@The Minstrel said:

Just wanted to chime in and say I'd love to see VSL implement the Waves solution, with temporary licenses in need of reactivation every 90 days or so. That would sure make me sleep better. I'm really paranoid about loosing my dongles.

I love the Waves TLC program.

HOWEVER, before VSL does a similar solution, the engineers and designers must make it SO EASY that a caveman can do it (sorry, a reference to a US insurance company marketing slogan that has jumped the shark). Right now, getting auths and manually copy/pasting to the eLicensor is quite a process -- can't imagine doing this every 90 days for a dozen or more auths on multiple dongles. Waves consolidates auths into "bundles" so I only have 2 auths to deal with. Just sharing.

I do NOT wish to have any authorization issue come up every 90 days. That can corrupt a project actually, one day a library isn't authorized and the next time you launch the project there might be something pointing to that in preferences resulting in an unstable project that has to be rebuilt. I definitely experienced this with my broken dongle issue in the interim before re-authorization, and I wouldn't want this kind of thing cropping up to add to my worries.

If this were *an option*, sounds swell. But having it as policy per se I don't like at all.

Waves TLC is an option.

http://www.wavesupport.net/content.aspx?id=4077

Auths and prefs are totally unrelated, and one changing should never interfere with the other. Something else must have changed (software version, etc.). A missing auth should NEVER change any session data. 

Sounds like something else was going on here. Different version of the software? This happened to me on numerous files when upgrading VEPro -- so separate backup is always crucial. VSL version changing is always cautious time -- but never related to authorization. Separate issues.

I would have to research that before I agreed or disagreed, 'auths vs prefs in the case of VSL'. In the case of many plugins I am definitely familiar with enough to 'know', that statement is *not true*. IE: you delete preferences and now a new authorization is required. As per hosts*, EG: I delete Cubase preferences and previous issues of blacklisted plugs appear, which were ignored according to the old preferences, and now.require sorting.

What specifically happened is I failed to have the right key in the right machine, and I instantiated something which required it (*: In VE Pro, which is information I omitted). That was the only problem. It did result in an issue with that vi frame. There was no update involved in that problem.

Regardless, Waves' would be a good *option* to have, I guess.

After I finish today's orchestration, I will pull my dongles and restart all machines, and relaunch a clone of my session (after backups are done. Interested to see what happens if an auth is missing. 

In ProTools, a missing iLok auth simply loads the session, with the plug or VI disabled. I have forgotten to insert an ilok after a remote session, and it's simply a matter of inserting the iLok and enabling the plug. No data has ever been lost. I must assume VSL is the same? I'll test for my own knowledge and share the results later.

J

Of course, the suggested solution with reactivation every 90 days would not suit everybody. I would never argue that it should be mandatory. But it sure would be nice if VSL would provide such an option, as a means for their customers to protect their investment.

Regarding corrupted projects, for some reason unknown to me, my eLicensers (got two of them) will occasionally fail to be recognized by my system. Usually one of them only, and it has never happened with my ilok or WIBU-key. Anyway, due to this source of irritation, I've loaded Cubase projects only to find that Vienna Instrument or Vienna Ensemble cannot be loaded. The only thing I need to do to get up and running again is to close Cubase (without saving the project), reconnect the eLicenser, find the VSTblacklist.xml file and remove the nodes referencing VI/VE. Never had any problems beyond this. I imagine saving the project might cause problems though.

Obviously the 90 days solution wouldn't suit everyone, essentially professionals with big studio equipment seem to be less interested in it. It would rather suit the hobbiest, essentially the SE user who are more prone to take their dongle and software around since...well since they have no studio :-)

But I think it would be easy to satisfy both world simply by providing the 90 days method as an option. Originally VSL was probably more "pro-oriented" but, with the introduction of SE which opens to the non-professionals, new solutions need to be found.

I don't honestly believe that insurances are a good solutions: I might be wrong but I believe it wouldn't be that easy to get your money back once your key gets stolen or lost or brakes. It would probably take loads of paper work and time or it would have to be an awfully expensive insurance which would turn out to be totally unconvenient. It's unthinkable for a non-professional to consider this solution which porbably works only if you insure a whole studio. I think this is rather a trick of the sotware company to try to put the blame on the user "well you should have thought about that, you should have insured your software" and try to soften their responsibilitie, but from the practical point of view I don't see this solution working for non-pro costumers...

