Just checking something.

If I ever loose my Dongle holding all my VI Licenses or if the dongle ever breaks - There is no way to get my Licenses back? And even though I have all the DVD's - I will have to buy the software again?

Is there a way of backing up the Licenses? After all its a small piece of plastic.

Thanks.

Best,

Tanuj. 

I just recently purchased my first library, the Special Edition.  Are you saying that if something ever happened to my Dongle I would be SoL?  Couldn't I just unregister the old vienna key and move the licenses to the new one?

cgernaey:

I just recently purchased my first library, the Special Edition.  Are you saying that if something ever happened to my Dongle I would be SoL?  Couldn't I just unregister the old vienna key and move the licenses to the new one?

Isnt this a serious issue?

I mean - how can you rely on a small piece of plastic and for how long? This is an expensive piece of software.

Yeah, I doubt I will get Insurance for music software - especially in India. 

But are there possibilities unexplored here as far as liscenses go? I mean - I will still have the DVD's but just because of an accident or anything else - I make not only a financial loss of 4000 pounds but a very personal loss too.

I have to move around studios a lot - to program for productions and the dongle may break!

Tanuj. 

breaking of the dongle is not a problem - loosing it would be ....

as long as you can send us any broken key and we can verfy its identity licenses can be replaced for a small handling fee

christian

..and what if the dongle is lost in e.g. a break-in? Would you then have to buy it all over again?

counterquestion: what if your 48 channel digital mixer is lost in a break.in - would you then have to buy it again?

So the answer is: yes, you would have to buy it all over again?

You don't think there is a difference between hardware and immaterial rights? We buy the right to use the samples, not the samples. As you have many times pointed out before. The dongle itself is not very expensive...

The answer has also to be "Yes", because there is no way for us to check if you've really lost your key or you have sold it.

best

Herb

chris, any such incident can only be handled case-by-case ... basically for VSL the license is sold and in use ... if the licenses are insured (as well as the mixer) replacement shouldn't be a problem for you.

clearly you can't write to VSL and tell: hey, my licenses have been stolen - send me new ones ...

for any more specific question please contact sales [AT] vsl [dot] co [dot] at

I realize that they have to protect themselves from pirating etc but there is something extremely unsettling about this subject.  For people who are trying to purposely pirate this stuff I can see why this would be a convenient way to smuggle more instruments.  However for someone like myself, I use a MacBookPro and I am CONSTANTLY (every day) taking my laptop on the road to do work.  I mix, arrange and compose every day on the road.  When I go to friends houses or to visit my parents, this comes with me so I can work on it in downtime, or to endulge my anxious mother who awaits my vocal accompaniments so that I may sing them for her (opera arias).

Do you have any idea how afraid of this little blue dongle I am?  I look at it every time I pull it out gently praying I don't break it, or drop it out of my pocket while grabbing my credit card out of my pocket.  I am afriad of putting it in my laptop bag that if I drop the bag I will break it.  There is so much stupid unnecessary focus on this dongle for someone like myself who moves around with it daily that it's ridiculous.  This only further enhances that annoyance and fear of losing it.  I am now 10 times more afraid of this dongle learning what I have learned here.  Just the idea that if anything happened to this other then breaking it (dropping it out of my pocket, someone stealing it thinking its a 2gigabyte memory stick and it looks pretty blue, I stick it somewhere I think its "secure" and secure it so much that even I don't remember where it is, etc.).

I have so many thousands of dollars in gigastudio samples (over 1 terabyte).  I was slowly deciding that I would lean this way because of the amazing stories I hear of these Vienna libraries.  However, if I ever ran into a situation with this dongle and couldn't get restitution by purchasing another dongle etc that would be the end of the line for me on this product.  There is no way I am going to travel all over the country, and Mexico etc with this thing doing live performances and composing being terrified I will lose this thing and have to re-purchase my products.  All it takes is one time giong through foreign customs and someone snatching it up and I am done for.

Sorry for the rant but this is a bit of a shock for me at the idea that I may be presented with a problem at the VSL door should something of this sort happen.  It may never happen, but now the fear has been implanted and which for me removes some of my excitement for the whole process.  Knowing that my hard earned money spent on the product isn't my life line, but in fact a 50 cent piece of fragile hardware most probably made in the cheapest 3rd world country known to man.  The whole idea of this makes me begin to consider rolling back to my gigastudio solutions and dongleless solutions.

