Hi Steinberg,
Are there any plans for the eLicenser to offer a similar product to ‘Zero Down Time’ offered by iLok?
hope this get a response, positive or negative.
Hello guys,
As far as I’m concerned this is not planned for a near future, yet. However there are plans in sight to improve the licensing technology.
Kind regards,
Not just Zero Down Time (ZDT), which is only offering a 14 day temp licence while a replacement dongle is sent out, but also TLC, which is the full replacement licence when the dongle is lost or stolen.
The general problem is that getting insurance for intangibles like software is difficult, when they only really require a replacement licence and a copy of the software.
Thanks Felipe for the response. Any advance notes on the planned improvements?
Nonetheless, I sincerely hope that more serious consideration is given to this moving forward and hopefully it gets bumped up to a more important to do list. I’m after a system subscription similar to iLok, where a short term ‘loss and theft’ instant license replacement is possible without the need for support intervention.
If you don’t mind me asking, Steinberg’s elicenser info page lists “2. Procedures for lost/defective USB-eLicensers: we only replace the licenses stored on the lost/stolen key (if all preconditions are met).” I cannot find a list of these preconditions. Can you please advise?
ZDT covers you for ‘theft and loss’. Yes its a temp license, but it can immediately get you out of a bind if there’s a problem with your iLok during a session, giving you near instant replacement without support intervention if something untoward happens. At present, Steinberg require you to contact support. Try that at 9pm on a Saturday if your eLicenser is lost/stolen/broken. I do feel Steinberg should offer a better solution.
+1 to this. I have a lot more that just steinberg products on my elicenser. We had a dongle fail recently and Steinberg took care of use with a temp license but I worry about all the other softwares I have on it. There should be a all in coverage from someone somewhere? Or if I can transfer the licenses to my HD, be able to make a system clone still.
I was wondering about backing up my licenses on a spare e-licenser dongle I have. Is this possible?
You cannot have a duplicate of the license on a second (or subsequent) dongle. That is what ZDT is for, so you can temporarily access (for 25 hours) a server copy of the license for use on a spare dongle.
Thanks Patanjali…Waves has something like this called License Cloud but there’s no time limit.
The perennial problem with licence enforcement is how to ensure there is only one instance of the license active at one time.
The problems occur when a licensee’s copy (dongle, software et al) is lost, stolen, corrupted or damaged, as up until then, it is all clear cut. The licensor has to have some way of determining the legitimacy of the licensee’s claims. This is where most license protection schemes can get onerous.
In enterprises, they now have license servers, to ensure, for software provided on a per seat basis, that the number of licenses in use is never more than the number paid for. But their users have reliable connections to those servers.
Outside of the enterprise, the obvious solution, other than having no license enforcement (trust), is the cloud, but that requires a constant internet connection to ensure real-time coordination of single use per license. However, for DAW use, that is not really feasible, due to many not wanting to be open to spurious internet disruptions, or use in areas with unreliable wireless connections.
Now, all this would be moot, if a lot of people weren’t feeling they were entitled to other’s efforts for free, with budding musicians being highly represented within that demographic. I suspect that that is less so these days, now that the costs of entry are so low compared to their day-job earnings.
But there are still many sites devoted to Cubase cracks, so the numbers must still be there.
I think that is where Waves did the smart thing by allowing transfers via soft-licensing on whatever machine you wish use (laptop, desktop, etc.) and the cloud server. Transfers are fast and efficient and no more dongles. They specifically went this route because of cracks…remove a deterrent for those that would look to Torrents for an iLok-free version.
I would really like to petition for this type of functionality. Either the way Waves does it or the way iLok does.
I travel between studios in LA, Nashville, and SLC. Ever since waves and iLok offered cloud options, I just leave a piece of hardware at each studio and don’t have to worry about ulcers from worrying about traveling with thousands and thousands of dollars in software on a piece of plastic in my computer bag/luggage getting lost or stolen.
I just upload them to cloud before I leave and pull them down when I get there. And even if I forget, I leave my main rig on and can just remote in and get them if need be. It is Heaven!!!
I am looking into upgrading to Nuendo once version 7 comes out for some of the new features and with that much cash invested, it would be REALLY nice to have a cloud license option. 