@Juda said:

I suppose you had to write this post because in order to maintain your work in Vienna - or you speculate in dellusional hope (denial is the first state) - or you lie

Juda - be assured my work doesn't need any maintenance, well, actually it could stand some maintenance, but not in the sense you're thinking about ...  😉

thx to DG for pointing to an UK-based example, i personally know at least 2 located in germany and even 2 located in austria ... my french is not good enough to investigate for such based in France, but i honestly can't imagine the second-largest country in the EU does not have an insurance company offering such a service.

Since a name is asked for here so badly: I just checked the german Allianz website ( not that it is the best, but just one of the biggest here in Germany): They offer a kind of Elektronikversicherung , which from all I can read goes even beyond what we are discussing here. In case of a "fallout" , "outfalll" , you know what I mean...(General Jack D. Ripper got a little mad in the head....), they even pay for, if you are temporarily forced to work outside of your workshop and have to rent equipment in order to fullfull deadlines etc. Travelling accidents can also be insured up to 20% of the total amount. They also expicitly speak of : "Cost for "reconstruction of data". And that for sure is not $1 for a USB stick.

I don´t know how it is done in France,though. Maybe they have special regulations.

I still think you can insure almost everything. Since decades there is the question, if nuclear powerplants shall be or can be insured at  all. For a long time it was told, no insurance-company would ever offer a policy, because nobody could insure against such a risk.

But I heard, that even this would be possible in theory, with the only drawback, that the monthly costs to be payed by the energy companies would be horribly high.

And that´s where I stop thinking about insurance in our case as well, because I´m sure, that the price asked for an insurance of the Vienna key would be very high, especially with the traveling component.

But just as an extension of your typical house insurance with some premium for the advanced topic, it shall not be ultimatively expensive.

I´d still be very interested in data, that only VSL can have, about the typical failure rate of these sticks. Or in another way. Which percentage of your customers ever came to the customer service with that problem or a lost Vienna stick etc ?

Because my feeling says, that we are talking about a very minor risk in general.

Well, interesting to see my topic is so popular while I myself have been absent for a couple of pages [H]

Still didn't take the time to find an insurance company, far too busy now with a couple of projects and almost done building a new studio.

But after reading and talking about it with people I too came to these conclusions:

1. The dongle thing: it sucks, but I love the sounds and VSL just "works" for me. I don't want to invest money in a new libraries and TIME in learning to use those new libraries. So I treat the dongle with the greatest care.
2. I decided to split up my libraries on 2 different dongles: SE on one, and DVD collection + download instruments on another. I rarely use SE anymore because I have almost all those sounds as download or DVD instruments too (but as bigger libraries). So SE is a nice "lite edition" backup if things really go wrong. Not perfect but better than nothing.
3. It's a good thing to minimize your dependency on dongles so I decided to quit using Cubase and start using Logic. I will miss Expression Maps but I believe some of that can be emulated in "The Environment". If I lose a dongle at least I can still work.
4. Last but not least; although it sucks to break/lose your dongle, it is true that there are stories to be found on the internets about VSL being as helpful as they can. I am somewhat confident that if anything happens, VSL will somehow help.

I'm sure that now our collegues in Germany are quite happy.I still live in France, and there any company has to allow a functional back-up.Therefore no insurance as the policy of vsl is estimated illegal.

I really am in love with vsl, too.But I know that a company addapts only to the marked in order to gain something. Therefore as a client smply asking "be nice" is infantil, the only motivation is a boycott, that can be solved in seconds by vsl. Shouldn't hurt at all.

Maybe vsl can provide a similar program like apple-care as the dongle is harware. Who really wants to be a few month without his product until an insurance company cleared the way? This could be the insurance of vsl for their product.Or I read  in the forums here a lot of more ideas.

But simply telling "insure your product at an insurance company" with no telling which there are is quite poor, and more an invitation, to produce emulators, wich will undermine the devellopement of more and better products.

It has to be, that I'm not hoping that there will be a better solution, but that VSL is hoping to find a better solution, or better said uses.

Anyway, if somebody knows a name of at least one insurance company, that insures my VSL licenses and software in France, please write me!!

Here´s an old discussion about exactly the same problem featuring Ilok and waves

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/78153-insuring-your-ilok-licenses.html

They also mention insurance companies (at least for the US & Canada).

As it seems, waves has more or less the same policy as Vienna.

But they also seem to deal with broken keys by inspecting them ( or letting them inspect by Ilok or whoever knows the hardware).

If granted they aslo come up with a temporary HD license to get at least their professional users back to work immediately.

My impression from older postings here is, that Vienna is dealing with it on a case-by-case base as well, at least under the radar.

And I mean, come on, I can understand it. On the UAD board there recently was someone from China or Vietnam with a weird story, he would have some licences from a friend, but he couldn´t phone the friend and hasn´t got his authorization number and the card would not work and how to transfer the plugins blabla. In Asia everybody would circle around the cards and put "something" onto it and stuff like that.

Easily understood....

On the other hand : If a long term customer has spend a lot on the libraries, you have his adress, credit card number, he has posted here etc etc, and after years is asking for help having a broken key  - I think it is a different case. And my feeling is that VSL has a good portion of common sense in these cases, even if it is not in their official FAQ.

Stolen or lost keys again...different case - Houston we have a problem.

Ha, ha, ha, 

countries from A-Z, that's really funny to read, Juda! 

Greetings from Düsseldorf / Germany

(We discussed this so often in the past ... and no one of the VSL Team is responding; but it seems that Steinberg (owner of ELicenser) is looking for an alternative for Elicenser as well. They understood the problem. But this will take time.)

@DG said:

I can find companies that insure music production software. One of them even mentions Pro Tools and Cbase, which as you know won't work without a dongle. Can't you find anything in your country?

