I'm really starting to see the two worlds interacting in these post. Let's see if it is possible to make one world understand the other and to propose a solution that satisfies both worlds. Please let me know if what I write below is wrong.

On world is made by professionals who make a living out of Vienna products. For these people samples are an investment and the dongle is a part of the studio equipment: it usually lies protected (and sometimes insured) in the studio. For professionals the annoyance of having to use the dongle is well compensated by the fairness that comes from the warranty that competitors will also have to make the investment of buying the software in order to produce music of the same quality. Some hundreds of euro/dollar invested in an insurance will hopefully come back in the form of contracts and in the peace of mind that comes from insuring a piece of your own future. For the professionals this investment is so important that it is hard for him/her to understand why someone would go around with the dongle in his pockets.

The other world is made up by all those who use Vienna only for pleasure. These are the hobbyists who, in the name of their passions for music, are willing to take shorter holidays or save on something else and buy these these exquisite technological tools for composition. For these people a hundred dollar to be added in an insurance makes a big difference. Additionally they'll probably use the tools in their spare time. Maybe even when they travel, on a train or on a plane (I know that these places are noisy but everyone tries to make the most out of the time he has :-). Their studio is probably a laptop and a pair of headphones and they enjoy very much having their friends and family listen to their works, however most likely no money is going to come back from their productions. The hobbyist just wants to use his product easily in the little available time. There is essentially no advantage for the hobbyist in having a dongle, it is just an annoyance.

Since the release of SE Vienna explicitly also started targeting the world of the hobbyists. It is Vienna itself who makes mobility one of the attractive points of SE by describing it as the "esource-saving companion for orchestral arrangements on the laptop, or for newcomers to the world of Vienna Instruments". However the copy protection solution is the same as for the professional products. Maybe an alternative solution could be introduced only for this chearper segment of products, what do you think? A Waves-like system is essentially the current Vienna-key system but with the added variable of time-limitation: instead of generating perpetual licenses, temporal ones are saved on the key. Having to download a license every month would indeed be an annoyance to the professional whose dongle is already safe. But 3 minutes for downloading a license once a month would be no hassle to me, to the hobbyist, if this allows him the peace of mind of not having to worry that the money he saved will be lost together with a blue piece of plastic.

What do you think?

Cheers,

Cesare

@cesare.magri said:

Having to download a license every month would indeed be an annoyance to the professional whose dongle is already safe. But 3 minutes for downloading a license once a month would be no hassle to me, to the hobbyist, if this allows him the peace of mind of not having to worry that the money he saved will be lost together with a blue piece of plastic

I'd be really happy with a system like that. I really can't afford separate insurance for my dongles, nor should I have to, when there are systems around that could protect both my, and Vienna's, interests.

As I've said before Steinberg did agree to look into the possibility of having a monthly authorisation for the dongle, but so far nothing has come of it. I would obviously be totally against it, unless it was only an option and not compulsory.

DG

Cesare, I really appreciate all the energy you put into that topic, but I have the feeling that you tend to over-complicate things a bit. :-)

The ladies and gents of VSL support are known for their friendly and helpful attitude. Seemingly disastrous occurrences can be solved by a simple mail most of the time  - with significantly less bureaucratic hassles than you would have to go through when dealing with insurances (!) or elaborate download/time limited/challenge-response/hardware-based/otherwise nifty "self repairing" license schemes.

Believe it or not: VSL is not a bunch of greedy and malicious people with the only goal to torture and squeeze customers. Most - if not all - of us do this because we like to do it, and because we hope that other people could like our ideas too. While we can't please everybody with all aspects of our products, we try to find the common denominator between "technically advanced" , "musically inspiring" and "economically feasible". In the case of copy protection, we have what we have. In an ideal word, we wouldn't need one; without financial restrictions, we would have written our own (the PERFECT one, of course! ;-) ...); in Real Life, we have chosen the Synchrosoft  / eLicenser system because it is the smallest evil amongst all possible solutions (and a pretty safe one, too).

I know by now that you would like to read "You're absolutely right, we have to do it exactly the way you want us to do it". While this could happen in many feature- and sound-related discussions, I'm afraid that our elbowroom is tight as far as copy protection is concerned.  8-)

... that said, I'm just a sound guy, and maybe there are already other options I'm not aware of just behind the horizon.

Kind regards,

@Dietz said:

The ladies and gents of VSL support are known for their friendly and helpful attitude. Seemingly disastrous occurrences can be solved by a simple mail most of the time  - with significantly less bureaucratic hassles than you would have to go through when dealing with insurances (!) or elaborate download/time limited/challenge-response/hardware-based/otherwise nifty "self repairing" license schemes.

