You've been heard. Response re: 4.9 and Encryption
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There are a few that can read DAZ formats (like Blacksmith 3D) but these are not renderer apps like the others you mentioned (neither is Hexagon), so can not be considered as alternatives to DS.
One of my biggest concerns with Daz Connect an DMR on their products comes from the fact that we can not go more than 2 days without some "sale" being broken. Constantly we see "Sale no working" threads... Daz usually works quickly to fix them, but the point is they are broken, constantly. If Daz can't handle sales scripts consistanly without issue, how can I trust them with DMR, something that has the potential to break my workflow. Not to mention, just because you have set up the "Posion Pill" escrow, How do we know that they don't go out of business in 6 months and never get replaced? Trust is a big thing, and I have learned the hard way, the most untrustworthy people are the ones who say "Just Trust Me". Daz has lost my "trust", and no matter the promises made yesterday, today, and even tomorrow, I have no trust that they'll keep their word, there is no real profit in keeping their word, and I'm sure buried deep down in the EULA or some other paperwork is a clause saying they can ammend the deal at any time
This DRM is potentially devaluing Geneis 3, since G2 and earlier stuff does work in Poser and there are PBR alternatives to Iray available for Poser (native in Poser 11 and Reality+Lux is there as an alterantive and the only option in earlier versions). I installed GameDev and now I need to use DIM to install a bunvch od DSON stuff, poser companion files, etc. I still like the DS interface better, but DAZ appears to be headed into a very closed, restrictive ecosystem, so Poser let's me keep my options open.
Sometimes it isn't about if you did or did not lose money to pirates it is about people feeling like they can just take from you without having to give back.
Ooh! and someones working on an importer for blender, I'm so very excited about that one
I can well understand this, and it must be wretched to see your hard work being stolen. However I fail to see how annoying/inconveniencing the customers that do NOT steal from you will make you feel any better.
Now that is a position that I understand and respect. I have the same thing with the work I produce from Daz in that I keep seeing it being offered for sale by these various Russian sites and it does annoy me that they're making money out of things I even gave away for free at one point. So they make money from my work when I didn't make a penny in some cases.
Now, I could put watermarks all over my images. It wouldn't stop the piracy but it might make people realise that they're buying stolen goods and think twice about buying it from those sites. However, some of my legit customers don't like watermarks, so I don't use them. At the end of the day its my existing legit, loyal customers that I have to keep happy because thats money in the hand - not some idea that I might potentially make more sales if I discourage people buying the packages from the pirates.
Unfortunately, I know that there isn't really anything I can do about it, angry as it makes me. Theres always going to be piracy and DRM is only going to slow the process, not stop it, and even if it did that wouldn't necessarily translate into more sales. I can only see one outcome from DRM Daz content and thats a reduction in the number of legitimate sales you make as you (or more specifically, Daz) irritate your legitimate customer base.
But if your only goal is to stop people stealing your work and to hell with how much money you make - then DRM is a win-win. Good luck Khory, I honestly hope it works out well for you.
People often suggest that 'if piracy was made really hard/impossible, pirates would buy this/each pirated item is lost money.' That's patently absurd.
But suggesting that NO ONE would buy a product if they couldn't get it free is also absurd. Look at how many people find various types of justifications. Look at the whole 'if the pirated item is easier than DRM stuff, people will just pirate.'
Well, there you go. There are shifting groups of people who will/won't buy a product.
Of course, it all comes down to how many, and that's a very difficult thing to measure. The consensus seems to be that 'making customers happy and having a fun userbase' works better than DRM in actually getting sales.
I know that I, personally, have spent money on a number of products I didn't really need to, simply because I was happy to help out vendors and hey, the product is nice. I could have waited until a great sale, or a pressing need. I didn't, because of good will.
Good will is impossible to measure well, but it's worth a lot.
How are you going to feel when you anger paying customers to the point they stop spending, and your stuff is still being stolen?
As a artist, I feel for you guys and gals that are seeing your stuff on Torrents, It sucks that your stuff gets taken like that, however, DMR is not the answer. It doesn't work, it might make you feel a little better, but I can say for fact, I will not buy any DMR product, and as of now, my wallet is closed to Daz. To be fair, it's more than just the DMR, but it was the final straw. If it's just me, I'm sure no one will notice, only time will tell.
