You've been heard. Response re: 4.9 and Encryption
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What they mean by this is that the original plan was for all products to be encrypted. (i.e. everything in the store/your library downloaded via connect would look like the presently available encrypted products.) After a huge backlash this was changed to only new products specifically labelled as encrypted being encrypted. Textures were always unaffected.
The original design for Connect encrypted all .dsf and .duf files -- this was later changed to having encryption on a per-product basis, so that some products were encrypted and others were not.
Encryption was always limited to .dsf and .duf files -- no other file types were encrypted.
On the next point, I'm not 100% positive, but I believe they said from the beginning that products which were currently available unencrypted would continue to be available that way. As that would require them to be delivered by other methods than Connect (since it originally encrypted all products), presumably if the number of people using DIM or manual downloads became negligible it was a possibility that those methods would be dropped. Since Connect was changed to encrypt on a per-product basis, they can continue to deliver unencrypted products even if everyone is using Connect.
ETA: Sorry, I missed a couple of your points. As far as encrypting older products being a potential legal issue, I doubt that was the case, as I don't believe that delivering encrypted files would actually violate anything guaranteed by the EULA.
It was explicit from the very beginning that export options would NOT be blocked.
I filled out two surveys by DAZ both did not have Carrara listed as an option, I manually added it but if it was compiled as a poll it would not be in their statistics, these polls are skewed.
Subtropic, I appreciate the response but I'm making an effort not to get too involved in this discussion any further. No one has shown any willingness to consider any possible benefits or hear positive stories to come from encryption/DRM, they only want, precisely as Khory said, for DAZ to do a 180 and scrap the whole thing. Just as many here (not you necessarily) have no interest in hearing out opposing views, at this point, neither do I.
I will purchase encrypted content, many of you won't. Let DAZ decide in the end if your refusal is worth reconsidering their position.
Thank you for clearing this up.
Seems our observations on 1) texture encryption and 2) blocking export options seem to match.
Fact is in the 4.9.0.21 Beta textures are not encrypted and export options are fully functional and there are comments confirming there are / were no plans to change that on the first page of the 4.9.0.21 Beta thread.
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@ 3 Delivering old products
I do not enjoy adding more confusion to an allready complex topic.
It seems the EULA is actually missing specific statements about the delivery method, the form of the product and the duration of the access to the purchased licensed content.
- It is not clearly stated how the the product is made available to the user
- It is not clearly stated in which form the user has access to the product
- It is not clearly stated how long the user has access to the product
Without those qualities defined the law (at least in european countries) reverts back to the default assumptions:
- The product is made available to the user through the distribution channels available at the time of purchase
A distribution channel can be changed as long as this does not negatively impact the conveniance of accessing the product.
- The user has a right to access to the product in the same form as the product was at the time the contract was signed.
In this case form means file type. If a product was not encrypted at the time of purchase access to an unencrypted version must be provided.
- The user has a right to access the product in its original form at least as long as the company is in business and able to provide the service.
Note that access to the product delivery options is not the same as the general duration for which the product can be used. The contract to use the licensed products is valid until the death of the customer.
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Maybe it would be in everyones best interest to update the EULA to include some information about
- the delivery method
- the form of the product (what is encrypted and what not)
- the duration of access to the product.
- available export options of the product to other applications
I heven't read all the comments here, but this one is probably the closest to the reality of the situation.
Well there isn't much sales data for them to go on right now. There were a few trial items released at initially massively discounted prices, but that was it. I'm expecting some more to turn up today or Wed because without actually releasing more items (and releasing them in ways that non-encrypted can compete evenly with) there's no way they can get any real data on how they do.
Many PAs would be well aware of their expected sales and would know if excrypting their products is enhancing or restricting sales. Not that there has been much to go by yet, as you say.
The complaints that matter the most aren't going to come from the forums and grunts like us, but when or if vendors jack up about losing money on their products, if that actually occurs.
This EULA really does need to be cleaned up:
http://www.daz3d.com/EULA
The EULA mentions a SECTION E, but it appears to be missing? There is no Section E...
Other Restrictions. This Agreement is User’s proof of license to exercise the rights granted herein and may be printed and retained by User. User shall not give, sell, rent, lease, sublicense, or otherwise transfer or distribute any Content on a temporary or permanent basis without the prior written consent of Daz. User may not reverse engineer, de-compile, disassemble, or create derivative works from the Content except as set forth in Section E above.
This is a problem for me. I have no desire to use connect and have created custom folder in my Content/People folders to eliminate unneeded folders and have created folders to better orginize my runtime. I have no desire to do it again with the amount of content I have it would take weeks to get back to the point I am now.
Instead of DRM why wasn't another approach taken to prevent Piracy? There are ways to tag downloadable items giving each one a unique serial number that would be linked to the buyers account. You wouldn't have even needed to tell anyone that you were doing it since it is non evasive. Then all you would need to do is download the item being posted to a wares site and identify the purchaser and deal with them individually instead of shoving invasive software addons down everyones throat.