 No offense Dietz, but that's a slightly silly response. This thread happened because the only 'helpful' response Cesare got to his email was that he had lost his licenses and could replace them at half price, following which the responses stopped. I'm sure that's 'solved' from the Vienna point of view, and they probably feel they have made a large concession, but I'm betting it's not solved from his point of view (unless I'm missing something that went on in the background). So telling him that a simple email would have been the solution might seem a little insensitive.

The bottom line here is that Vienna seem to want all the benefits of the elicenser, but expect their honest customers to carry all the downsides. As I said above, a license is not a physical thing that can be stolen; what I've paid for is Vienna's permission to use their samples, which is not something that can be taken away. It is Vienna who have chosen to make the licenses a physical thing, that can be stolen, so it should be their responsibility to sort out cases where they are.

Let's face it, Vienna keeps a record of all purchases and licenses, and restoring them would be a simple matter. I can only think of two reasons why they wouldn't.

• Firstly, they may be concerned that there is now a thief out there who is able to run Vienna instruments, and replacing my stolen licenses would essentially mean that an extra copy is now being used without Vienna having received any money. This is true, but it's a downside of having chosen elicenser, which, so long as I have done all I could to prevent theft, should be born by Vienna for having made that choice. And, in any case, I don't believe for a second that the average house thief would have a clue what he's stolen.
• Secondly, perhaps Vienna simply don't believe me when I say that the dongle was stolen, and feel that I am trying to get additional licenses. In which case, why the half price concession. If they don't believe me they should just say so. Offering half price licenses sends out the message, 'We believe you, but we're going to take the opportunity to charge you some more money.'

Sorry Dietz, I respect how polite you manage to remain, but the fact is that there is a serious concern here, and simply telling someone that he's needlessly worried won't make it go away. So long as Vienna's response continues to be that given to Cesare (and, again, I don't know if a better solution has been offered in the background), and so long as there are potential solutions that they won't explore, then there are going to be a lot of customers wondering why not.

Dear Dietz,

I have never thought that people at Vienna are evil nor I think anyone on this forum does. That's really far from what I think! The main goal of this post was to provide people with the information I was not given at the time I purchased the software and the dongle. Having had this information at the time would have been very useful to me. Additionally, some posts spontaneously happened to provide ideas and suggestions for possible solutions to some of the dongle problems and pointed out how other companies have addressed these problem. I think this cannot hurt.

To Pingu:

In my case the lost key problem ended as follows: a friend of mine suggested me to try dealing with Vienna. After a good amount of emails the following deal was reached: if I had spent roughly the same amount of money in new Vienna licenses as the money I had spent for the licenses I already had on the key, Vienna would have given me back the licenses for the old products as well. Although I wasn't really planning to buy any extra library at the time, however I thought that getting something additional would have been better than just paying back what I had already had purchased.

Cheers,

Cesare

@cesare.magri said:

To Pingu:

In my case the lost key problem ended as follows: a friend of mine suggested me to try dealing with Vienna. After a good amount of emails the following deal was reached: if I had spent roughly the same amount of money in new Vienna licenses as the money I had spent for the licenses I already had on the key, Vienna would have given me back the licenses for the old products as well. Although I wasn't really planning to buy any extra library at the time, however I thought that getting something additional would have been better than just paying back what I had already had purchased.

 Well at least that's a happier ending than was initially apparent. I still think the problem needs addressing though, because having to spend a load more money isn't really ideal; nor do I understand the thinking behind it. Either Vienna can restore the licenses or not - why does buying other products help?

I can see that allowing a dongle to be stolen means that there is potentially a new user out there, who hasn't paid Vienna anything - and I can see Vienna saying that we need to do all we can to protect their interests. But at the end of the day thefts happen despite all you can do. And since it is Vienna who insist on putting this rather vulnerable form of license in our hands, if there's more that they can do to make it theft proof, then they should be doing it, rather than simply putting all the burden on us, and then expecting us to share the financial penalty. I don't think people at Vienna are evil or money-grabbing either - in fact they've always been more than fair in the way they've dealt with me - which is why I don't understand the reluctance to at least consider solutions. Let's face it, the dongle is already a big enough pain in the butt - if we're going to have it we should at least get it right. What's the point of something that is already highly inconvenient but doesn't actually get the job done?

@Pingu said:

[...] No offense Dietz, but that's a slightly silly response. [...]

Thanks for letting me know, Pingu.

@cesare.magri said:

Martin, how much do you think would a dongle insurance cost for a library? I don't mean the exact price, just a rough estimate. This might be interesting information, to give us an idea of what's the range of additioanl costs we might need to take into account when we purchase a library if the dongle system stays as it is. Also, would the insurance be valid if you carry your dongle around?

