No encrypted for me.

Cris Palomino

Yep, imagine the bleary-eyed mod having to write it in the first place.  ;)

Havos

The very nature of this business is there are few items that fall into "must have". Perhaps the base figures (which are free) and the main morph packs, but very little else. If someone that is determined to get everything free has already acquired the current Genesis 3 girls, I wonder if they will fork out 45 dollars or whatever for the next, slightly different looking base girl.

fred9803

One could inagine what would happen if Daz suddenly released a "poison pill" whereby encrypted content could be unencrypted at a future date in the case of their demise. It would start the chattering classes predicting that this very demise is imminent. No, no business, even in the throws of insolvency does such a thing, let along a financially healthy one. They'd be setting the he cat among the pigeons and they have enough problems right now with the DRM backlash to deal with.

nicstt

j cade said:

Content creators, could get access to unlocked Daz, just like they get access to HD morphs.

Except that that would mean there could be no new vendors, Daz likes new vendors. Mo' Vendors. Mo' Moneys.

 

If they go walled garden as it is increasingly looking like they will, they can get new vendors anytime they want by recruiting from people making 3d content for Poser and other programs. Locking out the hoi polloi doesn't prevent them from going out to cherrypick the talent when they want.

 

Except that is a much smaller pool of potential vendors, who would be currently using a different program. So it would make no sense.

 

 

Um... Have you been to any other sites? There's more than enough people out there to crank out bikinis and low cut dresses for the next dozen iterations of Victoria. And creating content using other programs is fairly normal. All they'd need is access to the tools to make stuff for Encrypted Studio. Might slow things down, but not much. Or they'd sell a 'developer's edition' that could run unencrypted content, not all that different from how console game development is handled really.

They won't even let us peons play with their HD morph system for ourselves, how well do you think their encryption system is going to be protected compared to that?

You have the tools you need to make content for Studio.  It's called Studio.  There are no tools for making encrypted product.  We make product as we've always done.  We still use ZBrush, Modo, Blender, Maya, Lightwave, Silo...any number of other programs the same way as before.

 

This works for now. I was thinking ahead to if/when DAZ goes walled garden and makes versions of Studio that won't run unencrypted content.

 

 

That is the giantest "if" ever. There is literally no evidence that such a thing will ever happen, and so very much that it won't.

Kind of speculative, but is certainly a possible approach. I hope they don't go that way. And of course there is no evidence. There was zero evidence of DRM and Connect before the beta of 4.9 arrived to the joyous welcome of all. :)

Then TesseractSpace already said a few words to suggest that lack of evidence is poor evidence of something.

j cade said:

Seriously some of the speculation in this thread is approaching, "What if Daz's plan is to encrypt all of our content then hold it hostage to force us to form a militia and take over America!!!"

Sure, technically it could happen, I mean Daz can't disprove it.

 

@TesseractSpace To quote Sagan "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"  You can make a claim but the burden of proof is on you to prove it.

This presumes that both parties agree on what consitutes an 'Extraordinary Claim' - speculative sure, extradinary? Before 4.9 I would have agreed with you, now, I'm less convinced.

daywalker03 said:

For me, encrypted content is less value than unencrypted, so if it is offered at a massive discount I might be tempted, since I am buying less, for less. As others have said, the real test will be when we start seeing encrypted stuff at the standard 30% off, particularly if it is an item from a top PA, not just a DO buyout.

No, it actually would cost MORE, since they have to do an extra step in the packaging process for encrypted content; the work done by the vendor is the same no matter what.

But its purpose is to combat piracy; so there should be more sales due to this so then the decrease in functionality (there is an unknown lifespan on the product I have no control over) requires a decrease in cost.

Trake118 said:

Thouroughly backuped on 4 hard disks and 4 CD-ROMs everything I ever got from DAZ and I advise everbody to do so.

Why?

