ableton's unfair copy protection system

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
darthstephen
Posts: 161
Joined: Sun Jan 15, 2006 10:17 pm

Post by darthstephen » Sat Jul 15, 2006 10:47 pm

Johnisfaster wrote:no one ever said you were the only one that didn't like the protection, but you are the only person who reformats monthly and you are the only person that thinks ableton is unfair for thinking you're doing something suspicious when requesting a new response once a month. of course they will think you're suspicious. the people on the other thread don't reformat monthly. most people do it like once a year if that.

I'm done with this. seriously I can't talk to you without calling you names and thats just not nice.
"2. We should not have to get a different response, everytime we reinstall to the same hardware. We should only have to get a new response when our hardware is updated, a new hard drive for instance. It is very frustrating and annoying to have to continuously re-register the same program, for those of us who reformat and reinstall Windows routinely."

darthstephen
Posts: 161
Joined: Sun Jan 15, 2006 10:17 pm

Post by darthstephen » Sat Jul 15, 2006 11:04 pm

i'm really okay with ableton at this point...i'll probably upgrade to 6 even. since this thread started i've bought tassman and a sampleset using kontakt player, both with challenge/response protection. i think i am becoming more comfortable with it...obviously, i recently have thrown hundreds of dollars at it and i've found a way to back up my os for free. i have also tailored my reinstall practices to meet the needs of the people i'm giving money to. i think i'm doing pretty well, even without a lobotomy. i will probably continue to point out the disadvantages of c/r protection and i know one day it will be a thing f the past. it's fear-based. a trust-based system will prevail.

TheAnimal
Posts: 396
Joined: Sat Jun 04, 2005 7:31 pm
Location: Germany

Post by TheAnimal » Thu Aug 03, 2006 1:55 pm

I just tried how easy it would be to replace my 160GB startup drive with a 320GB startup drive using Carbon Copy Cloner. Everything went fine when choosing the new startup drive and all registrations stayed intact, with two exceptions:

- B4 II (Native Instruments - as expected :evil:) and
- Snapz Pro (Ambrosia)

I must say that shines a good light on Ableton. :D Thanks, Ableton!
MacBook Pro, iMac i5, Fireface 800, Fireface 400

Mike Goodwin
Posts: 1119
Joined: Tue Nov 22, 2005 6:29 pm

Post by Mike Goodwin » Thu Aug 03, 2006 2:14 pm

I would not call abletons protection unfair but at the same time I do feel that it is a pain. I am the type of person that seems prone to reformatting as well and have had to ask ableton for a rather silly number of unlocks. I dont like having to email them each time I want to reinstall software that I own. I would rather see them use the method that NI has started using where I can manage my own software. Or just do like the big boys do and start using iLok. I have to use an iLok for my other software and have never had problems with it. It would save me having to bother ableton, and it would give me greater peace of mind.

my .02

TheAnimal
Posts: 396
Joined: Sat Jun 04, 2005 7:31 pm
Location: Germany

Post by TheAnimal » Thu Aug 03, 2006 2:27 pm

On the one hand the NI method for managing authorizations / registrations is not bad.

BUT: I simply cannot afford the time to make new installs from scratch. With all the software plus updates on my Mac that takes about one whole day. So I need to use clones. And I simply expect them to work as they should.

Plus: NI's website is a PITA.
MacBook Pro, iMac i5, Fireface 800, Fireface 400

Mike Goodwin
Posts: 1119
Joined: Tue Nov 22, 2005 6:29 pm

Post by Mike Goodwin » Thu Aug 03, 2006 11:22 pm

TheAnimal wrote:On the one hand the NI method for managing authorizations / registrations is not bad.

BUT: I simply cannot afford the time to make new installs from scratch. With all the software plus updates on my Mac that takes about one whole day. So I need to use clones. And I simply expect them to work as they should.

Plus: NI's website is a PITA.
I hear that. It takes me a full day to install windows and all my software. And boy what a fun and exciting day that is. My fave part is going throguh each PSP plug one at a time, install, user name,reg code .... enter. Repeat. One would think if you bought the entire product line that they would include an installer. Oh well.

TheAnimal
Posts: 396
Joined: Sat Jun 04, 2005 7:31 pm
Location: Germany

Post by TheAnimal » Fri Aug 04, 2006 12:01 pm

Mike Goodwin wrote:And boy what a fun and exciting day that is.
I couldn't agree more!!!

