What is the big deal about dongle hate?

[jmarkham]

Originally Posted by Nuno_F

So you'd end with as many dongles as plug ins? That would be a huge waste.It's also extremely naive to think that they would be free. They would be included in the price and everyone would pay it, regardless of needing a dongle or not.

The way I break dongles, this would be a welcome experience ;-)

When i got the McDSP emerald pack, I got a nitfy green dongle .. when
I got Protools M-powered, i got a nifty red dongle .. when I got Protools
HD, I got a nifty turqoise dongle ... It's sort of like the LifeSavors
5-flavor roll...

jeff

[Nuno_F]

Originally Posted by jmarkham

The way I break dongles, this would be a welcome experience ;-)

When i got the McDSP emerald pack, I got a nitfy green dongle .. when
I got Protools M-powered, i got a nifty red dongle .. when I got Protools
HD, I got a nifty turqoise dongle ... It's sort of like the LifeSavors
5-flavor roll...

jeff

lol

well, I have 3 syncrosoft dongles and one ilok and I don't need anymore. I don't break them or lose them either....

[Duardo]

Yeah, so extremely inexpensive, so why don't you buy it for all of us? Them ****ing corporations are making US pay for THEIR piracy paranoia. It's THEIR problem. THEY should pay for the dongle and all related expenses. Who cares if it's 20 or 200 euro...

It's not just their problem, it's our problem to. I like the companies I buy software from to stay in business. More frustrating than having do deal with the occasional hassle you might encounter with a dongle is having a company disappear (Opcode and BitHeadz come to mind) or get bought out by another company and suddenly become exclusive to one platform (Bomb Factory comes to mind, as does just about every company that has partnered with Steinberg)...

And in any case, even if the company pays for it, the users are still paying for it...it's just a question of how directly.

MOST IMPORTANTLY, Stinkbug didn't start with a dongle up in their mischevious asses. They SUDDENLY found a hardware way (they could not handle sw apparently) to prevent piracy BUT at the expense of the legitimate users.

True, before the Synchrosoft key Steinberg wasn't using a dongle, but before that they were using those old parallel port dongles...it's nothing new to them.

What's more, why in the world would I want to monetarily CHARGE them to FINANCE MY policy due to the fact that I was not smart enough to defeat the unlawful via software?

It's not a question of not being "smart" enough...no matter how smart you are, there are smart people out there who will try to crack your software, so it's an ongoing battle. Whether a company farms their protection out to a third party or does it themself, the cost will be passed on to the customer, and I'd guess that it's more cost-effective to the company (meaning less cost they'll have to pass on to the user) to utilize a third party. And having lived through the days of having a bunch of dongles chained off of my serial and parallel ports, I'm much happier to see it whittled down to basically two standards that most companies use.

They could include the new less obstrusive dongle "free of charge" in Cubase 6, for example, and thus, a lot of us would actually be happy to pay the regular price of the update.

The fact that you put "free of charge" in quotes says that on some level you realize that, whether you pay for it directly or not, the dongle is not really "free of charge".

Personally, I'd rather not see the dongle included with the software, because if I already have one, I know that I'm paying for an extra dongle I don't need.

1. Total love by both legitimate and unlawful users is guaranteed 150%.

2. Only good things happen out of customer love

I don't think anyone can get total love from their customers...

But I see no reason to want love from a company's unlawful users. Those people are not their customers.

3. Sales would definitely go up

Not necessarily. Sure, bringing the cost down significantly would sell a few more pieces, but most of the people who use stolen software will steal it whether it costs ten dollars, a hundred dollars, or a thousand dollars.

Advanced economics. It's understandable they don't get it. And I don't have time to explain.

You do seem to be very proud of yourself, but I think that most of these companies that are still in business do have a grasp on economics, advanced or otherwise.

And it's quote obvious that your issues with Steinberg extend well beyond their choice to use dongles for copy protection.

So you'd end with as many dongles as plug ins? That would be a huge waste.It's also extremely naive to think that they would be free. They would be included in the price and everyone would pay it, regardless of needing a dongle or not.

