buyer beware URS plugins

  • Thread starter Thread starter foreverain4
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foreverain4

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ok, well, i heard pretty good things about these plugins. so, i went over to the website and bought the BLT eq. only $50, but, only to find out you MUST buy an ilok to run the stupid plugin! well, i went on to request a refund as i did not want to spend another $50 just to get the stupid thing to work. they refuse to give me my money back! this certainly has not done good for there rep in my book. they basically stole $50 from me... whatever happened to "the customer is always right"? sigh!!!!
 
ok, never fails! i was waiting to post this thread as my last option. soon as i did, i got an email saying a refund had been posted to my credit card. that was not what the sales guy was telling me at all. (rolling eyes) still, know that you MUST have an ilok....
 
iLok keys are pretty popular. Many plugins and programs are starting to require them. It's not a bad idea to get one if you plan on buying more plugs in the future.
did you download the plugin? i'm surprised they even gave you a refund. most software companies refuse to give refunds on software because of the whole piracy thing. And $50 for a plugin and 40 for an iLok?? I don't know, that's not really something to complain about in my book.
 
i did not download anything. not even sure you can from their website. i probably should have not bought the plugin so quickly... without understanding everything. just from their site, i thought ilok was an option, not a requirement. so, this thread now helps their reputation, i hope...
 
bennychico11 said:
And $50 for a plugin and 40 for an iLok?? I don't know, that's not really something to complain about in my book.


well, that is almost twice as much as i THOUGHT i was going to pay.
 
yeah, but you buy one iLok and you're set for all your plugins and programs.

I'm just sayin', in the grand scheme of things when every other plugin averages at least a couple hundred dollars on up to the $1000+ Waves plugins....90 bucks isn't that much.
 
yeah, it is only a 2 band. i may look into an ilok in the future. all the plugins i use now are uad-1. i just got a new computer and thought that i would try some native stuff. since my computer can now handle the plugs. wanted to start with the cheap one first... ;)
 
I personally hate iLok's, and won't buy software that requires them. The other thing I do is read very carefully what kind of copy protection the software uses, before buying. If I have any questions about it I'll email the company and ask them about their CP scheme. I generally try to stick with software that requires only a that a key code be entered, with no internet registration required. The idea is to unsure as much as possible that I won't get stuck at some point, unable to use the software I paid for. And that *has* happened.
 
Ditto. Hardware dongles are evil and I will never knowingly buy any software that requires them. Having to carry around extra hardware that serves no purpose except to satisfy the paranoia of a software manufacturer is not acceptable. I feel the same way about that as I do about WMA-based music downloads—like I'm really only renting the software, and if something goes wrong with that iLok, I'll end up buying it all over again.

Where I come from, trust is mutual. If the manufacturer doesn't trust me not to give their software to other people, why should I trust -them- to provide bug fixes? When that unnecessary piece of hardware breaks, why should I trust them to allow me to relicense the software against a working one? What happens when it fails more than once?

It's a USB dongle. I've gone through enough USB flash drives to know that those designs A. break easily, and B. break your port just as easily. If I'm going to subject my USB ports to abuse, it damn well better give me useful functionality—a USB audio interface, for example—not just be there to allow some software manufacturer to have more control over what I do with their software.

And the worst thing about dongles is that even with iLok, you can only store a certain number of keys on them. Some other dongles are even worse—software-specific dongles that only hold one product's keys. Either way, if every piece of commercial audio software I have bought required a dongle, when I want to do audio editing on my laptop on the road somewhere, I would have to have a dozen or more of those things. I'd have to design a chainable, firewire-powered USB hub because otherwise I couldn't have enough of them plugged in to do anything useful. (I doubt you could even plug in two of them without a USB extension cable).

And if every piece of commercial software required a license dongle, I'd have to find a way to add at least one more USB bus to my laptop because I would exceed the maximum number of devices you can hang off of the two that are on it currently. For that reason, no one will ever be able to convince me that USB dongles are acceptable. We cannot encourage companies to use them by buying products that use them. If we do, we will end up living in the world I describe with hundreds of dongles and no practical way to use the software on the laptop.

My policy on iLok and other hardware keys is this: if they have competition, I buy the competitor's product. If they don't have competition, I've actually been known to write a GPL equivalent (or port it from another platform). Don't get me wrong, though. I'm not a GPL zealot, and I don't mind buying commercial software. I simply don't put up with abusive commercial software vendors that require me to hang a dongle of my laptop's irreplaceable USB ports. It's just not worth it.
 
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