That's why I clone my startup drive every now and then. That's a background process. And in case my startup drive bites the dust all I have to do ist tell the computer to boot from the other drive.
MacBook Pro, iMac i5, Fireface 800, Fireface 400

rasputin
Posts: 645
Joined: Wed Mar 19, 2003 10:16 pm
Location: San Diego, California, USA
Contact:

Post by rasputin » Fri Aug 04, 2006 5:01 pm

darthstephen wrote:i simply can't believe how nasty you guys are. i guess i need pills because i run windows and prefer to have a fresh install once a month....
And then I stopped reading. Show of hands: how many people reinstall their OS once a month?

You might want to actually consider the concept that the problem here is not Ableton.

r.

The Shah
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Aug 04, 2006 4:29 pm
Location: singapura
Contact:

Post by The Shah » Fri Aug 04, 2006 7:00 pm

Let me put his in perspective for you, senor.

"I want to talk to you about the things that happened to me."

Let me tell you about copy protection that actually sucks.

I got me one of them ibook g 4 things a few months ago after using a pc for the last few years, and decided to install all my music software on it. That consists of Live and NI komplete 2. Now I really literally despise NI from top to bottom (I won't even try to hide my bias) BUT I love me some fm7 and B4. My standalone fm7 license don't do nothing nomore since I went over to Komplete 2. So to run my fm7 i gotta install the komplete dvd. my fm7 cd won't install as it's coded for os9. So check it out, to even install the thing you gotta go to NI's website and authorize it first. So first page you sign in, tell them your info, put in your serial number,bloodtype, birth order, miltary record, preferred sexual position all that jazz and click enter. And then what happens?

You get directed to a page that tells you the website isn't working properly and they are sorry.

That's it.

You can't activate or even install the software. Not even in some kind of demo mode. nothing. zilch. The great zero gape. Nihil Nihil Nihil.

Don't matter if it's your first install, or your tenth in six months. They could care less.

Now after enough people screamed about this for a few months they made some osx patch for installing a bug that I can't even get to. Even when you run the bugfix it don't matter, because the website is broken and you can't authorize it so that it installs and gets to the bugs.

So my software, which cost a lot more then Live, won't even work. it just sits there in a case. Paying customers -myself included until I was informed that I was no longer welcome to post at NI -have been telling Marius that website is broken in many areas for over a year. He of course denies that there is anything wrong with it. There are posts in the Komplete forum of osx customers like myself equally pissed, going back a good four months or so. No one at NI cares. Not like that's a surprise. This isn't a unique bug on my computer. This is for everyone trying to install komplete 2 on osx, presumably after one of the various website crashes or such, as it did work at one point in time.

It wasn't just komplete 2, at one point Marius had to manually register K3 registrations via email and they had similar problems with some Kore authorizations.

Maybe they've fixed it recently, at the best of times it's well known that they don't return calls or emails to customer service except on the seventh day of the seventh week of the seventh moon in the seventh month, and as I'm personally on the NI enemy list via Marius himself personally putting my name down, I don't expect any help and haven't checked back. I'm resigned to the fate of them screwing me out of hundreds of dollars, literally. That's alright, I've got a malay black jinn curse in the works for them...

Now if that wasn't bad enough, when NI made komplete 2, they re coded it with new copy protection. The people they farmed it out too to put copy protection in at the code level to keep it from getting cracked (and we see how well that worked, aye?) didn't get paid to beta test it. So all the stuff in komplete had all kinds of new bugs that the stand-alone's don't. Many of them, like in spektral delay and vokator were never fixed. You can't get a wet signal in spektral delay if you use it in Live. That's going on two years, it's been reported, back when they still pretended every two or three months they cared about their customers they actually promised twice in six month intervals to fix that. They gave up pretending entirely last year, so it's been silent.

Let me summarize:

Copy protection that is dependent upon a website that is notoriously problematic to even allow you to install the software once.

Copy protection that introduces bugs into the performance of the software.
.

So that, senor, is copy protection that sucks.



Now let's compare ableton...

I've used live in a studio since version one, and I've bought it since version two. The first time I installed it I didn't have an internet connection in my house. I had to do the challenge response via a friends computer and a floppy disk to bring it back and forth. It was no sweat of any kind, it was the first time I ever did any kind of unlocking on a computer as I'm not one of these computer types, only computer I really know much about is my wah wah pedal and I was sweating like a whore in church. It was no problem or any kind. Absolutely Zero Grief.

I had a vaio self-destruct as they are famous for doing. Had to reinstall on a new machine. Ableton gave me zero grief.

On that new machine, I had a boot sector blow out and lost everything. Had to do a new install of everything. Ableton gave me zero grief.

When I got this mac several months back, I was worried if there would be a problem installing since I already had live 5 hooked up on my p.c. Guess what?
Ableton gave me zero grief.

