Byron,
You are correct and it is my naive approach to how I would want thing to be done that got me in the current mess.
In an ideal world, Ilok would have some threshold of sanity before it eradicates your licenses.
 
Means that if your hard drive, your motherboard fails, there should be enough evidence that you have everything else the same and not trying to rip off the developer to get another activation.
 
Frustrated here and fired up the warez cracks for only those programs that I have legitimately paid for. Slow and painful rebuilding of the system but for the most part, cut the begging ritual short.
 
Don't have no crack for the AIR programs, like Hybrid, Xpand, etc, but these guys the most quick responsive to reset authorizations if you have a catastrophic failure. Many other vendors not so nice when you are down in the pits. Nothing money can't solve if you are denied by many of them.
 
If your computer is immortal, Ilok no dongle is great. If not, do the hardware thing. Will save a lot of grief that will be dumped on you in an instant when the hardware failure happens.
 
John

In an ideal world, thieves wouldn't steal intellectual property.


So don't get mad at the vendors, get mad at the pirates.

Again,
You are correct.
I try to imagine some young guy or girl trying to make a paycheck to feed the kids or keep the electricity on.  Sales supporting their existence going down because someone has easy access to a crack not paid for. This is why the visionary folks at Alchemy went down. We all ultimately suffer directly of indirectly from the curse of software piracy.
 
My beef is with systems like Ilok that have not evolved a middle of the world protocol that can differentiate between an honest hard drive failure and some rip off attempt. This would be easy with current technology, but we are where we are at and the little guy suffers.
John

bdickens
iLok only provides the method for managing software licenses. They do not issue them. It is up to the individual software developers to determine when, if and how many authorizations to give you.

They provide the management for issued licenses. You point could be an argument... in case iLok by technology can not do something. But there is a prove they technically can, they do if you pay them.
 

bdickens
So don't get mad at the vendors, get mad at the pirates.

Vendors can be mad from pirates, that is a valid point. But do I as a customer suffer from pirates? No.
Vendors shift the consequences of piracy to me with the logic:
"we have problems with pirates, well... let our customers suffer from piracy instead of us".
I first pay for the protection system and then suffer from it. I do not need it and that is vendor's choice, not my.
And so the vendor is responsible for my problems, not the weather/cat/child which can destroy a dongle, not a broken component in my computer which can be replaced under warrantee and for sure not some abstract "pirates".
 
I can speak for myself only. Have I bought any program because it was copy protected and had no crack? No!
I have bought the first license for Sonar because it had NO online nor dongle protection at that time. That was
deal breaking argument for me.
 

I will never give one penny of my money to Pace (iLock) again. Never.
 
I understand completely what azlow and John are saying. And I agree with them.
 
Slate never got a dime of my money. Neither did Soft Tube. Or any other software vendor that uses ilock. I take my money elsewhere.
 
And I have not had any software authorization problems. And I got a lot.

The problem begins with those that think everything should be free.  Nobody works for free.

azslow3

bdickens
iLok only provides the method for managing software licenses. They do not issue them. It is up to the individual software developers to determine when, if and how many authorizations to give you.

They provide the management for issued licenses. You point could be an argument... in case iLok by technology can not do something. But there is a prove they technically can, they do if you pay them.
 

bdickens
So don't get mad at the vendors, get mad at the pirates.

Vendors can be mad from pirates, that is a valid point. But do I as a customer suffer from pirates? No.
Vendors shift the consequences of piracy to me with the logic:
"we have problems with pirates, well... let our customers suffer from piracy instead of us".
I first pay for the protection system and then suffer from it. I do not need it and that is vendor's choice, not my.
And so the vendor is responsible for my problems, not the weather/cat/child which can destroy a dongle, not a broken component in my computer which can be replaced under warrantee and for sure not some abstract "pirates".
 
I can speak for myself only. Have I bought any program because it was copy protected and had no crack? No!
I have bought the first license for Sonar because it had NO online nor dongle protection at that time. That was
deal breaking argument for me.
 