Exactly...as I said earlier, I have both extra iLoks and Synchrosoft keys that I don't need, and even though I didn't pay for them directly, I know I paid for them. I've never bought one outright, but I know that I've paid a lot more for them than I would have had I bought one (or even two, to have one for backup) of each.

[Sascha Franck]

Originally Posted by Duardo

True, before the Synchrosoft key Steinberg wasn't using a dongle, but before that they were using those old parallel port dongles...it's nothing new to them.

Just for historical correctness, with Cubase (the full version, not some LE stuff), Steinberg was always using dongles.

- Sascha

[Nuno_F]

Originally Posted by m127

It should be, and they should take care of the costs of their own security concerns, because that is the decent thing to do. Period..

For someone who considers himself so smart and a master of economics, such naivety is borderline is stupidly. You think that any companies support any kind of developing cost themselves? It is all paid by the costumer.They are doing business, they have salaries to pay. The people developing have bills and mortgages to pay. They need money and that comes from their products. And you think you have a good understanding of economics?

Originally Posted by m127

Actually, an efficient policy CAN indeed reduce piracy by "converting" the unlawful.

lol

That's complete BS. Unless it's free, most crack users won't pay, regardless of the price cut. Sell it at 50 dollars and if there is a crack crack users will go for it. The ones that buy the software do so because for some reason they realised that was the right thing to do or because they can't get a crack, it's that simple. Why do you think there are so many users of the H2O version of Cubase SX3? Because there's no crack of C4 or C5. Why do you think things like the novation V-station have cracks online? It costs 25£! There should be no cracks according to your theory, yet, they're all over the net and you think the parasites stealing even consider shelling out the little money they ask? Think again. The only way to prevent piracy is by having a copy protection that works, and syncrosoft has in 99% of the products it was used.

[manning1]

Nuno_F
with great respect mate, the whole daw market is changeing and will continue to do so.
read my comments on windows n read tween the lines , and if you really think about it
deeply youll see that the whole hacking phenomena has occurred because its technically possible. and the underlying technology platform makes it possible.

let me say i will never understand what hackers derive from all this.
it would be complete anathema to the great software engineers i worked with over the years.

but in my view with respect to say we gotta have dongles cos of hackers is
replaceing one problem with another.
"lock up your daughters" approach just doesnt work.
neither did chastity belts . always someone around willing to break in..lol.

its transferring the problem to respectable users imho. and inconveniencing them.
let me also say there are millions of honest decent people who pay for their daw software.

heres another fact.
software devs are very smart people.
thus they will KNOW the risks in advance from hackers before entering
the daw software or any other software market that runs on the win os.
do they not understand the risks from hackers ?? OF COURSE THEY DO.
we are talking bout very intelligent people here.
who understand the risks.

so the old adage applies..."if you cant stand the heat get outta the kitchen".
OR..and heres the subtlle part , dont go playing in a kitchen created by someone else ,
but build your own kitchen. (ie build your own platform OS and daw.)
on this latter aspect theres nothing to stop a daw developer from building their own
OS plus daw plus sound device.
and ive a feeling this is a trend we might see.
ie...sell the sound device and the OS and daw are bundled into the price.
god bless.

[jmarkham]

Originally Posted by manning1

Nuno_F
but in my view with respect to say we gotta have dongles cos of hackers is
replaceing one problem with another.
"lock up your daughters" approach just doesnt work.
neither did chastity belts . always someone around willing to break in..lol.

To my thinking, I would say that we have a perfect example of what
happens when you don't take steps to protect your intellectual
property from theft and mass illegal distribution. It's the business
that we work in .. commercial music.

The combination of an unprotected high-fidelity source format and a
relatively high-speed worldwide distribution / dissemination medium
made it possible for the "bad apples" to make it easier to obtain
and use the media without license than it did to go to Tower Records
(or wherever) and buy it legally.

The result has been the near devastation of the commercial music
industry. To me, while we can lambaste the studio system for its excesses,
it has hurt nearly everyone in the business. Every time I hear of another
studio closing, or some very talented people getting out of the industry
altogether, it is a direct result of illegal file-sharing.

