waves TLC

+1

Eduardo

I'd like to give my input on the issue. I would very very VERY much be happy with a time-based re-authorization for the Vienna Key licenses. Let me tell you why.

On Dec 24th of last year (2010) my house was broken into. I was completely cleaned out. I lost a Vox amp, a guitar, several pedals, and worst of all the brand new MacPro i had just purchased about a month earlier. They also stole some of my backup haddrives. When i came home and discovered what had happened i was, needless to say, horrified. As i surveyed the result of this raping of my house, they had just completely yanked the MacPro out from the wall; the must have grabbed it and just ran for the door, as all the connecting cables & cords had then followed them out the door, knocking over my JD-800 on its keyboard stand. There was a trail of cables towards the front door.

Let me skip back to a few weeks earlier. All my USB ports were spoken for. I had been trying to set up my old Hartmann Neuron VS Nuke controller (an X-Y joystick CC), which connects through a USB port. As i had run out of ports, each session i started up, i would have to unplug some USB device in order to plug in my Nuke controller. Then re-plug the other device when i was done. It got rather annoying have to unplug, re-plug, unplug, etc. So i decided to buy a small USB hub adding 4 additional ports, that way i wouldnt have to keep unplugging stuff everytime i started up Logic. I just happened to take my Vienna Key out from the back of my MacPro and insert it into the new USB hub.

This proved to be the smartest thing i had done all year.

Now, flash back to my freshly burglarized home again. A trail of cables and cords led towards the door where this human scum exited my home. Along with powercables and audio cords, lying there in the middle of my living room was the USB hub, with my Vienna Key still safely in place. That was the only saving grace of this whole nauseating experience.

If i had not, just a few weeks earlier, transferred that Vienna Key to the hub, i would have essentially lost all of my VSL licenses. Forever, with no recompense. I thank God that these worthless tweakers who violated my house werent intelligent enough to know exactly HOW valuable that Vienna Key was. Had it been taken, i would have lost -- im estimating -- probably about $8,000 dollars worth of software. Sadly, i cannot get back all the original material i have lost. Nearly 7 years worth of music; like i said, they stole my backup drives as well.

So in my case, i narrowly escaped utter devastation. I pray something like this never happens to any of you. But had my V Key still been plugged in my Mac, or had they taken the USB hub, Vienna's current method of licensing would have killed me. So in light of this, i have probably the biggest " +1 " to add to this thread.

VSL, i implore you to take into consideration an alternate way of dealing with licenses. I dont know if it could be implimented so that there were maybe two different options of licensing for the user to choose from. But to me, having a 3 month (or whatever) call-home relicensing/re-authorizing option would be far less hassle than the misery i would have dealt with had my key been stolen.

Anyhow, that's my two-cents' worth for your consideration :)

-michael

 Michael, that is a sad story. Some suggestions for the future:

1. Insurance. The only snag is that this takes time and you would be without your licences until this was sorted out. However, VSL has been very generous in the past in giving out limited time demo licences, so I'm sure a case could be made.
2. keep 2 backups of all projects. I have an off-site storage (costs £8 a month). Obviously in your situation i would probably have lost a weeks work, but that would be better than 7 years.

I am a believer in flexibility and have suggested many times to Steinberg that they should offer a time limited licence for their own products that would have to be checked every few months.  However, I guess that the caveat for using this method might well be that the licence would cost more, due to the extra hassle for Steinberg. I don't know. However, I would hate this sort of periodic checking, so IMO there has either to be no change or a possibility to use both methods.

The other thing that Steinberg could introduce is something equivalent to the iLok zero downtime. Whilst not perfect by any means, it would be a way of getting over that period where the insurance companies won't pay out until all the paperwork is done.

DG

Any reasonable protection scheme also has to work with start limits as well as time limits. It is far to easy to get a round a time limited protection scheme. That's why all of our demo licenses are limited to both time and number of starts, where the number of starts can be reloaded during the time period.

Great! Then go for number of starts rather than time limits, it would be perfectly fine for me and many other people I guess.

Cesare

I was thinking that a really really extremely simple method that Vienna could implement for users to protect his/her own licenses, a very very basic one, could simply be to allow users to remove the licenses from the key. Suppose you have to travel, then you'd de-activate the key and restore the license once at destination. This would really cost Vienna nothing and solve many problems. It wouldn't solve everything but at least would be a step toward the costumers. This could be a basic step to show that they care a little...well, also some form of clear statement about what are the prices in case of loss/stealth wouldn't hurt (I mean, this foggy policy that changes for each costumer is kind of humiliating for the users I think).

Cesare

Vienna can't implement your storage facility idea, because the eLicenser CP method belongs to Steinberg. However, I agree that this could be a good idea, particularly if we all had an account, a bit like iLok. Hopefully VSL will make some useful suggestions to Steinberg.

One caveat. What happens if for some reason Internet access is patchy or restricted? You can't use your product at all...

DG

I agree, sometimes it's a case of "better the devil you know" everyone is complaining here quite a bit and perhaps not understanding this is an imperfect world and people are asking for solutions to a problem that probably can't be fully solved in the way that suits everyone. I think if there is any alternative solution proposed it has to allow the existing system to stay as it is if people prefer that (like me) - and don't want to re-authorise periodically. As said, what if the internet's down, or things like that.

@mpower88 said:

sometimes it's a case of "better the devil you know"

That can be true, except that, in this case, the devil we know isn't actually achieving anyone's goals at all. It's not just imperfect - it's simply useless. Don't get me wrong, I don't need to complain, because I've now ensured that my home insurance covers my licenses against fire, theft, etc - and I never remove the dongle from home, so I don't have a problem anymore.

