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I am SO Disappointed !!!!!

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The letter of the EULA says "don't reverse-engineer our software" but the spirit of the EULA says, "we don't care what you do to your own legitimately-purchased copy of our software behind closed doors as long as you're not modifying it to unlock unpaid content, redistributing it, or stealing code."
That's your (and his) interpretation...one the user is not entitled to make. Again, the creators/owners of those plugins wouldn't necessarily agree, and they are the only ones entitled to it. Based on that logic, a pirate could say "well the spirit of not pirating is so they don't lose money, but I wouldn't have bought it anyway, so they didn't lose anything, so it's OK." That game can be played all day long, and IMO it's hypocritical to condemn it in one way, then practice it in another.
 
Bullshit.

Yep, indeed bullshit.
I once bought an upgrade to a plugin i liked a lot only to then find out the cp had changed from perfectly fine for me as a user to some bullshit other method.
Now i should have done more research but it didnt even cross my mind a dev would to this to his customers without making it clear.
So i did approach the dev for a solution. Well, their solution was to sell my license. At least they allow that, good on them.

Result is this:
I use a version that doesnt have that bullshit cp, took a few days to get that.
I learned about what else is out there from those sources, its indeed shocking.
I will not upgrade this software should the ever ever sell an upgrade.
I will in fact not buy anything else from that dev ever.
I try to use this plugin as little as possible as going forward with os updates etc its a dead end either way.
I still think about just selling it, forget about its special sound and be done with it.
The first thing i now research before software purchase is cp method and i simply support devs that put their customers first.

Now i dont have sympathy for people stealing software, samples, music etc and i dont want to be in the position those devs are in with piracy but those trends in the software industry are screwed up.

I recently read about a court case between a software Company the Belgian State where the CJEU seemed to rule that software can be decompiled and reconstructed to remove functions that prevent the intended use of a piece of software. Thats sounds awfully close to cracking to me given circumstances like that vintage Native Instruments software thing that got people upset.
 
And then ironically piracy probably increased vastly when Epic Games later on started to pay game developers to keep games off steam :rofl:
Epic Games is fighting Apple, Google and Steam at the same time while still gaining profits and customers. I think they should step up the fight against Epic Games if they want to win this market share game. In the end Epic might fail but so far its actually wining while loosing tons of money.

Once UE5 is out powering new games its GAME OVER for all of them. :2thumbs:
 
Another great example of turning piracy problem into huge business opportunity was from Epic Games. They literally demolished all competition by giving their very expensive game engine for free until you reach certain profits. They did it by building an eco system around the Unreal Engine. This of course didn't solve the piracy problem completely but boy do they make money from people other companies completely ignored.

In music world this could be solved with "Rent To Own" licence. You can buy expensive software trough easy monthly payments. You can already buy Serum, Pigments, V Collection, Ozone Advanced and other goodies in this way on Splice.com. Another great example is Composer Cloud. Easy monthly payment for their complete catalog. On top of that they have very affordable sales. No need for piracy or its reduced to absolute minimum.

Some companies adapted to piracy situation. They understand very well that some people don't have a lot of money to spend but they still have some money. Other still charge 500 - 1.000 USD while completely ignoring everyone bellow their price range.

Very shortsighted if you ask me.
Subscriptions may deter a few ‘would-be’ pirates from going down that route, but the vast majority simply will not pay if they can get it for free.

Music subs are not really comparable since the use case are so different: ie music is almost entirely consumed on mobile devices, and if at home the last thing people want to do is fire up a VPN, track down the song/album on a torrent site, hope that it’s still being shared, download it (sometimes slowly depending on the number of leechers), unrar or unzip it, check for viruses, edit the file names, and transfer to your phone (which itself is a pain). Then you have the fact that most tracks can be found to stream on YouTube for free after watching a couple of skippable ads. I’d wager that music pirates tend to be of a certain demographic — 40 yo and above. Anyone younger grew up in the streaming era and couldn’t be arsed to pirate music. Just too much hassle.

Whereas with music software and sample libraries the model is very different: you have to jump through hoops whether you buy it from the vendor or you pirate. Neither one is much easier than the other. Sometimes the vendor actually make it harder to install with more hoops to jump through and more restrictions that the cracked version. That makes no sense. Making something as painless as possible to install and use is a big step to encourage legit use. I’m surprised very few vendors have made an effort in this area. In fact, some of the big devs still can’t get this right. I guess making this easy for the customer it’s just very hard for devs to do.

Also this complaint I hear that software and sample libraries are expensive is laughable. The cost to make your own music is crazy cheap compared to even just 10 years ago and it continues to get cheaper and cheaper while the quality is increasing. It’s never been cheaper. Anyone who says it’s expensive clearly has never lived through (or looked back on) the last 30 years and even beyond that in the 70s-80s when hardware synths were the cost of a small house!