Now one can certainly argue that the industry did not respond quickly
enough to create franchises like iTunes.. but that eventually did happen...
but you still have rampant illegal file-sharing that continues to depress
the overall music market.

The fruits of this practice are ubiquitous. Listen closely to the stuff that's on the radio or wherever. The quality
of the product has gone down significantly. Not everything has suffered,
but the mean of the music product sounds significantly worse than the
pinnacle of the studio system (pick your date between 1977->1990).

Everyone, including the listener, has been compromised by this practice.

The exact same thing would happen if companies like Waves, Digidesign,
Steinberg, etc. etc. did not take steps to protect their software from the
likes of Pirate Bay, etc.

Any arguments to the contrary must (to me) explain why the same thing
that happened to the music product would not happen to the music production
product.

There has always been some degree of illegal use .. FM "album" based
radio would play albums for the cassette crowd to record. But the fidelity
sucked and the ability of the recordists to replicate and distribute that
product again wasn't practical.

With the internet and file-sharing / peer-to-peer sharing systems, the
effect is logarithmic. That is a crucial difference in your operating system
analogy.

Also, the chastity belt analogy doesn't quite hold because the "illegal user"
can't duplicate your daughter and take a cut on each generation thereafter.
At least not in 2009 ;-)

To belabor the point: yes, the crackers/pirates are a very small
minority of DAW users .. but, the Internet / bit-torrent, etc. greatly
amplify their ability to do harm.

For this reason, while I admit that a dongle is sometimes an inconvenience ..
( like when I leave it at home and have to drive back to get it ) i
accept their necessity .. because I know what would happen without
them.

jeff

[Ashermusic]

Originally Posted by jmarkham

To my thinking, I would say that we have a perfect example of what
happens when you don't take steps to protect your intellectual
property from theft and mass illegal distribution. It's the business
that we work in .. commercial music.

The combination of an unprotected high-fidelity source format and a
relatively high-speed worldwide distribution / dissemination medium
made it possible for the "bad apples" to make it easier to obtain
and use the media without license than it did to go to Tower Records
(or wherever) and buy it legally.

The result has been the near devastation of the commercial music
industry. To me, while we can lambaste the studio system for its excesses,
it has hurt nearly everyone in the business. Every time I hear of another
studio closing, or some very talented people getting out of the industry
altogether, it is a direct result of illegal file-sharing.

Now one can certainly argue that the industry did not respond quickly
enough to create franchises like iTunes.. but that eventually did happen...
but you still have rampant illegal file-sharing that continues to depress
the overall music market.

The fruits of this practice are ubiquitous. Listen closely to the stuff that's on the radio or wherever. The quality
of the product has gone down significantly. Not everything has suffered,
but the mean of the music product sounds significantly worse than the
pinnacle of the studio system (pick your date between 1977->1990).

Everyone, including the listener, has been compromised by this practice.

The exact same thing would happen if companies like Waves, Digidesign,
Steinberg, etc. etc. did not take steps to protect their software from the
likes of Pirate Bay, etc.

Any arguments to the contrary must (to me) explain why the same thing
that happened to the music product would not happen to the music production
product.

There has always been some degree of illegal use .. FM "album" based
radio would play albums for the cassette crowd to record. But the fidelity
sucked and the ability of the recordists to replicate and distribute that
product again wasn't practical.

With the internet and file-sharing / peer-to-peer sharing systems, the
effect is logarithmic. That is a crucial difference in your operating system
analogy.

Also, the chastity belt analogy doesn't quite hold because the "illegal user"
can't duplicate your daughter and take a cut on each generation thereafter.
At least not in 2009 ;-)

To belabor the point: yes, the crackers/pirates are a very small
minority of DAW users .. but, the Internet / bit-torrent, etc. greatly
amplify their ability to do harm.

For this reason, while I admit that a dongle is sometimes an inconvenience ..
( like when I leave it at home and have to drive back to get it ) i
accept their necessity .. because I know what would happen without
them.

jeff

+1.

