Hello Paul, thanks again for answering.
I understand from the following answers that there is no "insurance" service Vienna is offering but that I have to go to a normal private insurance company and try to explain this situation, am I right? If not, where can I find informations about such an insurance plan?
I am not a sound libraries producer and dealer so I'm not commenting or discussing your position but I would like to examine the situation from my side, hoping that this will push you to move to a different anti-piracy system.
At this point I am supposed to pay some more money to a third party (if I'm not wrong, otherwise sorry about that) to be sure I can continue using an essential part of equipment that I already have bought (and there are tangible proves of it) in case of loss of an USB key that is not only on no value for me but also annoying since, as the equally annoying iLOK, it makes me use a supplementary usb hub that I don't need otherwise. But there is piracy and it's understandable as well as I would like to protect my records. What, to my point of view, appears less fair is that in consequences, I am forced to pay more money for not running the risk of having my activity heavily hit because someone else is pirating your libraries. With the same logic I should sell my records at 50euros or so because of piracy or spotify, so that I make the honest dealer pay also for the thief. Remember, that's only the situation seen from my side.
Moreover, this situations, as far as I know (I am also a happy Native Instruments, Motu, Spitfire Audio etc. client) is only specific to Vienna. Probably the other ones accept piracy as part of the business (as well as I do for my records, and I'm aware it's a problem!) or have a better functioning anti-piracy system, that I really urge you to organize because, at this point this situation have some consequences:
I feel that having my system based on Vienna products is simply too risky: at some points you mentioned that I should take care to my usb as it were jewelry but the use of my usb vienna key and of a diamond are quite different, as long as you don't travel on plane, train, car, stay in hotels, move from studio to studio with a diamond because...it's too dangerous.... :)
In practical terms, even if I'm a *very happy* Vienna libraries and, even more, VEP user I'm literally forced to update my libraries (as soon as I economically can) moving to other companies that don't put my activity at risk so that I can rely only to VEP as the core of my system and minimize the risk. By the way I'll be updating to 6 (that was on my to-do list) only if an unfortunate loss happen.
So....from one side I feel like I'm literally pushed away from your products (again, that I love) and on the other you're not selling me anything more, unless you change the licensing system and even worse, even if I want to.
I discovered this is not happening only to me so, really, I hope there will be very soon a change in this system so that I can be your client again.
hope you get this analysis as a positive criticism, that is the way I intended it and hope we can stay in touch with good news soon.
all the best,
Matteo Nahum, media composer, Valencia (Spain)