I'll just bet you have locks on your doors.

abacab
The problem begins with those that think everything should be free.  Nobody works for free.

I was not claiming everything should be free. Just that things should not be ridiculously locked with a possibility it breaks without any real reason and zero responsibility from the company which delivers you the product.
iLok provides the service they call "cloud", right? And it was not working world wide for continuous time. Do you think that is ok?
 
Your guitar is not stop working after one string replacement. Yes, it can happened the broken string was your fault. But you have replaced it. Now the pickup has noticed that and no longer produce the sound, with the explanation "there are pirates which copy our guitars, we have to protect ourselves".
 

bdickens
I'll just bet you have locks on your doors.

Sure. But does the lock on your door has following properties?
1) if for some reason the lock is broken, you are no longer allowed to use your home. And you are not allowed to call the lock repair service till you have subscribed to such service prior the accident happened.
2) every time you use your key, the lock is going online. If it can not go online, you get the message "sorry, the service is down. We have no idea for how long".
3) the door key is no longer working once you have replaced any window. And there is no way to re-enable it.
 
 

Bought an iLok gen3 dongle about a month ago. Moved my licenses from the computer over to the dongle. No issues.  I have about a handful of iLok licenses for Soundtoys, Eventide, and Softube.
 
I wish I could toss the Waves licenses over to it, but at least Waves lets you use a spare USB thumb drive.
 
Several years ago, I got burned hard AF after my HDD crashed one evening, and I was forced to reinstall Windows.  At the time, I had my license for Waldorf Largo on the PC (no dongle). $125 down the toilet!  Waldorf was at least sympathetic and allowed me to purchase a new license at a 90% discount rate.  Since then, I have Largo on an eLicenser dongle.  Between the iLok, USB (Waves), and eLicenser, I feel secure.
 
Windows 10 sucks so freakin' bad, and PC's in nature always need a re-installation of Windows at some point or another, that having guarded licenses worth $$$ (with no true "cloud backup" available) on an external device is the preferred solution for me.

2:43AM
I wish I could toss the Waves licenses over to it, but at least Waves lets you use a spare USB thumb drive.

With Waves you are covered: https://www.waves.com/support/reactivate-recover-licenses
So, if your ($1-2) USB stick is broken, you can recover IN ONE CLICK! Without post, without fees.
 

Several years ago, I got burned hard AF after my HDD crashed one evening, and I was forced to reinstall Windows.  At the time, I had my license for Waldorf Largo on the PC (no dongle). $125 down the toilet!  Waldorf was at least sympathetic and allowed me to purchase a new license at a 90% discount rate.  Since then, I have Largo on an eLicenser dongle.  Between the iLok, USB (Waves), and eLicenser, I feel secure.

When one of your clients call you next day and ask for the project name you have made for him (yes, just several characters! That is what the license key is), ask him to pay 10% of the whole work. I am sure he will like to pay you just 10% for this one word, since you could ask the whole price again
 

Windows 10 sucks so freakin' bad, and PC's in nature always need a re-installation of Windows at some point or another, that having guarded licenses worth $$$ (with no true "cloud backup" available) on an external device is the preferred solution for me.

Windows 10 has nothing to do with that. You also need to re-install OS X and Linux periodically. Most of the time the process is "automatic update", but sometimes not. BTW I have installed Windows 8 several years ago and since then I have just updated (Windows 10 1809 now). You can clone Windows to another drive without problem, except for iLok (and other such technologies).
 
Open the Waves link in one tab and this one: https://ilok.com/#!zdt-details in another. Then compare.
1) buy the second spare iLok dongle. When the first one is broken/stolen/etc. and you do not have spare, you will be unable to use products till RMA is complete and that can take 2 weeks...
2) replace both dongles once per 2 years (they have limited warrantee)
3) pay $30 per year for that "coverage". Or you can pay $100 just once when the problem happened. They are so friendly to give you options...
 
What is described in both links is EFFECTIVELY THE SAME for the company. In one case you just click once. In another you buy dongles, pay fees, wait weeks.... Do you still want Waves on your iLok?