I have also bought a lot of stuff that I may not get round to using for years. At least I can be confident the stuff will still work 10 years from now, which I can be much less sure of with DRM. I guess we have to start buying only what we need right now.
And to the PAs, piracy ispart of being in this business. BAEN, Tor, and lots of other content creators/publishes in othere industires (and even in this one) have learned to accept it. It's a cost of doing busienss that you have little control over. How you treat your customers on the other hand is soemthing you have much more control over. You should think long and hard about how quickly that loyalty can be lost. There is at least one PA that posted in one of these DRM related threads that went from my "in the cart" list to requriing serious consideration, or wishlisting till there is a better sale than the initial 30% off. Again, I want to reiterate that how you treat your customers is up to you, and good customer service goes a long way. As an example, Khory is often very helpful and because of that, I am more likely to purchase her products. Midnight Stories has impressed me in this thread, so a few more of his items found their way into my cart. Flipmode was honest about how useful his box "domes" would be in Iray, and that influenced purchases of his more recent products (and I bought one or two of those box based ones, and later on I used it in one of the professional music album covers I worked on). Anyway, I hope you get my point, because DRM is divisive and can hurt sales while good customer service, commuity building, etc. are all things that build customer loyalty. That's where DAZ should have invested their money.
Would you buy a car knowing that you could be locked out if it if the dealer/manufactuer felt like it? Some of us spend a lot here, and I can tell you that I do not find having e.g. $10,000+ of DRM'd content to be a good investment.
You mean OnStar?
These days the ones that can lock you out of your car are the hackers. Come to think of it, ransomware operates kind of like encryption based drm only at the control of a hacker rather than a company. Not a comfortable thought.
Totaly agree. It's not just you.
OnStar is an optional service, and is not even DRM.
true, you can only go so far in comparing digital things to physical ones before analogies break down.
No but if you sign up for it, they can literally stop your car from starting if they feel like it. People sign up because they reasonaly expect that that Onstar won't do that. Likewise I resonably expect that Daz won't wake up tomorrow and decide to lock me out of my content.
So to answer your question "Would you buy a car knowing that you could be locked out if it if the dealer/manufactuer felt like it?" the answer is: people totally do that
Not a good example...because, it can be done (usually for missing a payment, but it can now be and has been done).
However, OnStar can be disabled, or even removed from the vehicles it is installed in. And you can still use the car, modify it to your hearts content. Encrypted content is the opposite. You can't remove the encryption, and you can't modify that part of it. And since you can't disable it, it could be used to lock you out, for any reason, even by accident.
And OnStar is an optional service, with a contract involved.
Insert anything worth $10,000 or more that someone could lock you out of at their whim with no contract involved so few legal options. Bottom line is, at some point, the amount invested is high enough to make the idea of being locked out of it more and more unreasonable. And we know DAZ has customers that have purchased that much content. They even tested with ALL the content installed for DAZ Connect because they have customers with tons of content, so we know $10,000 is a low number.
OnStar may be a service with contract, but it can be enabled to disable the vehicle in certain cases...and there is always the 3 month 'free' (or whatever the deal is this month).
So a good analgiy as to why even the DRM'd freebies are a bad idea...
As there is with Daz, and that's part of what Steve's opening post was reinforcing.
Except for the half dozen or so (is it even that many) that have been Connect encrypted as more or less test cases. Which is a small fraction of all the content in the store AND is something that can be reasonably expected/justified.
A one-sided, easy to change contract of ahesion doesn't really count in my book. And the fact that the DRM was introduced before the poison pill was in place speaks volumes about the lack of professionalism at DAZ. And the poison pill option does not cover SLAs on resolving activation issues, what recourse someone blacklisted has, etc.
Of course, no one wants to takcle the $10,000+ portion of the point I was making.
Because, unless you have downloaded the few encrypted products that have recently been put out, then you do not have $10,000 worth of encrypted content. All your current content is unencrypted (and as per many posts, earlier in several threads) will stay that way.
Well I hope it's worth all this so that people feel a bit better. What a terrifying way to run a business.
I think the onstar/car analogy has been driven into the ground enough by now. It wasn't a particularly accurate analogy in the first place since it's something you choose, and no customer chooses to add DRM to their purchase. It'd be like adding a checkbox at checkout that adds DRM (which would activate your 30day returns ability) or something.