[manning1]

jmarkham
loverly post.
AND you make very good points mate.
no argument.
but...remember my point bout daw developers understanding the risks
of developing on the win platform ??
us musicians thus also must understand the risks of doing songs in
this day n age. the problems come with the territory imho.

i dont like the situation any more than you do mate.
but frankly i think the cats outta the bag, due to technology ,
and theres not much can be done bout it. so i accept it.
of course , as per usual its the struggling small artists who it hurts
the most cos they dont have the luxury of revenue streams from back catalogs
like big artists do.

heres something to ponder.
hackers remember have kids TOO.
what if hackers kids grow up to be musicians trying to sell songs or to build software products that everyone takes for no payment. ??
how will their hacker parents feel THEN when their kids cant make a decent living ??
OR..
what happens when the hackers themselves get old in the old folks home ,
and their kids cant afford to pay for their ex hacker parents old folks home fees ,
cos the hackers kids cant make a living from their songs or software creations ??
ie..what goes around comes around sorta idea. see what i mean ??
watch the hue n cry then !!


frankly its a pity no hackers have commented in this thread on their motivation
for hacking. cos me personally i dont get the motivation.
i just dont think the solution is to inconvenience good honest folks.

[Nuno_F]

Originally Posted by manning1

heres something to ponder.
hackers remember have kids TOO.
what if hackers kids grow up to be musicians trying to sell songs or to build software products that everyone takes for no payment. ??
how will their hacker parents feel THEN when their kids cant make a decent living ??

You could have the 1000 wisest men in the world pondering on this for entire life, and I doubt they would ever reach any conclusion even remotely useful for this discussion.

[Susceptor]

Originally Posted by jmarkham

The exact same thing would happen if companies like Waves, Digidesign,
Steinberg, etc. etc. did not take steps to protect their software from the
likes of Pirate Bay, etc.

Steinberg should create a bug-free product before asking to pay for something useless in order to run a program that crashes.

Digidesign has the luck of owning the de facto standard in big studios; also, a lot of plugins are created for this platform. But native stuff is catching up and DSP cards will soon be useless (in the future they will be just like dongles - really expensive ones).

Waves... can be replaced. There's nothing in Waves that cannot be replaced with other plugins that do the same.

I haven't seen one thing that cannot be replaced with a dongle-free alternative; by alternative I mean at least as good or even better.

Originally Posted by manning1

heres something to ponder.
hackers remember have kids TOO.
what if hackers kids grow up to be musicians trying to sell songs or to build software products that everyone takes for no payment. ??
how will their hacker parents feel THEN when their kids cant make a decent living ??
OR..
what happens when the hackers themselves get old in the old folks home ,
and their kids cant afford to pay for their ex hacker parents old folks home fees ,
cos the hackers kids cant make a living from their songs or software creations ??
ie..what goes around comes around sorta idea. see what i mean ??
watch the hue n cry then !!

Hackers might teach their kids to create music for free. You know that exists, right? And you know that music will be created and that artists that make music for free aren't dying of hunger, right?

Also, software developers have their way of earning money. It's not like EVERYONE pirates. Some give it cost - free.

[jmarkham]

Originally Posted by Susceptor

Hackers might teach their kids to create music for free. You know that exists, right? And you know that music will be created and that artists that make music for free aren't dying of hunger, right?

As a partner in a recording studio, we experience the "free artist" frequently.
They usually want us to record them for free (or nearly so). There also
appears to be a high-correlation between "free artist" and "living with
parents."

But we digress.

jeff

[manning1]

susceptor.
i'm not sure i communicated correctly mate.
what i was trying to say is...re hackers..
sometimes what goes around comes around.
ie if one does harm to another...at some later point in life
when one is in need one might regret ones previous deeds.
all i want frankly is a happy world.
i'm an eternal optimist..lol.

can anyone answer the question.
what motivates a hacker ??
and the second question...why dont they instead
use their energies to build their own product ??

jmarkham
re "living with parents".
nail hit on head.

