DRM and DONGLE

[v.veidt]

Thanks for considering the tablet market. Personally, I've found an approach that works very well for now. As always, I know the team is looking out for us as clients. For that, you have my eternal gratitude. Be sure to get some rest, I know how stressful long flight tours can be.

[Peter Wassink]

@ Peter : A dongle is much more expensive than 20€. Also : we need to prepare, record,register and set them, and test with each new OS for each new release of the OS (thanks Mr Jobs ... for the Mac OS 10.6.4 : a real nightmare). And I don't talk about the network ones (400 € for the most expensive, I don't remember exactly).

this seems an extra argument for switching to a dongle less DRM. Though i can imagine software DRM's can be nightmare too.

i'm currently working on a Toonboom storyboard Pro project. and it has a pretty good (as far as i can judge) license system that enables switching the license between machines with relative ease.
added benefit may be that limited time licenses would be easier to organise. I imagine that this could be a viable market, for instance for individual projects or workshops.

[Fabrice]

@ Peter : A dongle is much more expensive than 20€. Also : we need to prepare, record,register and set them, and test with each new OS for each new release of the OS (thanks Mr Jobs ... for the Mac OS 10.6.4 : a real nightmare). And I don't talk about the network ones (400 € for the most expensive, I don't remember exactly).

this seems an extra argument for switching to a dongle less DRM. Though i can imagine software DRM's can be nightmare too.

i'm currently working on a Toonboom storyboard Pro project. and it has a pretty good (as far as i can judge) license system that enables switching the license between machines with relative ease.
added benefit may be that limited time licenses would be easier to organise. I imagine that this could be a viable market, for instance for individual projects or workshops.

I would never use it for a workshop : imagine you have as many activation codes as you have computers ... that would be a complete nightmare in terms of management. (ok other solutions exists in this situation, but most often you have a limited number of reinstall allowed, and when you use a network, you need most often your computers to have the same datas using a ghost)
also, a such system would imply that we will do an automatic process online to let you switch your license... here come the piracy problem :
pirates don't simply distribute a crack ... they also attack your website to retrieve the software in its original uncracked state.
so a such protection would require a huge work on the website. I'm still oldschool, and at the moment links and registration codes are given manually, so we can check who asks for what. (about 1 on 5 requests for an unlock-code is a fake ...)
nb : The dongle also allows to add a time limit if we want.
And once again, without the piece of hardware, you are making your software being nothing (or only a virtual thing), this help the people (especially students) to think you can use cracked softwares.

+

believe me, with a simple serial number or DRM as protection, our software would be on all the pirate servers less than 2 weeks after it's official release.

I would add that the pirate will more probably try to find a real dongle or a real dongle unlock-code to crack the software. It's less easy.

[D.T. Nethery]

This discussion topic has been an education for me . After reading this thread I have more understanding and respect for what a software company endures to keep their software from being pirated and downloaded by unscrupulous users. I despise pirates . They have ruined film distribution, especially for independent producers and they ruin the development of software by draining precious time and resources from software companies which must be spent protecting their software , time & resources which could be spent on improving the software even more.

I also have more appreciation for the dongle than I did before. While not a perfect solution it does seem to allow the individual user the most flexibility, to easily transfer their license between a work or school computer to a home computer . (Just don't lose it !!!)

[D.T. Nethery]

May I ask if anyone else here knows if it is possible to purchase insurance for a dongle ? So if the dongle is lost or stolen the replacement cost would be covered by the insurance company . Has anyone done this ?

[slowtiger]

I think this should be covered in a general software insurance. Thus it doesn't matter what exactly happens, wether the CD is scratched, the dongle lost, or the harddrive with the authorized licence stolen or damaged.

I've had my bad experiences with dongles, too. The registration process of Logic when they switched to USB dongles was a nightmare, with lots of angry phone calls. Even worse was Quark Xpress, as any graphic designer knows. Quark was unanimously voted "worst support ever" around 2000, because they simply refused to answer any request for registration, thus leaving their paying customers without a working software for months. (And don't forget their stupid idea to make the presence of a pug-in part of a document so you couldn't open a document if you didn't have the very same set of plug-ins ...)

Compared to this TVPaint is just great. The software works, the support answers nearly immediately, and the developers actually care about bugfixing.

