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