 

There is nothing in Daz Studio 4.9 that will alter you excisting content automatically.  The encrypted content will be for new content moving forward only and the encryped content you buy will ALWAYS be available through YOUR account for ANY future version of Daz Studio 4.9+ that you have installed.

I understand that this is the policy for today, but it wasn't long ago that Daz said they had no plans on making encryption only content.  I have no idea as to what Daz's policies are going to be tommarow.  Better safe than sorry.  Policies change constantly.  What's available and the terms of availability of any content through a cloud service or encryption change constantly.  The only thing you really have is what's on your hard drive backed up in a format you can run without authentication.  Everything is something you have for however long policies stay the same. 

 

Let me put this plainly.  Whatever content you have that isn't in simple files on your computer Daz can disable any time they want without warning.  Products can become obsolete.  Things can get dropped.  Policies can change.  With the new sysem, new policies can be instituted to imediately apply to every piece of content you have except for what's on your hard drive in unencrypted files.  Question is: EXACTLY how much do you trust Daz not to change their policies?

Lets ignore the Daz trust thing; until 4.9 they were possibly one of two companies I trust. I'd experienced lots of great customer service.

But Daz can do everything they say; they can set up the process to permenently unecrypt the content. However, there are two ways that amongst others can screw us over.

1. Daz go bankrupt - unlikely perhaps. However, the content would be part of Daz's assets and unlikely to be given away for free.

2. Daz get taken over in some way and the new organisation scrap whatever Daz has done.

So even supposing Daz do all they promise - there remains those above.

... And Daz has already been sold/taken over before.

 

 

nicstt

Morpheon said:

I find it really interesting that in the time since DAZ announced they were going to start encrypting content, they've released about a half-dozen videos on their YouTube channel highlighting all the supposedly wonderful things about DS 4.9: the Smart Content, the ability to purchase content in-app, the renderer improvements, the animation tools, blah blah blah. However, in not ONE of those videos does DAZ even mention the DRM, let alone explain how it's implemented, how it will affect the average user, or why it was even necessary, given DRM's less-than-inspiring history. Doesn't it come across as kind of deceitful not to give people the full story when you're trying to entice them to become or remain customers at DAZ these days? And yet DAZ continually asks us to trust them.

+1

nicstt

TesseractSpace said:

So here I am, hours after my database went belly up on me, requiring a reset as evidently some conflict between a corrupt old DIM metadata was giving me repeated errors. I have been unable to reach my Connect installed content without tedious workarounds as I couldn't restore the metadata without a login since there's nothing to re-import evidently.

 

Now I'm logged in but I have to click on each individual item to 'install' it as it can't see what's already been installed. At least I don't have to re-download it all, but still not convenient.

 

This is within the first week of working with the new paradigm.  Don't have any encrypted content as there's been none that's truly 'free' and I'm not going to pay for DRM locked content. Pity nobody thought of making an encrypted test item so people can see exactly what they can and can't do with the new content. I wonder if the workarounds would even work with encrypted content. All I can do is try to guess based on the info Daz has given us.

 

I doubt Daz can guarantee I'll never have another database problem, as anyone who ever used a computer would just point and laugh. So I expect I'll be dealing with this again someday.

I restored Windows from an image, and recoverec my 4.8 backups.

Took me about 30 minutes.

I don't like or trust DRM implementations. I don't like the Connect as it stands - it should still be in beta.

 

icecrmn said:

They didn't try to hide anything from the very start.

Or they simply tried to get ahead of the inevitable s***-storm that would have ensued had people discovered that their assets WERE being encrypted and DAZ hadn't said anything at all -- kind of like the backlash Smith Micro got when people discovered they were getting locked out of Poser. That's CYA, not honesty. 

You and I have very different veiws on what constitutes honesty.

Don't mistake telling the truth for being honest. A dishonest person can tell the truth when they find it expedient, it doesn't make them honest.

lx_2807502

It's very obvious that DRM/encryption whatever has done absolutely nothing to stop the biggest companies in the world from being pirated. It's not like any smaller company is likely to have more success. The counter argument people have been giving in the thread "so you suggest we should do nothing at all" isn't an argument either. "There is a problem therefore we must try ANYTHING even though we don't know if it'll help at all but know it'll hurt the people that matter!"