Cheers

i can follow ... though: what if you lost your logic XSkey and wrote to apple ... would they have sent you a new license? what with steinberg, plugins, ect ....

cm, it's not a problem for me, and will perhaps never be. I'm one of those unfortunate souls that within a week will be cut of of the VIP program, and is now doing a final evaluation if I will upgrade now or never.

Since loosing a dongle is easily done, e.g. if you move around as cgerney does, I would suppose a special insurance would be needed, not only for break-ins and theft, but also in cases of your own fault, e.g. if you forget the dongle or drops it somewhere. Normally you don't carry values of 10000s of dollars worth in you wallet... could be an expensive insurence for sure. Maybe someone have insured expensive software and could enlighten the community of the cost?

Thanks for the info! My push-button-to-upgrade-finger just doubled its distance to the button!

Cheers

CM,

I have no dongles etc from my days of logic.  I am running logic studio and since I came from Logic 7 (as an upgrade) all I need is the license key from my Logic 7 install CD.  I have no dongles in my gigastudio setup or any software sample libraries of which I own.  This dongle idea is all new to me and seems VERY fragile and risky.  I have all this information saved on discs, uploaded in Apples registration process etc.  So I hardly doubt I would get much slack from them especially since the software only works on my Mac.  Of which they can easily look up and see the hardware address and serial number of the machine that I am trying to re-register the software on.  Which instantly proves the validity of my needing to re-install as was the case recently due to a bad logic update ruining my machine.  It caused me so much havoc and problems that Apple sent me to their closest MAC store for a free Leopard OS X upgrade for the inconvenience.  That is what I call service.  They realize pirating is out there, however chose to go with the honor system for honest people like myself and made my life VERY easy.  Thank you APPLE.

Again, I understand why VSL would try to protect themselves, however for the honest paying customer like myself, there needs to be some honor system for this as well.  Yes, you may get burned sometimes but this is the price of business.  When you have such strict rules and laws in place it is always the good guy who gets screwed, always.  The bad guy could care less if you go along with their scheme because they have nothing to lose, only everything to gain.  Maybe it's just me but if an honest paying person was buying my product and had a problem I would feel obligated to help them out when in fact the cause of their problem was something I created to protect myself from the thieves of the digital world.  Being in business is about accepting the fact you will have losses as well as gains in financial terms.  If the same repeating customer keeps coming back over and over for dongles etc then something is certainly raised to be fishy.

I remember when I had to reload my whole computer just recently due to the failed Logic update.  When I went to re-install Sibelius which I use for scoring it accessed the internet for registration and brought up a window that said "Sibelius was registered on this computer already" and it instantly activated my product.  I was so impressed with that.  Talk about no hassle at all and it remember my MAC Address or something solid enough to verify it was me and instantly let me get back to work.  Thank you SIBELIUS.  Something to this degree or as in depth as the grueling registration process of AutoCAD would be sufficient in proving that it is in fact the same machine that I registered the software to run on.  Let it even access the internet once every so often to verify that this is still the machine you claim to be running the software on (to prevent you from being able to multiple machine load the software and pass the license around and around your network).  I don't know, it's isn't my decision on how it gets done at VSL but I hope they are at least considering the idea of how many legitimate people could get upset, screwed over or just turn their backs on the products at all (it don't matter how good the product is, if it's a high risk product then people will run away from it).  Just the idea itself raises so much stress in me that it makes me feel like I am the one doing something illegal.  Becuase I now know if i lose it etc, that I am going to really have my work cutout trying to gain access to MY libraries again.  Of which I am at the mercy of someone saying, "sorry thanks for playing, but I can't help you.  Please re-purchase all your samples.  Have a nice day".  That don't fly with me very well.

Do what you have to do though.  I am sure you have thought about all of these things and in the end made your decision of how you would handle it and the dongle decision was implemented.  I speak only for myself but this may be where I draw the line and use what I have, and go back to using my old gigastudio solutions.  Yet making rational decisions while feeling irrational in mind may not be such a good idea.

Regards