Re: Lightwave USB Dongle


"Nicko" <genericsubscriptions@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1151104104.264792.76530@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
It's a tricky one.

Luxology are trying a variation on the model by licensing the software
to the user, not the machine. On their site I think they say something
about it being ok to install and use on all of *your own* machines. I
think they're going full tilt on being nice guys and expecting the same
back....Certainly there seems to be a good feeling in the industry
about Modo.

Yeah, I think Luxology has a good approach in terms of user-friendliness.
Although I'm not sure what protection it really offers them... But I truly
admire what they're doing. There's lots of different copy protection
approaches out there and some of the best I've seen are still dongle-based.
I really like the floating, dongle-based FlexLM server approach. It's cool
where you can have one or more USB keys and they don't have to be on the
system you're running the software on... Just accessible via
network/internet/etc.. So you may have licenses for 3 seats of XSI or
whatever and you can run them on any three systems you own at any given
time. And if you're going on the road where connection to the license
server isn't a possibility, you can get a passport license from the server
for that system for a certain amount of time (days/weeks/etc...). All
pretty cool and a lot more secure than Luxology's approach.

In the end though, there's no such thing as a copy protection that can't be
broken. Everything including Sentinel Pro, HASP, FlexLM, etc.. has all
been broken and the hackers/crackers are never more than a few days behind
the copy protection companies. And the harder the copy protection companies
try, the more inconvenient for the end-user it all becomes and also
increases software bloat and costs and yet they gain nothing more than the
ability to stop the casual copy or some average Joe from putting a second
copy on his notebook. In the end, those who want a free copy are going to
get it (without much effort), so why make it a hassle for the legit users?
We're starting to see the over the top means of copy protection now coming
out of large movie and music studios with all the new copy protection
schemes for HD-DVD and BluRay as well as DRM being integrated right into
Windows Vista and MacOS Leopard. Even with all that, people will still be
ripping musing and copying HD movies and all that. And we get to listen to
large companies claim that their industry is "losing billions in sales each
year to piracy" when the posted sales for that given industry don't even
reach more than a couple $B anyway (music industry, <cough>). When in
reality we should all be pissed off that we're going to be paying extra for
our music and movies because these companies want to incorporate and develop
new means to stop piracy when in fact, that just isn't going to happen no
matter what they do short of just not selling a product for pirates to
steal.

The whole dongle thing throws back to when 3D software cost thousands
instead of hundreds (of UK pounds) like it does now. I wonder if the
different figures today still justify the effort? I don't know of any
other software (except Maya I think?) that still uses them.

Lots of software still uses dongles or some other form of hardware keying...
Not just 3D software, but just about everything out there that isn't
directly targeted at the general consumer. In the 3D software world, MAX is
still using dongles unless they dropped them with the latest release. XSI,
Houdini, Messiah and several others do to.


.

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