I had to update my subscription to BFD3 on both my Mac and PC computers the other day. It was a free service, more just a formality, but if I didn’t do it, then I wouldn’t be able to use the drum software that I paid for.
There are all kinds of ways to stick it to your customers. I would rather that the company spend the time creatively planning its next features than trying to reconfirm (four times per year) that I didn’t steal the software and that the person that bought it is still the same person using it.
Knowmsayin’?
P.S. If you’ve ever watched a police interrogation, the guilty person always denies their guilt and it can take hours to get even a slight confession of wrongdoing from the perpetrator. So yeah, we’re not even in a position to keep InMusic in a room, let alone hammer at them for hours about this 90 day “guilty until proven innocent” re-registration scheme they’ve got going.
I think I would be happy if I could get the software I paid for to work in the first place! I cannot, despite several attempts, get the stupid stuff licenced. Given that I have better things to do, I just decided to cut my losses and abandon the product. I have also advised several others that I know to avoid it as well.
Funny thing about “sticking it to your customers” is the ironic dynamic of the people pirating a piece of software which uses bad DRM having a smoother experience using it…
The biggest problem with BFD since inMusic is general instability, with or without the DRM. The software calling home every 90 days is more or less fine, even though I dislike it, functionally I haven’t felt it nor will I feel it in subsequent versions.
And honestly the 90 day thing is pretty fair as far as some REALLY bad DRM goes. Back in the old days a studio I worked at would sell an artist the hard drive their album was tracked/mixed on upon request after migrating to the server, and removing a hard drive meant a hardware change which meant 3-4 suites of plugins had to all be re-registered before and after a project on machines/plugins not using ilok. Imagine having to contact Korg/Waves/Izotope/Roland/etc/etc/etc each at random intervals throughout the year to get your max authorizations reset, and going through every single plugin you have before your session starts to make sure it’s still authoized so you won’t have to wait 2-3 days for the “Your auths have been reset, regards.” email…
This has always been the case, paying customers have to deal with unfair practices due to piracy, and we deal with it by taking some peace and pride in the fact that we’re keeping the music software industry going.
Some of you youngsters need to have your computers exchanged with like a G3 powermac with 512mb ram and kontakt 1 or the original Drumkit From Hell sample CD for a week, you’ll come crawling back to BFD like “Yo make it 60 days I don’t care… I’ll do anything…” B) B) B)
I’ve done the G4, DKFH et al (except Kontakt and Waves were too expensive back then), although we often used an R-8M for drums, but none of that makes me want to put up with inMusic’s DRM.