There is so much legally free stuff available and really great very cheap stuff available. Look at what Spitfire/Christian Henson are doing with the free Labs, Pianobook and the free BBCSO version. Incredibly good quality for nought. This kind of thing lowers barriers to music making and makes kids or people with a low incomes much less likely to don an eye-patch and wear a parrot on their shoulders.
 
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Pirating these days is 100% motivated by a misguided interpretation of GAS. Like how people in hip hop want to pirate Omnisphere because somehow they think it’s a must-have for a hit song, even though they could do the same with a number of other free synths. Whatever you pirate, you do not need.

Reverse engineering, on the other hand, is a legal headache. It’s easier to legally say you don’t support the process, but turn a blind eye, than it is to say you support it and then try and come back to stop every case that doesn’t fit within the realm of non-piracy.

Whatever it is, piracy sucks, and it’s the source of much of what makes things more expensive and less enjoyable for us all. If you hate copyright protection, well piracy did that. Discontinued products? Probably a bit of piracy there too. There’s no good justification for it that doesn’t lead to the idea that piracy contributed to the problem you’re trying to remedy with piracy.
 
In my country, 70% of families live under 300 dollars a month, and 25% of the population live under extreme poverty. Currently, there are 20 million people suffering from hunger.

My family comes from an indigenous village in the Amazon where the average income is close to 50 dollars a month. Last time I've been there, they had Linux installed at the local school, but some software was pirated.

The dentists that came by the river had software they needed to use, so the school had everything they needed installed. Tooth loss is a devastating problem in the village, and it became worse since government support was reduced. The current government is hostile to the indigenous population.
 
one the user is not entitled to make
By the letter of the EULA, you are correct... just like no one is entitled to drive 56 in a 55 zone.

"well the spirit of not pirating is so they don't lose money, but I wouldn't have bought it anyway, so they didn't lose anything, so it's OK."
But this is an example of a copyright violation, because downloading and using the pirated copy constitutes unauthorized distribution. Unauthorized distribution is what EULAs are designed to deter.

If you bought a copy of my latest album, burned a thousand CD copies, and put them all in a box in your basement where no one but you would ever see and enjoy them, what would I care? As long as those CDs stay in your possession, you're not violating anything or affecting me in any way.

But as soon as you sell one or give one a way, then it's another story, because someone is getting the value of my music without paying me -- the owner of the music.


That game can be played all day long, and IMO it's hypocritical to condemn it in one way, then practice it in another.
By the letter of the law, people who drive 1 MPH over the posted speed limit are hypocrites for shaking their fists at people who drive 30 MPH over the limit. But common sense is all that's needed to understand the folly of the hypocrisy. Both are technically moving violations, but only one is a threat.

EULAs are designed to deter the threats, like IP theft and unauthorized distribution, but in order to cover all the ways in which that can happen, the EULAs have to be written somewhat ambiguously and all-encompassing to be as concise as possible. When a EULA is followed to the letter exactly as written, there are no threats to the developer. But even when it is not followed to the letter, there still may be no threats to the developer.

I would never advise someone to outright disregard a particular developer's EULA. Rather, I would advise them to contact the developer for clarification. But generally speaking, if you want to do something as apparently harmless as driving 5 MPH over the limit, I have no problem with it.
 
Subscriptions may deter a few ‘would-be’ pirates from going down that route, but the vast majority simply will not pay if they can get it for free.
All the painters and carpenters that were working at my house for six months have "hood sticks" - cracked Amazon Fire Sticks that get all the streaming channels so their toddlers can watch Disney Plus all day long.

Hundred bucks.
 
Yep, indeed bullshit.
I once bought an upgrade to a plugin i liked a lot only to then find out the cp had changed from perfectly fine for me as a user to some bullshit other method.
Now i should have done more research but it didnt even cross my mind a dev would to this to his customers without making it clear.
So i did approach the dev for a solution. Well, their solution was to sell my license. At least they allow that, good on them.

Result is this:
I use a version that doesnt have that bullshit cp, took a few days to get that.
I learned about what else is out there from those sources, its indeed shocking.
I will not upgrade this software should the ever ever sell an upgrade.
I will in fact not buy anything else from that dev ever.
I try to use this plugin as little as possible as going forward with os updates etc its a dead end either way.
I still think about just selling it, forget about its special sound and be done with it.
The first thing i now research before software purchase is cp method and i simply support devs that put their customers first.

Now i dont have sympathy for people stealing software, samples, music etc and i dont want to be in the position those devs are in with piracy but those trends in the software industry are screwed up.

