IK Multimedia Warning

[coldbuggin]

I bought and registered Sampletank in 2006. I want to sell it. IK charges $50 as a "license transfer fee." To me, that is insane. Oh, let me sell my car. Better give Nissan additional money to allow me to sell WHAT'S MINE. Ugh. Needless to say, I will never buy another IK product again.

[IP]

agree, this 1 sucks!

some companies charge money to transfer a license
some others dont even let you sell it
some let you sell but then the product become NFS. (so it lose its value because only a few people will buy something that will not be able to sell in the future).

[pencilrocket]

$50 is crazy.

[doghouse]

The heck with the transfer fee, I wish mfrs would just figure out better ways to deal with piracy than requiring users to deal with licenses in the first place.

When I bought Reason 2.5 seven years ago, it came with a "credit card" with a serial number on it. I entered that into the program and I was good to go. No need to deal with some licensing app over teh netz, no dongle, nothing. If I ever sell it, all I have to do is give the buyer that serial number and he's good to go.

Why it has to be any more complicated than that beats me...people have been cracking warez all along despite all these stupid licensing hoops we jump through.

P.S. Reason 6 now requires a dongle

P.S. #2 You don't own any software you buy, check the license agreement (the thing you never read but just click on "accept"). That's what the Open Source movement is all about.

[glitchrock-buddha]

I think it's perfectly reasonable to charge a fee for license transfers to cover costs, but not 50 bucks. Especially for products that just can't be sold for that much more.

When you consider the fact that it does require some administration and support to transfer a license, usually issuing a new authorization code and changing user information/registration, it makes sense that there is a fee. Especially when you consider that it's as good as new for usually not much more than half the price when used.

In the case of IK Multimedia though, one good thing is that you can just transfer the account. It requires no work on their part. Similar to how you can transfer your korg account. So you send your username/password and then the new buyer changes all the details for that account (email, username, password, personal info etc.) and you avoid paying the transfer fee. However you'd have to sell/buy all licenses tied to that account.

[William]

I just recently emailed IK about upgrading my very old copy of sampletank and never received a response (think 8-9 years old lol...i still have the discs and the serial #'s though).

I also went to download my copy of Miroslav SE for PC since I just switched over from a Mac, and was notified that I would have to pay for another download authorization.

IK not looking too good in my eyes at the moment either.

[sporkles]

Not to mention that their plugs have meant guaranteed crashes with Live for years now. I bought the T-Racks singles in the group buy a few years back. First of all, the authorisation/installation process was the most tedious one ever (authorise/challenge every single plug). Then comes the fact that if you actually try to use the plugs in Live, Live crashes. Add to that the endless promo e-mails they bombard you with subsequently... I haven't even installed the plugs on my new laptop; not worth the hassle. If I have to use them, it's only on a single, rendered master on my desktop.

[friend_kami]

I think it's perfectly reasonable to charge a fee for license transfers to cover costs, but not 50 bucks.

cover what costs?

[sporkles]

I guess their rationale is that they're entitled to it, as they miss a potential sale whenever someone buys a used licence, and that they actually have to go to the painstaking effort of transferring a licence to a new user.

[glitchrock-buddha]

I think it's perfectly reasonable to charge a fee for license transfers to cover costs, but not 50 bucks.

cover what costs?

You don't think license transfers cost the company anything at all? When someone has to even respond to people's emails, send new authorization codes etc. it does take some time in the day, and those little times add up when you make 0 dollars from it. A license to software also grants certain privileges such as support. A new user of software means the potential for new support requests (authorization issues, system compatibility or any number of usage issues). No new income but potential new work. It is very kind of a company to offer free of charge license transfers and it certainly makes their products more enticing, but I can fully understand a small fee (Not 50 dollars!), like 10 dollars.

A reasonable alternative is NFR but free transfer. If second hand purchase makes it NFR, I think it should be a free service to the original buyer. It lessons the value of the product somewhat as a second hand purchase. But if there is a small fee then you should be able to have it exchange hands as many times as desired. GForce for example goes NFR but is free. Camel Audio unfortunately have a fee and it goes NFR. I think that's a bit much but at least they have great support. 2CAudio have a 50 dollar transfer fee as well, which I think is crazy.

[kitekrazy]

Some companies like Cakewalk to not allow software to be resold.