Clinging onto the poison pill hope doesn't make sense either. Promises are worthless because circumstances change (this isn't good or bad; it just is.) As mentioned above, it's also impractical for them to release it now, and unlikely to happen in a company emergency. 

The only way I know of to decrease piracy rates is to make your product more easily accessible - which is what the Connect/built in shop is meant to do. But that concept fails too, because any regular here knows that to buy anything that pops up the moment you see a thumbnail in a tiny window is going to get you ripped off when there are many better details for browsing around the site and combining things, looking at daily sales, waiting for sales, not to mention looking at the larger images, etc.

There's already a really good interface for shopping on the Daz store - the website. The in-client store is a less useful version of that, and I can't imagine any regular customer shopping in it with its reduced information, nor can it be called anything but disingenuous to new customers who will be missing out on the many deals and details the website offers (no, having a hyperlink on an item page in client is not the answer, because that removes any point of having a store in client in the first place if you have to check everything online in the much more helpful, informative, and friendlier to use store (which itself has been shown to be far from perfect on a near daily basis.)

fred9803

I don't question the honesty of Daz as I believe it when they said "..we had no plan to release encrypted-only content.."

What scares me is that this is true and decisions are being made with no long term plan in mind. They'll try this and try that and see how it floats, or sinks, based on sales figures.

They're basically trying to sell us a new flavour of potato chips to see if we'll buy them. Some like the new flavour, some tolerate it and others think they stink. I think they have absolutely no strategic plan beyond a month or two ahead and heaven help any business with no long-term vision of their future.

Leana

Spit said:

Fixmypcmike said:

SpottedKitty said:

Fixmypcmike said:

Not sure what you're saying -- ExP morphs can't be installed with Connect, they need to be installed with DIM or manually.  What does that have to do with being prevented from doing something because of encryption?

What I remember of the post (wish I could find it to make sure) stated that the way ExP morphs work is incompatible with the way Connect now rearranges the content folders. I suspect the ExP initialisation procedure can't understand the encryption. The only way to get them to work is to not use Connect for every figure that has ExP morphs, and all the morph sets themselves.

It has nothing to do with encryption.  Remember how V4 and all her morphs had to be installed to the same runtime, and if you had more than one runtime it wouldn't work right?  That's why they don't work with Connect, because it installs each product to its own separate folders.  That's the opposite of what Cris was asking -- rather than encryption interfering with the users' ability to do something, the way the product was constructed interfered with the ability to install it using Connect, which is why it needs to be installed with DIM or manually.  So this is an example of Daz foregoing encryption so that the users can continue to do things, not an example of encryption preventing the users from doing something.

Backwards. If it weren't for encryption/DRM you wouldn't have Connect with the fancy schmancy new file format and Smart Content.

Connect is supposed to be DAZ's answer to all the "where is my content" and "how do I install" support requests: basically have DIM integrated directly in DS.

They used the opportunity they had with that new system implementation to add the DRM part, but they could have done that without the Connect install system.

Ippotamus

 

ashley9803 said:

I don't question the honesty of Daz as I believe it when they said "..we had no plan to release encrypted-only content.."

What scares me is that this is true and decisions are being made with no long term plan in mind. They'll try this and try that and see how it floats, or sinks, based on sales figures.

They're basically trying to sell us a new flavour of potato chips to see if we'll buy them. Some like the new flavour, some tolerate it and others think they stink. I think they have absolutely no strategic plan beyond a month or two ahead and heaven help any business with no long-term vision of their future.

Encryption makes no sense if it isn't the only way content is released.

It may have been sooner than expected, sure ... but it was definitely expected.

I'm not sure if they properly calculated the backlash beforehand though.