[Fabrice]

Compared to this TVPaint is just great. The software works, the support answers nearly immediately, and the developers actually care about bugfixing.

Thanks Slowtiger

One thing I have to add is that the TVPaint dongle also allows to use TVPaint software during a few days, even without having the registration code.
Also it allows the studios or schools to start the work even if the whole payment is under progress (for exemple : the bank transfert uses to take a while between Mexico and France )
The customer is not considered as a thief here. It is something important for me and all the others at TVPaint.

[ammoniteboy]

I loath the dongle. Its horrid. Its near impossible to use TVP on a laptop with a cintique and an external hard drive. Not to mention all of the times i've accidentally nocked it out and lost my work. I've even lost a storyboarding job once because I was on the road and didn't have the dongle with me! Do you realize how frustrating that is? The dongle is absolute garbage! Its absurd and a completly bogus. As other people have pointed out it does absolutely nothing but encourage people to get a cracked version.

If you really want to stop piracy offer the software at a reasonable price, actively update it with rich features and keep your loyal customer happy. As is version 10 is completely overpriced, its so called new features are nothing more than tweaks to clean up the cluttered interface and system improvements to address the fact that the program gums up and chokes on average size projects. I'm insulted really that TVP expects former or new customers to pay so much for so little. They're pretty much doing everything in their power to invite pirates

[D.T. Nethery]

] Its near impossible to use TVP on a laptop with a cintique and an external hard drive. Not to mention all of the times i've accidentally nocked it out and lost my work.

No, it's not "near impossible" . Get a USB Hub. That allows you to plug in 4 - to - 7 USB devices into one USB port. I've seen some 10 port hubs.

Having the dongle plugged in to a hub will also prevent you from accidentally knocking out the dongle. (not sure how you could do that unless your USB port is loose? My dongle fits snuggly in the USB port and would need to be deliberately pulled out to disengage it. )

[D.T. Nethery]

If you really want to stop piracy offer the software at a reasonable price, actively update it with rich features and keep your loyal customer happy.

I'm a loyal customer (are you ? ) and I'm quite happy with the level of service I get from TVP Developpment Co. I think TVPaint just gets better and better. If I recall correctly, the updates (with significant improvements) from v. 8.6 to 9.0 to 9.5 were FREE for almost everyone and the price of the software did not significantly increase during those years, so now I do not begrudge TVP Developpment Co. from trying to stay solvent and recoup some of their investment by charging for this v.10.0 update.

And quite frankly: TVPaint 9.5 isn't broken. It's a great piece of software. One could keep using it and be just fine , without updating to v. 10.0 if it's too expensive to upgrade right now. I really like the updates to v. 10.0 and to me they are worth the price, but if I had to I would be fine to continue to use v. 9.5 for the time being.

[masterchief]

I have four USB ports on my gateway notebook .. plus a 7-port USB hub, gives me a total of 10 available USB ports.. optical mouse, Shuttle pro, intuous4 tablet, printer, ext HDD, thermaltake HDD expansion, USB NIC, ...and a multitude of dongles. not a problem here. sometimes I even plugin Pinnacle TV tuner USB and watch some television. I keep my notebook on stable horizontal surface free of clutter. a cintique is just not practical IMHO

[Mads Juul]

with the new Tablets rising with Windows 8 .
maybe it is time to have a TVPaint with no Dongle?
I can see this have only 1 usb port and when drawing on the screen in your lap I could think the dongle get in the way

http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow_viewer/0 ... 00.asp?p=n
Just a thought

[masterchief]

Latest release of Lightwave 3D from NewTek can be used without a dongle. It works with Windows 7 OS. It requires a separate key file installed on the computer

[idragosani]

While I would love a dongleless version of TVP, speaking from my own experiences of working in a small software company, license management is a royal PITA. I can't imagine being able to keep up with it and trying to prevent piracy as well, although I imagine TVP could go through a 3rd party authentication service (I think Sentinel provides this). The big benefit of the dongle is license once and then use TVP anywhere the dongle goes.

Wonder how licensing is going to be managed for the Android app, though.

[JohnArtbox]

speaking as a long time tablet user, I hate having a dongle. I'd much prefer a cpu locked version so I didn't need to constantly worry about where the dongle was. Or if we have to have a dongle, how about the smaller ones which sit almost flush, so at least we could tape it in place and forget about it?
Please....