Hi!

I am remotely collaborating on some songs with a friend and sharing projects with each other back and forth in Ableton (we both use Windows 11 PC). He uses 3 plugins I cant afford to buy and arent available at "sister site", so he offered to give them to me to use in our projects, but only if I can block them connecting to the internet or "calling home" which could cause his licenses to be cancelled. How do I do this?

I have read about using a host file or the firewall? But I never did it before, is it enough and I don't know how to determine what internet addresses and files to block?

I only have one chance at doing it right, so I worry I will do it wrong and his licenses will be cancelled. Of course I could just pull the internet line out of the wall, but ideally I wouldnt need to do this every time because we want to sometimes work together in real time. Also, I think even if someday I have enough money to buy these I would still want to block them from the internet when I am working. Can anyone here help me?

The 3 plugins are Rapid, Viper and Midi Wizard 2.

Thanks everyone!

 

If you're using Mac, use Lulu - it's free:

https://objective-see.org/products/lulu.html

Otherwise, Little Snitch:

https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html

 

Hello @ilovepizza, ask him if multiple licenses are available for the corresponding plugins. Sometimes the manufacturers give you one or two more licenses when you buy them! You can also research the manufacturers' websites yourself. If he gives you the plugins, you'll obviously have to register them. Most plugins are tied to the respective CPU, for example, etc.

 

...
@ilovepizza...I block IPs using my firewall (Comodo) in Windows. It just works.

 

I use tinywall. It's a whitelist firewall meaning all traffic (incoming and outgoing) gets blocked unless you specifically allow the program/process to access the internet.

 

little snitch on my mac

Glasswire on PC if i need to go online with it

 

Do you, or Tinywall, disable Windows firewall, so there's no confusion and 2 firewalls working simultaniously which is unnecessary? It's enough to stop the Windows firewall service if I remember correctly, maybe two services... There are no Windows services in WINE so I forgot them and I have absolutely no experience with W11, but I remember Tinywall being really good and resource friendly.

 

Last edited: May 9, 2025 at 2:33 PM

If you send the plugin binaries to me in a pm, I could try to patch them so no calling home would be possible anymore.
Otherwise the safest way would be to turn off internet while using them or to use a good 3rd party firewall.

 

Windows Defender is crap so I yank that out by the roots. I have used both Tiny & Little Snitch but recently switched to Fort Firewall.
It's very feature rich & FREE.

https://github.com/tnodir/fort

 

Thank you guys for the suggestions and help

With firewalls (Windows and 3rdparty) I just block the program .exe file, or the whole installation folder and VST3, right?

With the host file, where do I find the IP addresses for these plugins to add to the list?

Sorry if these are dumb questions, just want to be sure I am being thorough and doing it right.

 

I would recommend you not doing this with someone else's paid plugins. Have him bounce stems to audio for those few plugins, or use different plugins in their place. You should learn how to block plugins anyway, but if you screw up his licenses he's going to get unhappy about it.

You could both use DSP56300 for free and end up with similar result as Viper. Someone can suggest one to replace Rapid. Serum, Serum2, Nexus 5, whatever. And anything in some Midi plugin can be easily done some other way. He could always render the 2 synths from the legal ones right before you call the track done being produced and about to start mixing.

You might not want to pay for your own licenses; but that will be better than paying for his, when he has to get new legal copies because you screwed this up.

 

The easiest and most efficient way to "block" things like that is to disconnect the machine being used for production from the internet. Do this by either pulling the ethernet cable from the back of the machine or disable the network interface being used for internet via a batch file within the OS itself. The batch file method gives you complete control over your internet activity simply by clicking an icon on your desktop (internet ON or internet OFF, at will)...

The "built-in" windows firewall is a lame piece of junk, I never recommend it over a third party tool other than to simply disable it. There are a number of 3rd party firewalls - comodo was mentioned, but it like many other things is not "compatible" with win11 (one reason among many why I can't stand win11).

here's a few 3rd party firewall solutions - most of these can be had thru warez channels (not necessarily sisite);

1. ZoneAlarm Free Firewall
2. TinyWall
3. PrivateFirewall.
4. Sophos Firewall Home Edition
5. Free Firewall
6. A1RunGuard
7. Glasswire Firewall
8. Fort Firewall

On my internet machines I use a combination of a great 3rd party firewall plus NetLimiter. This is the best solution overall as it allows many different ways to block things both at the network level and by OS designation. My production machines NEVER EVER touch the internet.