I've noticed some longtime ... very loyal and even loving customers turn their backs on this ... ... decision.

SimonJM

Spit said:

SimonJM said:

<edit>

Metadata import complete, and all looks to be well

</edit>

Is the metadata for ALL products you 'own'?

I have not done a product-by-product check, but first glance suggests it may well be all.

Havos

Ippotamus said:

 

ashley9803 said:

I don't question the honesty of Daz as I believe it when they said "..we had no plan to release encrypted-only content.."

What scares me is that this is true and decisions are being made with no long term plan in mind. They'll try this and try that and see how it floats, or sinks, based on sales figures.

They're basically trying to sell us a new flavour of potato chips to see if we'll buy them. Some like the new flavour, some tolerate it and others think they stink. I think they have absolutely no strategic plan beyond a month or two ahead and heaven help any business with no long-term vision of their future.

Encryption makes no sense if it isn't the only way content is released.

It may have been sooner than expected, sure ... but it was definitely expected.

I'm not sure if they properly calculated the backlash beforehand though.

I've noticed some longtime ... very loyal and even loving customers turn their backs on this ... ... decision.

My guess is that they were expecting a huge amount of bad feeling over this, but were hoping it would be restricted to the forums, not the marketplace, and would eventually start to subside

Daywalker Designs

Cybernikes said:

One last thing;

I have been a member since 2007, I have felt the need to post exactly six times, all of them on this topic.

Many of you have made good points on both sides of the issue, you can not however change the way I feel.

I just tallied up my customer sheet as to what I have actually spent (VS my very low estimate) so here is my final score if you are at all interested.

DAZ without connect, $30,336.05 dollars,

DAZ after connect, $ 0.00 dollars,

I'm done talking. (Edited membership officially canceled)

Apparently you missed that you do not have to use Connect or buy encrypted content. DIM still works just fine for me after updating to 4.9. If DAZ sees that they can't make money with it or even give the stuff away, then we'll hopefully see the encryption go away.

tl155180

I just cannot for the life of me see any way that this Daz-Connect is actually going to increase sales or profits. The only possible impact I can see it having is to decrease sales slightly as legitimate customers opposed to DRM and forced content management stop buying products. It might not be a big hit to their overall sales revenue, depending on how many do this, but its the only direction in which I think it could logcially go. Pirates are not going to suddenly start forking out for these products just because they've made it slightly harder to copy.

Of course, I also think that now its been implemented theres absolutely no chance it'll ever be removed. Someone's career depends upon this looking like a success.

WendyLuvsCatz

Well to be perfectly honest, I feel the only valid reason for it is to stop Poser users from using any future DAZ content.

Carrara is an unfortunate casualty of the move but prob considered collateral damage 

nicstt

fool said:

Well to be perfectly honest, I feel the only valid reason for it is to stop Poser users from using any future DAZ content.

Carrara is an unfortunate casualty of the move but prob considered collateral damage 

Wouldn't that be friendly fire?

WendyLuvsCatz

nicstt said:

fool said:

Well to be perfectly honest, I feel the only valid reason for it is to stop Poser users from using any future DAZ content.

Carrara is an unfortunate casualty of the move but prob considered collateral damage 

Wouldn't that be friendly fire?

SpyroRue

nicstt said:

fool said:

Well to be perfectly honest, I feel the only valid reason for it is to stop Poser users from using any future DAZ content.

Carrara is an unfortunate casualty of the move but prob considered collateral damage 

Wouldn't that be friendly fire?

I dont think they care somehow.

Chohole

I love conspiracy theories. I used to just live on it. You know it's all hype and garbage, but you're still really paranoid afterwards. It's fun entertainment.

said Doug Stanhope

lx_2807502

tl155180 said:

I just cannot for the life of me see any way that this Daz-Connect is actually going to increase sales or profits. The only possible impact I can see it having is to decrease sales slightly as legitimate customers opposed to DRM and forced content management stop buying products. It might not be a big hit to their overall sales revenue, depending on how many do this, but its the only direction in which I think it could logcially go. Pirates are not going to suddenly start forking out for these products just because they've made it slightly harder to copy.