I had some problems with this mac, I was given it as payment for a project I was producing in malaysia, I had a row with the executive producer, uninstalled all my software and gave it back. He tried to pretend it never happened and had his wife pass it back off to my wife over tea to give it back to me as a gesture of goodwill. So tonight I finally got around to downloading live again and installing it on this machine. Again, since I had installed not too long ago, and all the bad "luck" I keep having with various scum who call themselves software companies, I fretted on this one. And you know what? You know the song by now:
Ableton gave me Zero grief.

As my mainman Paws can tell you I don't hide my feelings about things that piss me off. I've put Ableton over for years as great, everywhere I've gone on the net and with other musicians and producers.If ableton did anything I didn't like, anything at all, I would take them to task for it. I've had no problems of any kind though, and I've never seen them act in any way that was less then ethical. I hold myself and people I know up to what in our current age are considered unrealistically high standards, yet they have never once let me down.

Now I realize that I'm largely preaching to the converted. I'm not here just to vent how much I loathe NI and everything they stand for. That's all well documented elsewhere, I only bring it up to illustrate the differences in my experience, if your opinion on any of this is different then mine, that's cool, I'm not saying it as an attack on what you value (even at the height of me calling NI out daily on their forums I was still mates with several people who work for NI, we just agreed to disagree), it's just the extent I want to demonstrate how Ableton has done right by me compared to my experiences elsewhere. Since I was in the neighborhood already, and saw this thread, I thought I'd just take a second to thank Ableton, because really,I appreciate them tremendously. From the software's features to it's quality control to the design aesthetics, to the way they appreciate their customers, they are the absolute tops, there isn't any competition.

Emissary
Posts: 2431
Joined: Tue Jan 27, 2004 11:27 am

Post by Emissary » Sat Aug 05, 2006 8:53 am

Ableton are great with regards to giving you new unlocks. I did a dual boot on my pc , and so my challenge response code changed when i re-installed. I was a little worried , but after contacting them, they added another unlock the next day. Its nice to deal with a human and not a machine

Machinesworking
Posts: 11416
Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2004 9:30 pm
Location: Seattle

Post by Machinesworking » Sat Aug 05, 2006 10:30 pm

Emissary wrote:Its nice to deal with a human and not a machine
Some of us prefer machines. :)

mike holiday
Posts: 2433
Joined: Mon Jun 28, 2004 8:52 pm
Location: NOW

Post by mike holiday » Sun Aug 06, 2006 1:43 am

Machinesworking wrote:
Emissary wrote:Its nice to deal with a human and not a machine
Some of us prefer machines. :)
what about the hybrids?
:P :P
dual 1.8 G4 10.4.9 w/768 ram & A&H xone 3D


"I ain't often right but I've never been wrong"

TheAnimal
Posts: 396
Joined: Sat Jun 04, 2005 7:31 pm
Location: Germany

Post by TheAnimal » Sun Aug 06, 2006 9:03 am

Mike Goodwin wrote: I would rather see them use the method that NI has started using where I can manage my own software.
I wouldn't! Wanted to shift my NI license to the new drive yesterday. But do you know what's the first thing they tell you when you click to deactivate the old authorization?

"Please note that you will not be able to authorize the same product for this hardware configuration again."

:evil: So I can't go back to my old drive e.g. as a backup. Great! :evil:

I bought B4 II for about half the price it normally costs, but I already regret it! The software is nice but neither the copy protection nor NI's general stance towards customers are.
MacBook Pro, iMac i5, Fireface 800, Fireface 400

friend
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Aug 21, 2006 12:39 pm

Post by friend » Mon Aug 21, 2006 1:00 pm

Lots of Ya***y doodles here it seems. And most of you must be under 20...
I'm really surprised how unfriendly and unprofessional forum this is. My first impression of this forum and its people is totally negative one.
Probably you are all just teenagers and Live isn't professional product for serious music making at all?
Are there any people who really do something serious with this program? Not just fuckin' techno trance shit from the Bushland...

Angstrom
Posts: 14921
Joined: Mon Oct 04, 2004 2:22 pm
Contact:

Post by Angstrom » Mon Aug 21, 2006 1:06 pm

friend wrote:Lots of Ya***y doodles here it seems. And most of you must be under 20...
I'm really surprised how unfriendly and unprofessional forum this is. My first impression of this forum and its people is totally negative one.
Probably you are all just teenagers and Live isn't professional product for serious music making at all?
Are there any people who really do something serious with this program? Not just fuckin' techno trance shit from the Bushland...
Image

Post Reply