[nightscope]

Originally Posted by manning1

can anyone answer the question.
what motivates a hacker ??

They do it because they can. Like climbin' mountains. Also not much else to do in deepest, darkest Eastern Europe.

GCHQ in UK has employed a bunch of ex-hackers to guard the nation's cyberspace.

".....earlier Lord West, who has been appointed as the UK's first cyber security minister, said the government had recruited a team of former hackers for its new Cyber Security Operations Centre, based at the government's secret listening post GCHQ, in Cheltenham, to help it fight back."

"You need youngsters who are deep into this stuff... If they have been slightly naughty boys, very often they really enjoy stopping other naughty boys," he said."

So one minute a criminal, next a hero.

BBC NEWS | Politics | UK 'has cyber attack capability'

Originally Posted by manning1

and the second question...why dont they instead use their energies to build their own product ??

I guess they know it'll be cracked within a few hours of release, so what's the point.

I trust you and your's are well, m1.

ns

[captain caveman]

Originally Posted by Sascha Franck

Err?
In case your mouse is stolen, you buy a new mouse. In case your Syncrosoft dongle is stolen, you don't only buy a new dongle but you have to buy a new Cubase license, too.
See?

- Sascha

Yes I do see that a dongle is slightly easier to steal than a laptop or an expensive mic seeing as it is smaller. Easily remedied so the laptop would have to get stolen with the dongle or so that the dongle is inside the workstation though.

You can't steal non-dongled software from someone without stealing their laptop/workstation but you can steal the software from those companies really, really easily. What's worse?

To be honest I think it's a bit childish complaining when a small item that can be worth as much as a similarly small item such as a piece of jewellery is stolen in this context.....

"OMG, I left my fiancee's diamond ring on top of my laptop in a club and someone stole it. The jewellers aren't going to replace it for free."

How's about a bit of personal responsibility for our stuff and admission that the fact that dongles exist in the first place is because of uncontrollable software theft.

It's either accept the piracy and do nothing about it with ineffective copy protection or try to do something about actually protecting software. There's no middle ground - either protect it with something that works or don't protect it at all. When it's "protected" with ineffective copy protection the only people who are disadvantaged are the paying customers.

Vive le dongle (effective)!

[jmarkham]

Originally Posted by m127

You are right, though I haven't read a single post advocating for piracy here.

We, a significant amount of potential customers, don't agree with paying for the dongle, nor with losing a USB port, all at our expense. That is the main issue under discussion.


My suggestion could change both those cons, and it would be fair AND ethical for dongled corporations to proceed with it.



I agree and doubt it will happen though. And this proved my point that, while there are fair alternatives such as the one I suggested, they really don't give a **** about us, so **** them.
.

But I believe your insistence on a copy-protection free product is a bit
duplicitous in that it completely ignores the 800 pound gorilla of illegal
file sharing and what it's effect on the industry would be.

jeff

[Lawrence]

You guys still arguing about this nonsense? Why?

Companies with *effective* dongle copy protection and a product that people actually want are not going to remove it afaik so it's a waste of breath at the current time.

I never understood why people continue to use things that annoy them so much. Move on I say. Use Reaper and non-dongled plugs. If you think companies who use dongles don't give a crap about you then stop using their products and walk away.

I don't see the problem.

Stop .... using .... the .... dongled .... products. If ... you ... have ... any ... sell .... them .... and .... get .... on ... with ... your ... life.

I don't like really fat women. They annoy me so I don't date them. Easy.

Will someone please compile a list of the daw companies that don't dongle their daws?
Will someone please compile a list of plugin developers who don't dongle their plugins?

Will someone explain (I tried) that those who do dongle are in the minority and that all this drama over a minority of products on the pro audio market is just plain silly when there are so many other choices?

[Bob800]

Hahah!

Dongles = fat ladies.

[Sascha Franck]

Originally Posted by jmarkham

The result has been the near devastation of the commercial music
industry. To me, while we can lambaste the studio system for its excesses,
it has hurt nearly everyone in the business. Every time I hear of another
studio closing, or some very talented people getting out of the industry
altogether, it is a direct result of illegal file-sharing.

