Idea - soft elicenser as an additional license

It’s not manipulation, it’s logic. Again, this is a standard business decision: you weigh the cost of lost sales due to possible piracy against the loss of possible non-customers. This has to be mapped onto the situation of today and in the coming years, not how it was three years ago. Steinberg will not sell a single dongled product to kids moving around with laptops, but they may very well sell quite a few non-dongled ones. This actually renders the crk/no-crk discussion moot, the market has run in another direction. Can you live off upgrades for fixed-location studios? Fine, then I’ll step back and shut up. But until proven otherwise, I simply don’t think this is enough.

As for myself, I have NO problems with dongles (two at the moment) in the studio, but I will not use them on the road. Who in their right mind would? Thousands of EURs on a flimsy, pluggable piece of plastic, which upon being lost also renders your system unusable Right Now? Riiight. Find a way not to lose it? The easy answer is to use something else. That’s the point. That’s why I, while sitting on a bench in Mali or at Charles deGaulle or at a cafe in Oxford, use AI, not Pro8. I can live with the situation as it is, but I would very much welcome an improvement.

r,
j,

Dongle is perfect, only downside is that it is not military grade quality, when travelling I guess you also carry other important and expensive stuff, just be careful with your material.

I haven’t seen any cracked software of cubase since version 5, now we see that artist (6.5) and elements (7&8) are downloadable as cracks, this is sad news! On the other hand all the other stuff named in threads before are available as cracked software!

That would help in many cases!

When doing mobile work I have a short USB extension with me just to take physical stress from the dongle, while my wireless mouse receiver is really tiny and can stay where it is when I put the laptop in its’ bag. No risk of breaking/losing it. Theft is still a hypothetical danger but hell, I personally don’t run my stuff in places where this is a serious factor. Who does?

Made a suggestion years ago: temporary license transfer!
Would work like this: plug in the dongle, transfer the license for i.e. 24 h to you laptop. After those 24 h have passed the license is available for download to the dongle again.

no need to risk the physical dongle or the license. Even if that laptop gets lost or is stolen, the license would be available after the set time automatically.

On the other side, such a system could completely knock out Steinbergs working piracy protection just as a soft e-licenser probably would.

Very good point. And very nice logic. I mean you want use full Cubase while laying on a beach, sitting in a bar, mixing records in an airliner… and therefore Steinberg must go for unreliable soft license paradigm and suffer losses. So Steinberg must earn less because you want earn more. With all respect I would say it’s not fair.

And guys, why are you not afraid of using laptops in general? It can be broken (you can drop it), it can be stolen (sooner whole laptop than a tiny dongle) and in that case you will lose not just a key, but many hours of work and other stuff.

Regards

You’re very conveniently disregarding half of the argument. This isn’t about what I want–I have several times stated that I can live with the situation as it is, while still hoping for an improvement–it’s about what the user base as a whole, existing and potential, is moving towards: mobile production. I predict that THAT loss is far greater than the one to piracy. I may be wrong, but given the competition’s decisions, I don’t think so.

So to you comment on losing your laptop. Come on. You need something to work on. The point about the dongle is that is an additional piece of hardware. And in any case, a laptop is of course backed up. You seem to think that you lose all its content if it’s gone. If so, you’re just being …let’s call it careless.

r,
j,

I don’t ignore your arguments, I just show how it looks like, because it’s pretty clear that eLicenser (the dongle) is the only solution that is reliable nowadays against pirates. BTW if the user base is moving towards mobile production so they will be satisfied by Cubasis soon considering tablet’s progress. Or considering modern music direction they will need nothing more than a tambourine in the nearest future. :laughing:

Regards

Having been round the houses with this, perhaps the most plausible solution would be for eLicneser to update their hardware. I’d love a version of the dongle that was one of those really stubby ones, like this - http://www.dcrainmaker.com/images/2012/02/a-much-better-usb-ant-stick-for-your-garmin-forerunnerby-suunto-11.jpg . That way, at least you can leave it permanently plugged into a laptop, since laptop-users are the most inconvenienced with the current arrangement.