I recently read about a court case between a software Company the Belgian State where the CJEU seemed to rule that software can be decompiled and reconstructed to remove functions that prevent the intended use of a piece of software. Thats sounds awfully close to cracking to me given circumstances like that vintage Native Instruments software thing that got people upset.
The irony of this is copy protection exists because of piracy, not the other way around.
 
I wonder how many people here use adblockers which are depriving publishers/content creators/authors etc of revenue. You are effectively taking something (the content) while circumventing the method of payment (the ads). Is this not theft also?
That depends on if the site has you agree to endure the ads as a condition of use. Some sites are doing that lately. I don’t view those sites. If it’s a site of value, I’ll tolerate their ads and/or join their service.
 
If someone pirates your sample library, you haven't lost money. The musicians you hired don't lose money. The pirate isn't taking money out of your wallet. I think it's fallacious to equate an illegal download to a lost sale. It's not like stealing a physical good that the seller has to then replace.
Just FYI, when people pirate your library it happens similar to how it happens in the gaming world. A payment made with a stolen credit card that gets charged back later. Charge backs along with the download cost (regardless of some comments ive seen on this forum) do cost developers money. Often happening through VPNs, and from payments in places in the world with laws that make it inherently impractical to follow up with from a legal perspective, especially in the small world of sampling. So it does cost the developer. And the amount of it is insane, once you track the analytics of web traffic matching up with the day your library gets released on a warez site you realise just how big the problem is.

But think prevention is better than cure, so new tactics will be introduced in the future methinks.
 
Okay lets talk about a couple of positions I've seen offered up here:

1. "People who use pirated software were never going to buy the product anyway.."

This is wrong, ask Urs Heckman. Over on the DSP forum at KVRAudio Urs kindly offers up his experience of writing software that attempts to defeat pirates. In every U-he product there are at least two different authorisation systems - the one that executes immediately, and one that waits for a specific day of the year. So the pirates hack the first of these and release the software, when the "named day" comes around if the above were true then those illegal users would discover their software no longer worked for them and begrudgingly give it up, but Urs tells us he gets a *significant* bump in sales on these "named days", which means that what is happening is people are using pirated software until its no longer working and only then do they buy the real-thing, they could always have afforded it, just they didn't want to pay.

2. "Pirated software is just a try before you buy risk reduction strategy - people try using pirated software and if they like it then they buy"

This is wrong in my experience, so I know this first hand. Channel Robot (my company), like a range of other companys, have been offering software with simple copy protection and full functioning demos - we give you 9 sessions of 15 minutes each - so that's 2.5 hours to decide if you think the software is worth buying, plenty of risk-mitigation time we feel. Does this stop pirates? nope, not now and never has.
 
By the letter of the EULA, you are correct... just like no one is entitled to drive 56 in a 55 zone.
The difference is it's commonly understood, or an "unwritten law," that driving 1 mph over the speed limit is acceptable by the people who made and enforce that law. No similar understanding across all creators of plugins exists that it's OK to reverse engineer and modify their creation. If you took a poll to ask, you'd no doubt get mixed responses.

But generally speaking, if you want to do something as apparently harmless as driving 5 MPH over the limit, I have no problem with it.
But again, they or you or I have no right to apply our own personal interpretation of the EULA and do whatever WE consider to be "harmless." A pirate could say the same thing: I just made a copy I wouldn't have bought anyway, so it's harmless. If someone contacted the owner and got permission to do something, OK, but regardless, either one respects the EULA or not. Saying it's OK to blow it off one way but not another is applying a double standard.
 
Okay lets talk about a couple of positions I've seen offered up here:

1. "People who use pirated software were never going to buy the product anyway.."

This is wrong, ask Urs Heckman.
That's one company and one example and hardly equates to all pirates. It's far from wrong, but the answer obviously varies. It's not always true either.


2. "Pirated software is just a try before you buy risk reduction strategy - people try using pirated software and if they like it then they buy"

This is wrong in my experience, so I know this first hand.
Again, you're trying to take one example and act like that means it's true in all cases, but it isn't. Undoubtedly some people pirate for exactly that reason; in fact, I think at least one or two on this thread have already said as much (not that they do, but had before...).
 
Yep, indeed bullshit.
...
And, like your reply, all those arguments were just excuses and rationalizations. Here's an idea...

Rather than try to move the goalposts and argue that piracy is OK, how about you supporters just acknowledge that it's wrong, but you don't care and are going to do it anyway? It would take a bit more courage to say that, but it would take less energy than trying to gaslight the whole forum.

I have to applaud bill5’s logic for maintaining clarity in this thread.
He is great at counterattacking and debating others but I don't recall him offering his own argument. Some people just like to stir the pot.
 
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