Complete and utter nonsense. This is not proveable on any account.
Where have the record companies been when there was a demand of online music delivery starting? Right, they had their heads in the sands, and now they're blaming file sharing. Absolute nonense. IMO all record companies should suffer as much as it gets and simply go bankrupt. They deserve it full stop.

- Sascha

[Lawrence]

Originally Posted by m127

That's a good idea though. Maybe I will start a thread on non-dongled software.

We already know we have choices L. Your insistence is not needed "either". Actually I already switched to Reaper for new projects several months ago.

Regretfully, I have about 600 projects done in the stinkbug product, thus any change in policy would still benefit me and many others.

Cool.

But you don't have to repeatedly post the Reaper license terms ... I use Reaper also and being a self-made millionaire like Justin allows one to do those kinds of things with their pet projects. Great daw but monkey see monkey do doesn't apply here. If you expect Steinberg to drop all of their copy protection and just "trust people" to pay for it like Reaper ... you are kidding yourself ... sorry. If Cubase had those same terms it would be *really, really* popular (more popular than it is now even) and lots of people would never pay for it.

See the many people using the SX3 and N3 cracks to this day two versions later. They don't use cracks because the cracks have no dongle, they use cracks because they don't have to pay for it.

As to your "stinkbug" projects... why did you buy a daw with a dongle in the first place? Why not Sonar or some other non-dongled daw?

Look, of course there is a valid discussion to be had about whether companies should dongle or not. But at some point it gets ridiculous. redundant, counterproductive and pointless. This discussion crossed over (imo) long ago. Steinberg obviously is of the opinion that their product is of enough value that the dongle won't stop most people from buying it... and it looks like they're correct... C5 seems to be a pretty successful release.

A 20 page thread on GS where we insult each other isn't likely to change those facts and/or their minds about that.

I'll be curious to see if when Reaper reaches the level of features of Logic, Samp, Cubendo if it stays with the current license model. We'll see.

[jmarkham]

Originally Posted by Sascha Franck

Complete and utter nonsense. This is not proveable on any account.
Where have the record companies been when there was a demand of online music delivery starting? Right, they had their heads in the sands, and now they're blaming file sharing. Absolute nonense. IMO all record companies should suffer as much as it gets and simply go bankrupt. They deserve it full stop.

- Sascha

I really don't know how to respond to this...

jeff

[Nuno_F]

Originally Posted by Revmen

The funny part is that dongles are ment to make life harder for the pirates but instead it's the ones who pay for their software that suffers. Ironic.

Right. And they don't make life harder for crackers. That is why none of the products using Syncrosoft after SX3 had a single fully working crack available.

I sometimes wonder if the anti dongle people actually have a single valid rational argument to support their dongle phobia. I have not one heard one yet.

[tazman]

I used to fear the dongle, but since I switched to Nuendo and started using one, I have not had any issues.

[The dman]

To M127

Hey with all do respect why don't you just move to another DAW? I know you said you have a lot of Cubase projects but personally speaking if I was that upset about a product I would change, move on and not look back.

All your posts rants and aren't going to change anyone or anything. I understand you feel how you feel but you seem to waste a lot of time being bitter about a $500 computer program, it's not like there aren't any other options. It seems to me if you took all the time you spend being bitching about Steinberg you could have a good amount of projects already converted to you new DAW.

[Sascha Franck]

Originally Posted by Lawrence

I'll be curious to see if when Reaper reaches the level of features of Logic, Samp, Cubendo if it stays with the current license model. We'll see.

Same here.

- Sascha

[Sascha Franck]

Originally Posted by jmarkham

I really don't know how to respond to this...

You simply don't need to. The record industry is going downhill for a whole plethora of reasons not being related to illegal downloads at all.

But well, that's really not what this thread is about (even if it partially is).

