AxisPlugins all

 

That's a good thing, maybe all the ilok owners will join their forces and sign/vote a petition against ilok implementation. but i think my hopes are too high for this one.

 

Just because iLok 2 is defeated for the current crop of softs doesn't mean an automatic switch to a new (iLok 3) hardware device.

It depends on the implementation. If you can open a door without a key because the lock is weak then you just make a better lock. The key (iLok license) could be fine, but perhaps it was the license checking that was exploited.

I have no idea, but AudioUTOPIA isn't necessarily a death knell to the dongle industry, in fact, I think you'll see a redoubled effort in protecting software. Maybe WIBU will just take a larger piece of the market, but I would be willing to bet that no premium soft developer is going to just roll over and say, "eh, dongles... that was a joke, right?"

Look how long iLok successfully protected PT. It was not a waste of time for Avid by any means. Last good version in the wild was M-Powered 7.4 which was a long time ago (until now, obviously).

 

Actually, Ilok2 got hit instead of WIBU/eLicenser because it was kinda more popular than the other ones. Whatever will get popular enough to reach crackers nose, they will jump on it. You can say it's impossible for them, but the same thing was said all the time about ilok2 and they still found a way to humiliate it. Redoubled effort for R&D? With the guilt pressure and the painful morals of being ashamed that their unbreakable device got broken? put yourself in their shoes knowing that most of the companies who paid you a protecting license of a few grand $$$ to fail and probably affect their sales more than if they'd have a simple protection and keep the ilok2 license implementation for themselves and focus on making great products, take Klanghelm for example. They have no protection and i've heard they achieved more than 10.000 sales. If you multiply at least 10000 x 30$ as the small prices that Klanghelm have, he's up to 300.000$ just for himself. I know that Klanghelm is just one guy.

 

Well, dongles have been around for a long time, and many of them have been cracked, yet they still exist and are as popular as ever.

CodeMeter has a cash reward for anyone that can break it, so it's likely to be a bit more robust than the current iLok incarnation. Nothing is impervious to cracking in the long term, of course, but it only has to last as long as your current version of product is viable in the marketplace.

It only has to be "good enough" and for the last 4+ years iLok 2 has done its job, and Cubase has been secure for every release after 5.1, so I'm not really sure Steinberg regrets going with a dongle.

Only time will tell whether or not devs start abandoning dongles en masse but historically speaking DRM does not regress. Did the motion picture industry give up because Macrovision on VHS was skirted? No, they used DRM on DVD. And when that was bypassed, they used DRM again on BluRay. People are invested in protecting their intellectual property, and their profits more so.

It's all speculation, but I think it's foolish to think this is some coup de grâce to dongles or DRM in audio softs. It's just one more step in the eternal cat-and-mouse dance.

 

You've explained it better than I could. For me the key words are "good enough". It applies to all kind of protections. MD5 hashs were used years ago until today computer power made them breakable. Now SHA1 is the most used. Probably in five years the de facto standard will be SHA2 or whatever protection scheme "good enough". SHA2 could be used now, but this would mean excessive resources used only for protection.

 

@Rasputin
1. They didnt mention Japan.
2. The best hackers wouldn't attend to this kind of contest. What if one of them would've break it?
3. If they would've break it, then CodeMeter company would've look in the cracking process and they would've learn to improve the code. Hackers wouldn't offer a slice of cake for a corporation.
4. If the guy who broke it really would've get a big cash reward as well, then i'm sure that along with the money he would've had NSA & CIA all over his life from that point, because there's no smart gouvernment that would leave alone a hacker of that calibre to break a so acclaimed american CodeMeter.
5. The whole competition was probably all a promoting action, we can't know for sure how good the participating hackers was, but a thing is certain: A great hacker would never expose his skills publicly, especially against Codemeter or companies of such calibres. They could've even put their life in danger, enterprises will always try anything to get rid of someone that might compromise their business. A hacker would not only compromise just a sector of this company's business but actually all of it, because all this kind of companies does is to ensure license protection.

 

Last edited: Dec 21, 2015

While I share the sentiment that PT is nothing special, I disagree that no one GAF about PT. If you ever tell anyone that you record audio or are a producer, etc. they invariably ask (within a three minute time-frame) "so do you have Pro Tools?"

There are plenty of people getting into audio that buy a Pro Tools license simply because they feel they need to have access to it to be "in the know". I mean, how can you call yourself an audio something-or-other unless you've had 1st-hand knowledge of Pro Tools? (Slight sarcasm there, but there's a grain of truth in it.)

No one wants to admit to a studio or clients that they have no idea about Pro Tools, that they've never used it, etc. It's still a status symbol and it's made more desirable by being (traditionally) hard to obtain.

 

Last edited: Dec 21, 2015

People love to brag. Don't forget the ego factor. (GeoHotz?) There are such things as Black Hat conferences, and well-known info about exploits that happen there.

Besides, many reputable and well-known people, companies, and entities publish articles/findings on exploits all the time. There are more white hats than can be named, and they make their reputation by discovering how to crack things and then publishing their findings. Take the Trusted Computing Base Jamboree / Passware BitLocker Firewire hack as an example.