Scroll down to number 27.

http://www.allianzmusicalinsurance.co.uk/care-and-security/faqs.asp

DG

"The policy also doesn’t cover any damage to computer memory or other electronic memory or data storage, computer or other electronic memory, discs, memory cards or microchips."

This is part of "number 27" so I would have thought it would preclude full cover of a VSL dongle in terms of licence restore. My studio insurance that to used cost in excess of €3,000/year and similarly excluded software. I would be interested to hear from anyone who has made a sucessful  software claim on the type being discussed here  - Perhaps a number of people may feel they have bought sufficient cover but if the detailed exclusions and terms are looked at carefully it is unlikely all eventualities would be covered.

A full license VSL licence replacement, for me, would be well in excess of €10,000 so it is a worry and also a disappointment that there isn't a more elegant solution. I would support development of a regular license check to maintain validity if this got over the problem of dongle failure and theft, but the current situation does result in a large number of VSL licence holders having serious concerns.

Julian

I may have found a Dutch insurance company (SNS) which insure dongles + content. Might be interesting for other Dutchies here as well. I'll keep you guys posted...

O.K., times seem to be changing.

I just learned that the company, most known to have wierd copy and challenge/response systems in the past, has moved forward - Waves !

Unbelievable, but they have done it and burried their ilok protection scheme.

You can now use the harddrive itself or a regular Fat32 USB stick for their license center - which by the way looks similar to the one VSL is using.

But here is the deal :

If your device is broken or stolen, you can recover your licenses with a few clicks and transfer it to a new device. The only restriction is, that you cannot do it more often than once a year ( I think everybody could live with that).

Here is their How to video :

http://www.waves.com/support/waves-license-center

May that be a solution for VSL ?

@kleinholgi said:

O.K., times seem to be changing.

I just learned that the company, most known to have wierd copy and challenge/response systems in the past, has moved forward - Waves !

Unbelievable, but they have done it and burried their ilok protection scheme.

You can now use the harddrive itself or a regular Fat32 USB stick for their license center - which by the way looks similar to the one VSL is using.

But here is the deal :

If your device is broken or stolen, you can recover your licenses with a few clicks and transfer it to a new device. The only restriction is, that you cannot do it more often than once a year ( I think everybody could live with that).

Here is their How to video :

http://www.waves.com/support/waves-license-center

May that be a solution for VSL ?

The new Waves copy protection scheme was released in March 2012, and was cracked within hours of release. As such, I wouldn't consider the new scheme a success by any standard. We're trying to aim a little higher than that to protect our own as well as our customers investments.

I understand, that copy protection is always an important point to consider.

And the discussion of giving in to piracy at some point, because you can´t fight it anyway, has filled tons of postings in computer forums, without much result.

So far so good.

But every producer should focus on its core customer base. So if I were VSL I would ask myself which percentage of sales is going to:

a) "professional" users . I assume that in this group there is only a very minor fraction to even consider hacked software, and be it only for legal reasons.

b) "semiprofessional" users, who don´t work full time in the music business. I assume that in this group people using "warez" stuff is stil very low.

c) "hobby musicians",who don´t make money from it, but take their hobby more or less serious. I would think that even here most people would only use legal software. And may it be only for "ethical" or moral reasons.

d) " on the fly users". The kind of guy using his Apple i-phone with a free "string APP" and who has heard about some professional library that is extremely expensive, but he might be able to download the stuff from some weird server on  the  Cayman Islands.

Question 1 : How many users are there from group No D ?

Question 2 :If the software is copy protected like Fort Knox and not available as a crack, how many of group No D would even think about buying it officially. So how many lost sales are there in the end.

Question 3: How many honest users don´t buy the software, although  they would be willing, only because the copy protection scheme is so user unfriendly.

These questions can only be answered by VSL, because they should have the best data about the situation. ( And I would still be interested about the average failure rate of the Vienna Keys or how many typical requests are coming in).

I can only judge from a small volume of cases, but I know for sure that some people dind´t buy plug ins from e.g. Waves for about a decade, just because of the problems with their copy protection in the past. UAD, TC, Voxengo, Ohmforce etc got the money instead.

As you can read in my former postings, I´m not the one forcing VSL to leave the Synchrosoft/ Vienna Key route with brute force. I can understand their position.

And I´m in the confortable situation, that my libraries have "only" cost me a few hundred Euros. Additionally I don´t make music for my living. So if the key would break down I might be angry for a day, but it´s not a catastrophy. If the key is stolen at home because a thief broke in , I might have much bigger problems than the VSL library....

But I can absolutely understand users, that have shelled out several thousand Euros, who are worried about their investment.

In the end it is all about keeping the customers happy. So what about a nice christmas reminder next time : " Dear user -your Vienna Key is now more than 2 years old. Buy a new one and Santa Claus will bring you a nice piece of Vienna Sacher Torte to your door for free!".[:P]

i'll pick up that idea and propose a ViennaKey - SacherTorte bundle to the marketing guys ;-)

Great.

Plus one "Kaffee-verkehrt-herum" and we´re melting in delight [:)]

Thhe quality of VSL - sound and software are superior to other samples.So it has kind of a Monopol, and they need only a minimum of client-service.

So why should this company think to give the customer more than a minimum assurance of his purchase?

A solution for both sides, several solutions are possible.But why waste energy?Isn't it enough that the company grants its clients to give their money AND the customer gets the soundbanks with player ?

Until now there is no need at all to change the license-policy, as the clients depend on VSL and not the other way arround.

My question is, why  bother to suggest an software insurance at all? Just asking VSL wich company insures their products is insulting.Isn't it enough to mention the system requirements for the use of the products.

We customers only want, soundbanks for money, insurance for money or service for money.Don't think what VSL can do for you, think what you can do for VSL.