- Sascha

[civilization3]

Originally Posted by jmarkham

To my thinking, I would say that we have a perfect example of what
happens when you don't take steps to protect your intellectual
property from theft and mass illegal distribution. It's the business
that we work in .. commercial music.

The combination of an unprotected high-fidelity source format and a
relatively high-speed worldwide distribution / dissemination medium
made it possible for the "bad apples" to make it easier to obtain
and use the media without license than it did to go to Tower Records
(or wherever) and buy it legally.

The result has been the near devastation of the commercial music
industry. To me, while we can lambaste the studio system for its excesses,
it has hurt nearly everyone in the business. Every time I hear of another
studio closing, or some very talented people getting out of the industry
altogether, it is a direct result of illegal file-sharing.

Now one can certainly argue that the industry did not respond quickly
enough to create franchises like iTunes.. but that eventually did happen...
but you still have rampant illegal file-sharing that continues to depress
the overall music market.

The fruits of this practice are ubiquitous. Listen closely to the stuff that's on the radio or wherever. The quality
of the product has gone down significantly. Not everything has suffered,
but the mean of the music product sounds significantly worse than the
pinnacle of the studio system (pick your date between 1977->1990).

Everyone, including the listener, has been compromised by this practice.

I have not been compromised by any such thing. I don't listen to much if any commercial music. Because, it was made first to make money and be readily marketable en masse, it was never the best music available. Consistent & pervasive Lowest Common Denominator. The forces that dictate such a situation began, let's take a look at what, your golden age which is now tarnished, I think 1978 is a fair enough marker for around when the industry had shown it wasn't taking any chances on anything, and the music business wasn't as creative as the shoe business. That's all pervasive and existed for years before it began to be too unwieldy, like a dinosaur, it will cease to be a viable force, there just isn't enough to sustain it, it sapped the resource pool. The mean of the music *product* sounds the same now as it did to me then, without a doubt.

The product is by intent and by definition disposable, it was meant to move units in the marketplace. That is a pervasive mass psychology. That's what's the deal we're dealing in.

Now, I cannot fail to note, you've a vested interest in your argument. It's a suspicious argument, it's not different in quality to a congressperson's views on health care who accepts money from the health insurance industry.

First of all, you seem to believe no record company person ever put a load of records in the back of a truck and wrote it off, or ever took advantage of the artist in the most flagrant abuses in the fulfillment of contracts... I could go on for paragraphs here, it's been pandemic for decades. The start point in your golden age, this music was just as crap as it is now, with better production values maybe. This era is one of the more shameful chapters on unethical practices by record industry executives. You want to just sorta slide by all the excesses of the industry. You're the industry, I guess, your interest is vested where it is, I suppose it's normal to do. Not everyone is so stupid as to accept it as anything but what it is, bogus and suspect.

The artists have been indentured servants in the music industry forever. "Everybody is hurt", when some schmuck manage to get something without paying for it one measly 128bit download at a time. Nonsense. On the scale of what the industry has taken from the culture vs what it provides, it's a wash at worst.
The times they are a changin, and most of the how and why you choose to ignore, and have a facile one dimensional answer to something subtle and pervasive in a culture, which has as a symptom a system that's been broken forever.

To use this bogus half-baked go at an argument in favor of dongles, good lord man, get effing real.

[rydan]

Originally Posted by kpaw

The only downside I see is if you lose it or somehow break it and can't get it replaced. What's the deal here? What am I missing?

Well, for me, that's pretty much it. Your dongle could get lost or stolen and then you loose licenses for $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. And, at least as a private person (as opposed to a business), in sweden, no insurance will cover that loss, since the insurance companies do not see licenses as "property".

[Chrislpp]

iLok was easily cracked on PC as for Macs it means you have to buy the plugins and use the ilok, OR go back to tiger and keep refreshing the demo period, still, with an ilok, or go back to PC.....

[drycounty]

Really sucks that my car which is FULLY PAID OFF came with a key that I have to use all the time just to get to work and stuff. It also sucks that my wife INSISTS on us locking our house that we PAID FOR and using keys just to come and go. Sheesh!

Keys are for losers!