Serial Code for Kontakt Instruments?

[Maxheadroom]

Hello,

is there good/prevalent way to add an (offline) serial key authorisation to your Kontakt instrument? Does anyone have experience with this?

Thank you in advance!
Best,
Max

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[henrik242]

You mean for copy protection? Only way is to partner up with NI.

 

[Maxheadroom]

Yes for copy protection. Ok, thanks.

 

[Joakim]

I think it was realitone instruments that have scripted serial key authorisation, maybe mike will chime in.

 

[nordicguy]

Some instruments (if not all?) from Audio Reward (Kontakt Hub) e.g., asks for a s# the first time you open it.
It must then be save as.

 

[Mike Greene]

I think it was realitone instruments that have scripted serial key authorisation, maybe mike will chime in.

Here's how ours works:

 

[d.healey]

You can script it (which isn't difficult to crack) or you can pay NI to encode it, which is even easier to crack

 

[Maxheadroom]

Thank you everyone!

 

[Silence-is-Golden]

8dio uses watermarking, is that also easy to "crack"?

 

[EvilDragon]

You can't crack watermarks, but you can purchase with a fake/stolen ID and then it's untraceable (or traceable to a wrong person)...

Yes, this is very wrong, but also yes, it has also happened already numerous times.

 

[d.healey]

8dio uses watermarking, is that also easy to "crack"?

Even if they don't use stolen details and you find out who they are, what are you going to do about it... Other than blacklist them

 

[Lindon]

We have one too, here's a video of it at work:



There's plenty of threads about authorisation here, and many people saying its a waste of time, our experience is differnt to that.

 

[d.healey]

Curious. Can you "call home" from within a Kontakt script?

No, thank goodness!

What's to stop someone from distributing the serial number along with the library? How are you ensuring that a particular serial number can only used by one single user?

Nothing. It's the same with all forms of watermarking, it is purely a deterrent, it has no other purpose. All the developer can do if someone shares their watermarked software online is download it, see who uploaded it, and blacklist them.

 

[willbedford]

With our libraries, we have a simple 'load license file' screen. The server generates a unique NKA with each order, then the user loads it into Kontakt once. No inputting keys manually. No re-saving the patch.
So far it has been very effective at deterring piracy.

 

[MartinH.]

You can't crack watermarks, but you can purchase with a fake/stolen ID and then it's untraceable (or traceable to a wrong person)...

Yes, this is very wrong, but also yes, it has also happened already numerous times.

I asked this in another thread, but didn't get a reply I think: do they watermark the instrument patch or the samples? Meaning is your final audio export watermarked, or just the instrument patch? I don't mind the patch, but I would mind if the audio was watermarked.

 

[EvilDragon]

Audio watermarking is a bunch of snakeoil as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Lindon]

With our libraries, we have a simple 'load license file' screen. The server generates a unique NKA with each order, then the user loads it into Kontakt once. No inputting keys manually. No re-saving the patch.
So far it has been very effective at deterring piracy.

Yeah we did that with the DrumDrops products, it generated about 20-40% more support calls on authorisation issues, including "Ive accidentally deleted my key..." type calls . So we went with the one above instead.

 

[willbedford]

Yeah we did that with the DrumDrops products, it generated about 20-40% more support calls on authorisation issues, including "Ive accidentally deleted my key..." type calls . So we went with the one above instead.

I've never had any issues. If they delete it they can just download it again - it's just a link in the email, below the main library download.

 

[Mike Greene]

With our libraries, we have a simple 'load license file' screen. The server generates a unique NKA with each order, then the user loads it into Kontakt once. No inputting keys manually. No re-saving the patch.
So far it has been very effective at deterring piracy.

I've been considering a method like that. Once the customer goes through that process of loading the nka with one nki, does he still have to do it with the other instrument nki's? Or does doing it once take care of all the others? To me, that would be the main advantage of this method.

 

[willbedford]

I've been considering a method like that. Once the customer goes through that process of loading the nka with one nki, does he still have to do it with the other instrument nki's? Or does doing it once take care of all the others? To me, that would be the main advantage of this method.

It takes care of the others. Even with the manual code entry, that's pretty simple to do.

The main advantage of the NKA method is that you can have a long and complex key, without needing any 'creative' user input system (I do admire yours though)