Many thanks in advance,

Cesare

Hi Cesare,

Based on what I'm paying the cost of insuring a dongle with the Special Edition licences (both standard & extended) would cost £30 per year. This would increase to £45 if you wanted to take it out of your studio environment.

Also, like DG I too would hate to use 'phone-home' licencing on the eLicenser, but if the user could choose to switch between the two types of auths then it could solve the particular problem we're discussing.

M

@Pekay said:

What do I have to do to create a spare key that works?

There is no creating a spare key-VSL management will not allow that and the key is fool proof as far as cracking it. I wonder if there is not a better solution-Adobe verifies all software vis-a-vis a user computer-Adobe server link up. With each computer having a unique built-in ID -In My Humble Opinion that would be enough security for most folks.

@RainerL said:

To prevent misusage there can be a further limit that maximal 3 times a key can be reported as lost.

Any reasons against this suggestion?

Because VSL has no control over what Syncrosoft will or will not do as far as disabling the dongles. Sounds like a good solution to me though if Syncrosoft could be brought into the loop.

@DG said:

Steinberg has never been good at communicating with users, and are usually so dogmatic about things that if the idea doesn't come from their collective brain trust it is not usually implemented. 

finally, some one else who found Steinberg to be the way I found them ! I was beginning to wonder if it was just me because I have had great difficulty in getting help with Cubase issues and in 85% of the problem situations, I had to come up with my own solution.

This is an interesitng thread because my vienna key just died on me tonight, and I cannot tell you how pissed I'll be if they make me rebuy licenses because their cheap piece of plastic decided to stop working. However, it seems like people think that you can just send the key to Vienna and they will eventually give you something that works, which is nice. It's still weird that this information isn't documented anywhere, and it's also scary that at any point you could be put out of commission for however long it takes to ship a key back and forth (a week? a month??) at any given point through no fault of your own, but I guess that's the modern world for you. 

I've got to say, in addition to coming here for Vienna key support tonight, I was also looking into buying that nifty Vienna choir with the student discount... but I've gotta hold off for now, these license hassles just make the product not worth it. It's such a shame because they do such a good job otherwise. 

Oh, and follow up quesiton: if I order a new Vienna key, will that give me another 120 free starts? That could hold me over until VSL sorts out my Vienna Key issues (assuming they agree to take it back and give me the licenses again)

@mikezaz_27157 said:

This is an interesitng thread because my vienna key just died on me tonight, and I cannot tell you how pissed I'll be if they make me rebuy licenses because their cheap piece of plastic decided to stop working. However, it seems like people think that you can just send the key to Vienna and they will eventually give you something that works, which is nice. It's still weird that this information isn't documented anywhere, and it's also scary that at any point you could be put out of commission for however long it takes to ship a key back and forth (a week? a month??) at any given point through no fault of your own, but I guess that's the modern world for you. 

1. You should always have a spare key in case of breakages. Lesson learned, I hope. [;)]
2. If the key is just broken, then I'm sure that support will sort out some new licences. Have you contacted them?

DG

About all this half price, full price, for free if you buy something with the same value, trust or no trust discussion.

Just imagine what would happen if it would be known that VSL is replacing licenses for free (or for the price of a new dongle) when this dongle is lost or stolen ..

Unfortunately there will be abuse, there might be people who would abuse it only for themselve (it is much more convinient to have the licenses at home and in the studio without carrying the dongle) and there might also be some people who would claim stolen products in order to make a musical interrested friend happy ...

I am not happy with dongle protection at all  but if you want to work with this great product that's the price you have to pay ...

@DG said:

1. You should always have a spare key in case of breakages. Lesson learned, I hope.
2. If the key is just broken, then I'm sure that support will sort out some new licences. Have you contacted them?

DG

I didn't mention it here, but I do have a spare (Steinberg) key. As far as I know, it makes no difference because you can't have a license on two keys. 

I have contacted support, no answer yet, but that's not surprising cause I emailed on Saturday when it died. 

@mikezaz_27157 said:

I didn't mention it here, but I do have a spare (Steinberg) key. As far as I know, it makes no difference because you can't have a license on two keys. 

No of course you can't, but it means that as soon as VSL gets the old one back they can email you the codes for a new licence. They may even send you a time limited demo to tide you over.

DG

You say "of course you can't" as if it's obvious, but many companies, such as Sibelius, will allow you to have a license on two computers. It's certainly not unheard of in this industry.

If VSL ends up doing what you say they will ,I'll be very happy and it will seem quite reasonable, although again I'd prefer it if all this were documented and standardized somewhere (and it would benefit them, at the very least so that speculative threads like these don't need to exist)

@mikezaz_27157 said:

You say "of course you can't" as if it's obvious, but many companies, such as Sibelius, will allow you to have a license on two computers. It's certainly not unheard of in this industry.

Sibelius doesn't use a dongle though.

DG