Of course, I also think that now its been implemented theres absolutely no chance it'll ever be removed. Someone's career depends upon this looking like a success.

It hurts my brain too. I just can't work out any overall gains encryption is going to have over not having it. I want to say something about that person and their career, but then my post might get encrypted.

nicstt

Chohole said:

I love conspiracy theories. I used to just live on it. You know it's all hype and garbage, but you're still really paranoid afterwards. It's fun entertainment.

said Doug Stanhope

LOL

After the Edward Snowdon revelations, I realised I wasn't being paranoid enough. :)

rippme99

I love conspiracy theories. I used to just live on it. You know it's all hype and garbage, but you're still really paranoid afterwards. It's fun entertainment.

said Doug Stanhope

Well and about 50 years or more down the road, when official records get released quite some of them tend to turn out to be true :D

rippme99

I love conspiracy theories. I used to just live on it. You know it's all hype and garbage, but you're still really paranoid afterwards. It's fun entertainment.

said Doug Stanhope

LOL

After the Edward Snowdon revelations, I realised I wasn't being paranoid enough. :)

Or that heh

Spit

2. Daz get taken over in some way and the new organisation scrap whatever Daz has done.

Hey, that happened to this community back in the '90's when a company (which changed its name a few times) owned Bryce, Poser, Painter, etc.. A new guy came in and had an online conference with Bryce customers and accepted suggestions we gave for upgrading the program. A couple weeks later they put all our beloved programs now orphaned up for sale and changed to little 3D twirly things to put on websites. We were all devastated. Truly devastated. Later Corel picked up Painter and Bryce but Poser was tossed around from country to country before finally settling down.

Boy, memory lane for all the feelings of betrayal. A bit depressing.

acanthis

Firstly, I will never under any circumstances buy DRM'd content from DAZ. But, in fact, I stopped buying on the 22nd January and also cancelled my Platinum Club membership, all because of this fiasco.

Anyone looking at my purchase history will see how much that has cost DAZ, but, of course, they don't care. Customer churn is the name of the game, so why should they?

Now, as to 4.9 itself: I refuse to install it, not because of the support for DRM, but because I have yet to see any compelling technical reason to do so. Let's just ignore all the BS about Smart Content and Categories and Push Advertising and Integrated DAZ Store. None of that interests me. My content is organised the way I want it and I won't have DAZ telling me to do it any other way. Nor do I want to go shopping at the same time as I am trying to create art!

So, with all that fluff shovelled out of the way, what are we left with?

An incremental update to the rendering engines, neither of which were written by DAZ. I don't use 3DL, so that just leaves iRay. I have never experienced the undocumented "Crashes when rendering certain content" error and I'm happy with the speed and quality that the version shipped with 4.8 delivers. So that's it. No compelling reason to saddle myself with a version of the software bloated out with a ton of functionality that I either don't need or don't want.

As an aside, I read somewhere that DAZ was trumpeting all of the fluff in 4.9 on their Facebook page with numerous HD video clips. I don't use Facebook but I assume that any customers who do, and are against DRM, have been equally vocal there? Just a thought.

So, just to be clear on my position: NO to DRM. NO to any DRM'd content. NO to DAZ Studio 4.9. And, for the forseable future, NO to any purchases from DAZ.

DAZ_Spooky

SpottedKitty said:

Fixmypcmike said:

Not sure what you're saying -- ExP morphs can't be installed with Connect, they need to be installed with DIM or manually.  What does that have to do with being prevented from doing something because of encryption?

What I remember of the post (wish I could find it to make sure) stated that the way ExP morphs work is incompatible with the way Connect now rearranges the content folders. I suspect the ExP initialisation procedure can't understand the encryption. The only way to get them to work is to not use Connect for every figure that has ExP morphs, and all the morph sets themselves.