P.S. - If r4e has offered to crack the stuff I would take him up on it.

 

Last edited: May 10, 2025 at 1:42 AM

I second this. It's truly a wall.
It's super easy to set up, change, and you can auto-learn apps and programs if you're too lazy to browse for them.

@SineWave - You remembered correctly. And, you don't need the Windows firewall if you're running TinyWall. I never ran into any problems, but I've heard people say they've experienced weirdness, so I just opted out of Windows firewall—it's a win if you get to kill any Microsoft program.

 

Last edited: May 10, 2025 at 2:06 AM

Just remember that those programs you "allow outbound connections to" can include your DAW, your browser, and any other application the developer might try to get out past your firewall ruleset with. They try to get creative.

 

Thank you for the list. I hope I can find one from your top list, somewhere humm

I sent a PM to r4e yesterday, but didnt hear anything yet. That would be really amazing!

I was looking at a simple one click solution for turning on/off the internet like a light switch in the tray sort of thing and found one 'Internet Off, but again it doesn't support Windows 11 Something like this would be much better than always using the manual line removal or digging through Windows settings to disable internet each time, are there any on/off button switch apps you might recommend that do similar to the one I mentioned?

I still don't know how people find all of the IP addresses to block. I see long lists for some plugins so obviously it isnt only the developers website IP. I guess they monitor and copy connections or another program does it.

 

Two .CMD script files sitting on your desktop should be all you need.

ON Win10 at least it's as simple as finding the index number of the network interface that you wish to enable/disable.
The syntax for the instruction to be run from the .CMD script should be as follows (leave out the "<" ">" when actually issuing the instruction. they are just being used here for annotation purposes);

wmic path win32_networkadapter where index=<XX> call <enable or disable>

- where <XX> == the index number of the preferred internet network adapter
- the word "enable" or "disable" to be used interchangeably depending on the action you wish to perform against the network interface.

- to find the proper index number of the network adapter - use your System Information tool >> Components tab >> Network tab >> Adapter tab. You'll find all the network related interfaces (hardware and software) listed here. Simply find the INDEX number of the adapter with a internet facing IP address. Place that INDEX number into the instruction listed above where index=<number of the interface> (sans the <>)​

You'll have a .CMD file for ENABLE and another separate .CMD script file for DISABLE of that interface unless you want to add some fancy batch logic to a single script to dispense with the need for another separate .CMD file. Place them both on your desktop and you're done. Just dbl click on the action you want.

Test the scripts for functionality by opening your network connections panel and running the scripts. Keep a close eye on the internet adapter status and make certain you see it enable and disable when the scripts are run.

If you use a good 3rd party firewall that has a REAL TIME monitor of ALL network activity it's a relatively simple task to see what is attempting to make connections, to where, and what ip, etc ,etc... I would suggest a good firewall WITH NetLimiter as well. It will give you the most flexibility when blocking/securing things.

 

Last edited: May 11, 2025 at 1:33 AM

Any full-featured software firewall will show any outbound connection attempts if they are configured to deny everything and show an alert. Or option to alert and ask to create a new rule.

Another way is running a dedicated network protocol analyzer like Wireshark. https://www.wireshark.org.

If you do not have other plugins which need to be internet connected like iLok plugins, you could just go into your Windows settings and disable the network interface you have ethernet cable connected to. If you are on Wifi, that's even easier.

 

I've been using radiosilence on Mac for years with no issue. You just drag in the app you want to isolate from the internet. So you can't block individual IP addresses, only entire apps. Very simplistic. But it works. 9$ (unless you look around).

 

Me too. It is a great little blocking app, but I use Little Snitch along with it. Radio Silence is like a wall, but often you want something more like a moat and a drawbridge. Radio Silence is not capable of any exceptions, and you also can't add a free blocking subscription to it like you can with Little Snitch. It is not a full featured firewall by any stretch of the imagination. It would handle this guys situation very well if it wasn't Windows.