Is this something that can be renewed every two years? I know the hardware warranty is for two years. So, every two years, we should buy a new key, transfer the licenses, and buy a protection plan for the new key?

I'm happy to see this new development and I'm hoping that we'll be able to protect licenses over the long-term, not just be limited to a total of two years protection.

You can renew your Vienna Protection Plan every two years. We'll notify you via email in time before a Protection Plan expires. 😊
No need to get a new ViennaKey. Simply activate the new Vienna Protection Plan license with the existing ViennaKey.
Thanks for your interest and let us know if any further questions pop up!

Best,
Stefan

Thanks, Paolo! That was exactly our goal! 👍😃

yeah it's especially nice that we don't have to buy a new key every two years to get a new hardware warranty, which I know used to be a thing people needed to do to protect from hardware failures.

I currently have my VSL key and licenses insured through a third-party insurer, but I will feel a lot better about going directly through VSL. My experiences with VSL customer support have all been very positive.

Compared to Zero Downtime for iLok the new product VSL is offering is much too expensive - it costs more than twice as much (ZDT 60 USD for two Dongles!!). If You have Your libraries on three computers running via VEPro You pay 210 Euro every two years - are You serious!? Why the user should pay that much for a licence protection system? 

Obviously it is possible to deactivate licences if the key has been stolen or lost. Why then there is a need to do anything else? If I have registered all my libraries and keys and a key gets lost or broke, the only thing VSL would have to do is to deactivate the licences on that key and provide the licences I registered to a new key. If then I would have to pay a transaction fee of about 50 Euro I would not have any problem - everyone would be happy...

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!! That's so great! I feel much better. I have a question though : if my ViennaKey is older than two years, will the new Protection Plan work for that same key even though the warranty doesn't work anymore ?

Best,

David

Oh, I have another question : can we transfer the new Protection Plan on another ViennaKey as we can do vith other licenses ? Thanks.

Best,

David

@Paul said:

Hello everybody!

We're very happy to finally announce our solution to lost/stolen/broken ViennaKeys: 

•     Protect your valuable VSL licenses for 2 years
•     No downtime when reporting a ViennaKey as lost, stolen, or broken
•     Simple and straightforward

For a fee of €70 per ViennaKey, the Vienna Protection Plan will cover your valuable VSL licenses for two years, no matter how many licenses are stored on each ViennaKey! No downtime for you, no more worries!

Here's a link to our FAQ's. 

Best, 
Paul

I much prefer the Waves and Adobe Creative Cloud model personally. USB/machine licence storage choice is so much better; or checking over the internet like Adobe Cloud. eLicenser is tech from the stone age nowadays....

Sorry, but I fail to see why this "service" should cost so much for users that have already spent maybe hundreds or thousands of Euros on VSL products.

These are software licences that cost nothing to register or store, unlike physical objects. VSL should provide a free service to customers and not charge this fee every 2 years.

Maybe someone from VSL can explain the reasoning behind this, apart from being a money-making subscription scheme.

Oh sorry, I just realized my two questions already had answers on the other thread.

Best,

David

@derek_gibbons_10742 said:

eLicenser is tech from the stone age nowadays....

That may be true but, from a developers point of veiw, eLicenser encryption has never been cracked and that's all that matters.

I agree with musos and others - this is a complete rip-off.

Typical home contents cover is about £1 per £250 of cover.  If I have around £2000 of licences on my Vienna Key then on that basis the cover should be around £8 (say €10) per year - not €35.

But it should actually be much less because the cost of home contents insurance is based on replacing everything with brand new equivalents, whereas all VSL need to do is push a button on a computer to create the necessary licences.

At last !!!

After 10 years of work with VSL to create mucic everywhere in France in theaters, new circus... 10 years of moving with my keys in train, metro, residence of work, etc... 10 years of paranoia ! I realy feel better... Thank's. 

So basically, VSL has gone into the sample library insurance business per se.

For my situation this solution seems reasonable and I hope this solution clears up most of the hate and discontent that this issue conjures up on the forum.

😊👍😊👍

... Then again, maybe I spoke too soon😔

Oh well, can't make everybody happy I guess.

@MikeHC said:

But it should actually be much less because the cost of home contents insurance is based on replacing everything with brand new equivalents, whereas all VSL need to do is push a button on a computer to create the necessary licences.

Yeah, but then VSL has to pay eLicenser for those licenses that you lost.  It's not as easy as "pushing a button on a computer."

Hey, remember two days ago, when this plan didn't exist and if you lost your key you had to pay 50% of the original cost to replace it?

I think we're all in a much better position today :)

@patmaddox said:

Hey, remember two days ago, when this plan didn't exist and if you lost your key you had to pay 50% of the original cost to replace it?

I think we're all in a much better position today 😊

"Better" is the enemy of "best".

The sad truth is that this whole system of licences stored on keys is not great. I have been buying new keys every 2-3 years in case they failed and I lost all my licences. I now have a drawer full of empty redundant keys.

Maybe VSL needs to invent their own secure protection system instead of using eLicenser?

What if I had 3 slaves with vsl instruments - should I pay 210.- Euro every 2 years? This is not acceptable! VSL does not provide a secure system to store the licences - and these are rather expensive ones - that is the point. The price of vsl libraries should include a secure system so that nobody is forced to pay extra. Maybe another step could be (Dear Steinberg!!) to produce better quality dongles. Just compare with the competitor iLok - better quality keys, much better handling for organizing the licences, half the price for a secure system. I feel really bad about this step because everybody was waiting for years for a good solution - sorry, this is a bad one.