On the other hand, I certainly understand the anger that some must feel. The supposed benefit of the dongle to VSL is that it makes it impossible for people to be using their software without paying. But that isn't true. The elicenser was cracked a long time ago - all of my students seem to know where to find fully working cracks of Cubase - and it's only a matter of time till someone decides it's worth adapting the crack to VSL. The supposed benefit to me is that it protects Vienna's interests, which protects them financially, which makes them able to develop more stuff - kind of a convoluted, tenuous way of trying to persuade us we should be grateful. Nevertheless I would agree that this is a way of protecting my interests in, as you say, an imperfect way - but it's not, since the dongle will be cracked, and none of that will be valid.

So we have a dongle which isn't achieving anything, other than to tick a lot of people off, cost a lot of money all round, and put legitimate customers at risk. I don't mind things which are imperfect, but there ought to be a sense that everyone is shouldering a bit of the inconvenience. That's not the case. Vienna pass on the entire cost of the licensing system, and the entire risk. So the legitimate customer stands to lose thousands of dollars, whilst Vienna are never exposed to any risk, and the illegitimate user uses the product at no cost at all.

@Pingu said:

The supposed benefit of the dongle to VSL is that it makes it impossible for people to be using their software without paying. But that isn't true.

AFAIK VSL protection hasn't been cracked, so it is true.

DG

Even if it is cracked, it is a deterrent to *most* people. Those people who it is not a deterrent to are either very dishonest essentially (bad karma for them) or they would not ever have been able to afford to pay for the software anyway - and that becomes a moral argument but not in the immediate sense a financial one. For most people however, it's a pain, cracks are often unreliable, you don't get updates, and you have to navigate through virus laden websites and so on in order to get it, which risks your whole computer... not that I've used cracked software, I've simply been around computers long enough to know these things.

I think the solution here is a bit of common sense and flexibility on VSL's part as well as the customers. For example, I once had my hard drive crash and had to get a new license for some software, then a month later, the new drive crashed as well, I explained this to the software company that I was NOT using it on other computers, and they gave me a further license. A year later, I upgraded my computer and once again they obliged, even though it never says they have to do that on the license. In VSL's case, if somebody truly got robbed, yes, there may be somebody out there using a stolen dongle, but really are they selling music from it? I doubt it - in a case like this, I think it would not hurt VSL to give another license to the customer who had until that moment lost everything. A bit of discretion is all that's needed to patch over a situation that will never, cannot ever be perfect.

How about a password check in order to access the key. This could be at regular intervals like monthly or bi-monthly. Entering a password to make your key work is not a lot of hassle and that way a stolen key would be useless after a certain time.

@DG said:

Vienna can't implement your storage facility idea, because the eLicenser CP method belongs to Steinberg. However, I agree that this could be a good idea, particularly if we all had an account, a bit like iLok. Hopefully VSL will make some useful suggestions to Steinberg.

Ok, why then not getting the option of getting one demo-activation after the other instead of a permanent one (only for those who wish it). They wouldn't need to implement much for that...

Cesare

@DG said:

Vienna can't implement your storage facility idea, because the eLicenser CP method belongs to Steinberg. However, I agree that this could be a good idea, particularly if we all had an account, a bit like iLok. Hopefully VSL will make some useful suggestions to Steinberg.

Ok, why then not getting the option of getting one demo-activation after the other instead of a permanent one (only for those who wish it). They wouldn't need to implement much for that...

Cesare

However, would you be prepared to shoulder the additional cost? Also, you would still have to pay a 10% fee to receive new licences if you lost the old dongle.

DG

@DG said:

However, would you be prepared to shoulder the additional cost? Also, you would still have to pay a 10% fee to receive new licences if you lost the old dongle.

 Why would it have to be 10%? I understood that, at the moment, in cases of damaged dongles (i.e. where it is irrefutable that the customer had the licenses), Vienna are passing on the fixed fee that they are charged by Syncrosoft, for the generation of a license. Suggesting that this fee should be related to the value of the software would be profiteering.

That's not the real issue though. The real problem is that there seems to be no clear policy on how cases of theft, loss, damage, etc, are handled. I wouldn't mind a fixed fee per license, but there seems to be no guarantee that I could even get that deal out of Vienna. They appear to operate on a very ad-hoc basis, and have a basic mistrust of the customer. If there were a password/dongle combination then it wouldn't have to come down to a case-by-case argument, and begging Vienna. Vienna could be absolutely certain that the lost licenses would cease to be of any use to a thief, and would be in a position to issue new licenses, at a fixed fee.

Let's face it, at the moment, we already pay for the copy protection system, but it absolutely doesn't protect me as a customer, unless Vienna choose to believe me. So basically they are coming up with a system that protects them 100%, then charging us to implement it. With a password protected system, it might cost slightly more, but I would feel there was a reason I was paying for it.

If you lose your licences new ones have to be generated. I believe that this is charged for by Steinberg. I certainly don't think that customers who bother to take care of their dongles should have to pay for the careless of other customers, which is what would happen if VSL didn't pass the cost on to the offenders.[:P]

DG

Why should we pay 10% more??? We have already purchased the license to use the samples.

And yes, it would be simply decent if Vienna clearly stated the conditions and costs for replacing the licenses and keys rather then taking each case into account. This total arbitrariness in the conditions is not very serious.

Cesare