And regardless of whether or not the VERY best hackers attended those competitions, CodeMeter has still been tested and improved through multiple people from the outside attempting to crack it. It's not something just dreamed up in a sterile lab that has no track record.

But everyone can feel free to think that all the software of the future is going to rain from the sky in perpetuity, catering instantly to their every whim. Or whatever.

AudioUTOPIA did something that was considered very difficult to do. Props. And I suspect R2R has something up their sleeves as well. I just don't personally believe that means the horns of Armageddon have sounded and that Avid, Steinberg, Vengeance, Slate, etc. are all going to just roll over and say, "you know, let's ditch the DRM and bring our prices down. We've been so unfair all these years." I rather suspect that the dongles will get harder, or all the top-end DSP will take place on rented server farms and only be accessible through the cloud via lease.

 

Probably not just country, but also whether you're dealing with students, hobbyists, semi-pro, or pros. If you just want to make some rap beats with your friends and they're all using FL Studio then you're likely to ask, "hey man, do you have a copy of Fruity? I wanna make some trap beats" versus someone with a studio that's trying to attract clients or a student that's trying to break into the industry who would be much more inclined to want to learn/possess PT. And then you have the person who has a studio only for personal use and they're much more likely to work with whatever suits their workflow and their budget. Those people will probably be using Reaper, Studio One, etc. and won't be as concerned about what their friends/peers/colleagues are using.

But by-and-large, anyone getting into audio is tempted to at least try Pro Tools, just so they don't feel ignorant, un-hip, or left out in the cold.

 

In my opinion, it seems a very cloudy business. I may sound funny but there is a chance that to keep the pace devs might expose their products to public. If they see the rivals are gradually taking charge and their survival is in jeopardy, it's easy to go public and let the people get used to of their product until next version/product where ilok type restrictions jump in to secure for the next say 4, 5 years. What is left is that with the politics of victimisation they achieve more fame and with full of resources they survive plus a huge pool of new users. Who cares for the struggling developers; they just die out. Goal directed strategy. Am just implying hypothetically and have no vivid example to cover it so I could be entirely wrong. Am also not undermining anybody's efforts.

 

Last edited: Dec 21, 2015

Getting PT out of the studio and into live gigs and strengthening its sequencer (EDM?) seems like the course of action to take. I agree that they need to break PT into a wider market because the legacy of PT is about the only thing keeping them afloat, so far as I know. Avid suffered a lot on the video end of things because of Final Cut.

 

They still need to download stuff in their computer as long as the daw is running on their hard drive, unless they're implementing the DAW right into the web browser.

 

I'm sure that someone clever could come up with ways to make part of the code dependent upon routines only remotely present, and in a way that would not affect latency.

Basically the server would act as a dongle that can be upgraded at whim. No hardware replacement as a method gets cracked, just change the algorithm periodically and force a re-download of the plugin.

I mean, there IS a reason why everyone is moving toward a cloud model, and it's not out of the goodness of their hearts. Subscription is the future; a perpetually evolving install.

 

But what if a particular studio prefers no connection to the internet? Is he bound and forced to comply? Yeah, he can stick to the old version but what if let's say an user was a PT user since v7 then kept it loyal upgrading to each new version, that means that all his loyalty should be screwed and that AVID shouldn't care about him if he's not having an internet connection in order to use the new and better featured version? Also, you're right by "there IS a reason" but it's not entirely protection-related. It's actually about turning a temporary business into a permanent one. Let's face it, if you as a company make some plugins, all sorts of EQs, compressors, etc. and people buy them all, let's say in the course of 5 years. How or what are they going to pay for after these 5 years? Does the company needs to make another EQ? another comp? when the client already had enough of it?
Well, here the "subscription plan" kicks in. That's the advantage. Users pay less in the short term but more in the long run, but they consider it more convenient to pay 25$/month rather than 2500$ in less than 3 months. Company's advantage is that they get money each month, they will get fed economically in a constant manner.

 

There are many advantages (for devs mostly) for the Software-as-a-Service model, you're right. But my argument is that it is a viable way to protect a software from unauthorized usage.

If a studio wants a particular killer app then, yes, he is bound to comply or he is left behind. Look at Adobe. You think major graphic art houses are planning on sticking with legacy versions of Photoshop and Illustrator just because they don't want their computers connected to the 'Net, especially since they all probably are anyway?

Yes, that depends on clout. Maybe Slate can't get away with strictly subscriptions, I don't know. Maybe his plugs aren't in that much demand. But when Steinberg and Avid start paving the way to SaaS then the end-user will be acclimated to that business model and be willing to accept that from even lesser players in the field.

Once you've got your computer on the 'Net for PT 14 then it's a moot point if Slate needs an always-on connection too.

I'm not really sure the point you're arguing, though. What is it? Audio devs are doomed and the good guys (cracking teams) have saved the day and there's no longer any fear of being under the oppressive thumb of greedy companies and their tyrannical demand to be compensated for their product ever again?

 

Wow hehe!! My intent with this thread was to simply point out that "things are not as impossible as they seem after all". THATS IT!!! Now lets move on & forget I even said anything.
"Content Removed"

 

Last edited by a moderator: Dec 30, 2015