@passenger57 said:

Hi I'm new to this thread. I was getting ready to spend several thousand on Vienna Products, but am very honestly nervous about the vienna key failing or being stolen. Has there been any more progress on this subject since this thread was first posted? I need peace of mind with this kind of investment and I'd be happy to pay extra for it in the form of some sort of protection like ilock has.

iLok does NOT have any protection from theft or loss, unless you are speaking of Waves TLC.

iLok "ZDT" (zero down time) is no protection, really -- read the fine print. If you have a ZDT iLok and your iLok is damaged, ZDT will restore a bunch of temp auths that will work while your iLok is being repaired. HOWEVER -- if you lose or your iLok goes missing, ZDT will get you some temp auths. It is then up to you to figure out how to replace the auths -- and just like VSL, you best have insurance for many (most). Unless you have Waves TLC, which is the time-bombed/phone home solution...

If you are paying $29/year per iLok for ZDT, and you THINK you are protected from loss or theft, you are mistaken. You are better off investing in better insurance, or a theft deterrence system.

PS -- read this... and then ask iLok what happens when the 14-day temp auths expire.

http://www.ilok.com/ilok-zero-downtime.html

Hi! No news at the moment. Same problem here: I was interested in the new Instruments software and in the choir package but after my sad experience with the key loss I prefer to wait and see whther they introduce something new in the authorization system or if something nice comes out elsewhere. Let's see...

Best,

Cesare

@jeremyroberts said:

It is then up to you to figure out how to replace the auths

There is technology and knowledge on earth that can solve the problem.

There is money to solve the problem or more money made when problem is solved (at least I'm not buying anything more untill it's solved).

There is just lack of ambition, which I hope will change thanks to this thread.

If the dongle fails, you can send it back and the licence would be transferred to a new dongle. Always worth having a spare, empty dongle for safety.

For power outages, you really need to get some anti-spike protection. if you don't, you are risking more than just the dongle.

As far as insurance, you will need to shop around, because many insurers won't cover software. However, it is possible to get cover.

DG

Hallo!

How does the watermark system work? Thanks for pointing out this new set of strings, didn't know about their existance.

Did anyone get a chance to try Waves TLC? That really sounds like a great solution. I wonder what those who tried it think of it, wheteher there where issues etc.

Concerning the damaged dongles: each company is free to deal independently with the damaged or malfunctioning keys. As far as I've heard, Vienna is willing to transfer the licenses (i.e. to make them activable again) once you send the bad dongle back and buy a new one.

Cheers,
Cesare 

Watermarking adds a unhearable signal to each sample e.g.: Add in frequency ranges which can not be heard some data.

If this data is different for any sold copy it is quite easy to find the person who put the samples to some file share systems and eact accordingly.

Also if someone publishes music with these stolen samples you can still figure it out and (assuming you get the identity) can sue these people.

Similar technologies are also used for movies to figure out in which cinema the movie has been stolen

In any case you need some pretty strong watermark which can not be deleted or gets removed after some format changing, so just the frequency thing is way to weak.

Details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_watermarking

At the end it is kind of philosophy, if you invest time in protecting your things, or invest time in sueing guys who distribute the samples and and guys who use it. But it might also be impact on location (Most probably US courts bring more money then Austrian courts)

Re: Watermarking

VSL has evaluated advanced watermarking technologies several times. For our needs in the context of high-quality orchestral samples and related software products, the technology has a few problems:

- A sample may undergo ten or more audio processing steps, before being mixed with dozens of other audio signals. As soon as the strength of the watermark is anywhere near the robustness which is necessary to "survive" in a scenario like this, it is already degrading the fidelity of the actual sample. That's not what VSL is after. ;-)

- Tracking down watermarks makes sense for broadcasting (especially web-radio) where it is useful for royalty and billing purposes. There are no comparable business models for our needs.

- Even if we assume the theoretical chance that watermarked samples would be traceable, it is more or less impossible and (most of all) completely uneconomic to take legal action in each case where misuse is suspected. ("... invest time in sueing guys who distribute the samples and and guys who use it", as Gabriel put it in the previous message.)

- Good (and especially individualized) watermarking technology is much more costly than common dongle-based copy protection.

- Copy protection not only protects our products actively against piracy, but also the investments of our customers. Watermarking alone can't do that, especially as it can't protect software, just "content".

In other words - no watermarking in VSL samples.

Kind regards,