It doesn't work because, the way it is done now is by running a post install script. Daz Connect doesn't do that. It has nothing to do with encryption or file organization. They are Poser files after all.

TesseractSpace

Well it's all fun and games till someone loses a library...

 

Before this a database issue was simple. Find and remove the offending metadata, reset the DB and reimport...

Now that I made the perhaps foolish decision to migrate to Connect... 

After DB reset, try reimporting metadata... Nothing to import.

Add the cloud folders at several levels to several sections of content and see if it can reimport... Nope

Try using those directories a bunch of runtimes. No luck.

Perhaps I could have copied the files into a single runtime and made them usable that way, but serious PITA there...

All this because my laptop and I were hours away from internet (other than my phone which cannot be shared with the laptop without a long talk to my provider and some not insignificant expense.)

Get home, finally login and the metadata comes flooding back... As uninstalled products...

Go through library and reinstall... At least no redownload needed, but I have to be online and logged in the whole time and after a certain number of files processed the processing slows way down almost as if it was redownloading or just suffering a memory leak...  

I've gotten maybe 25% back, and have to leave my internet again. While I'm technically not locked out of these items, circumventing the blockage is a fairly sizable undertaking. If any had been encrypted, I don't know that I could get them usable without being online to do so.

So far this DRM even at its lowest level has crippled my ability to use my content as I would have before. The Encrypted level promises even further risk. 

I was feeling the insult to my integrity when the DRM was announced. DAZ saying they don't regard their customers as potential criminals is like someone saying 'no offense but' before saying something offensive. Actions speak louder than words. Their words say they don't think we're all pirates. Their actions say we are until proven otherwise.

I get that feeling of being called a crook everytime I see the 'obtaining data from DAZ connect' before it reauthorizes one of my Connect installed products. At least I can move back to DIM for now.

wgdjohn

lx said:

Ehhh. Obviously the decision was made before the release day, but I seriously doubt it takes them long to pick some upcoming content and encrypt it now that the system has been created. A lot of the "free" stuff screams "intended for PC+" so they probably bought it out ages ago since they have content lined up well in advance of release.

You are exactly right of course. Now that I think about it more.

lx_2807502

Spit said:

2. Daz get taken over in some way and the new organisation scrap whatever Daz has done.

Hey, that happened to this community back in the '90's when a company (which changed its name a few times) owned Bryce, Poser, Painter, etc.. A new guy came in and had an online conference with Bryce customers and accepted suggestions we gave for upgrading the program. A couple weeks later they put all our beloved programs now orphaned up for sale and changed to little 3D twirly things to put on websites. We were all devastated. Truly devastated. Later Corel picked up Painter and Bryce but Poser was tossed around from country to country before finally settling down.

Boy, memory lane for all the feelings of betrayal. A bit depressing.

It's okay, this group of faceless investors cares about you and would never do anything to hurt your purchases.

I remember Bryce back in Pentium 3 days o.o I thought it was so nifty even though it took hours for my friend to do 1280x720 picture renders of basic landscapes... but they were real 3D things!

Jason Galterio

Spit said:

2. Daz get taken over in some way and the new organisation scrap whatever Daz has done.

Hey, that happened to this community back in the '90's when a company (which changed its name a few times) owned Bryce, Poser, Painter, etc.. A new guy came in and had an online conference with Bryce customers and accepted suggestions we gave for upgrading the program. A couple weeks later they put all our beloved programs now orphaned up for sale and changed to little 3D twirly things to put on websites. We were all devastated. Truly devastated. Later Corel picked up Painter and Bryce but Poser was tossed around from country to country before finally settling down.

Boy, memory lane for all the feelings of betrayal. A bit depressing.

I remember that. If I remember correctly, I was at Bryce Camp in Ojai when it all went down for the last time.

They had just demoed their "Camtasta" application that turned flat pictures into 3D scenes just a few hours before. So it was quite a shock.