(Insert "frosty" tone here): I wasn't trying to be funny.
Seriously, though, I had the same experience: "It isn't working!"
My first renders had me checking to make sure I'd taken the correct meds...
But yeah, "Comedy of Errors" sounds good. They would certainly be unique renders!
Waiddaminute... Are you saying that if DRM turns out to be a good thing Daz might drop it?
I realize that your statement had a few of the hated qualifiers, but in this case they're in our favor.
Okay, if that is true, I'm willing to wait and see.
How about trying my idea... pick a popular encrypted item, wait until after the maximum sales period is over, then offer it unencrypted at the same price to see how many more people snap it up? That will give you an idea of how many sales encryption cost you. (Yeah, I really want that trenchcoat!) You could offer an update for the people who bought it encrypted, to be *choke* "fair".
I still won't buy encrypted.
Possibly stripping this data from products would be as easy as getting around encrypted content. Some are now saying that all you need to defeat Daz encryption is DAZ Studio and Hexagon, but I have no idea if this is true, or how that works and I have no desire to find out. As has been mentioned before, there are people who relish these challenges and have nothing better to do with their time than just this. The best ones end up working for the NSA.
Sounds reasonable. But sometimes not accepting DRM isn't a matter of principle.
Some of us can't use DRM, because our art computers cannot go online. An issue that still has not been addressed.
...and people like myself who are in an already tight budget get squeezed out even more. Not a good solution.
Whether or not DRM is in place, dishonest individuals will still find ways to steal. By forcing us to pay more for their dishonesty, they have won.
...I thought polling on the forums was banned.
:O maybe that's why I haven't seen any of these mysterious polls :O
...even though I'm mildly diabetic, I only drink Mexican Coke as it doesn't have HFCS or some gwad awful chemical substitute.
..there is no benefit to the user, plain & simple, especially for those who also use other programmes like Carrara or Poser in conjunction with Daz Studio. Encryption limits the content only to Daz Studio.
Now if Studio also had the same capabilities like Poser and Carrara then it would be different, but it doesn't.
Maybe this section has still not been fixed to check which customers actually read through the EULA and which not. ^_-
I stumbled upon this in February 2015. I did make a forum post but did not file a ticket. because I was told that this issue will be forwarded. Therefore I asume that DAZ3D is aware of this but the plans to acutally update the EULA may have been delayed.
I compared with the EULA version of 2013 and there under 1.0 General License Agreement Section E were the paragraphs under TERMS of USE.
With the current EULA open in your browser press Control+F and enter "Terms of use" as search text and then you are at section E.
Section E is clearly where the aliens that create the Encryption are housed. They're waiting for Daz to slip up and release a range of spaceships for them to escape in.
...crikey was on another forum and couldn't get a pic to attach properly, just sat there doing nothing but saying "uploading" for nearly 15 minutes.
However they can implement DRM. Gotta love the priorities.
The original plan was to encrypt daz specific file types through Daz Connect regardless if they were older products or not. Unencrypted versions would be available through the Product Library and DIM. The reason behind it was it gave us one discreet path to test and work on, as opposed to increasing the complexity by having a conditional "somtimes encrypted" which would mean that the encrypted path wouldn't get as much testing and be more likely to have bugs lurking that weren't uncovered due to the lack of encrypted content to test with. The decision was made from a purely technical one to create a single path that content would be read from to make it so that path gets completely tested, as opposed to creating additional complexity on both the application and server sides to do conditional product encryption. However, after seeing the uneasiness and some people reading into it a maliciousness where there was none, we went to the extra effort to add in the conditional path (and the original public beta gave us a pretty good idea that the encryption path worked well).
IANAL, and not to be contrarian, but the "default assumptions" could also be similar to other virtual stores where you get a single download link that has a limited number of uses that is only available for a limited time only as the delivery mechanism as some places do with downloadable products. I can think of a lot of software companies that deliver their goods via download link that make no such guarantees and don't indefinitely offer it as a download (Microsoft, VMWare, EA, Activision Blizzard, etc.). Beyond the delivery of the transaction, I am not sure if there is any legal standing that a company is required to provide perpetual access to it. If anyone remembers, back in the day, you would have a limited number of downloads with Daz and had to request to get your download counter reset to access it again (which wan't guaranteed). Daz does want to provide perpetual access to the content, and switched over to that customer friendlier model of having the downloads be whenever and as many as you want in, I think, early 2013. Where as it incur a lot of bandwidth for Daz to provide that service, it is something which is a no brainer to offer because it makes it much more convenient for you guys, as well as reducing the burden on users needing to feel like they have to constantly keep copies backed up because it might go away some day, which it won't as the latest versions of all products will be available to download anytime. Sort of like how Steam has a lot of users trust that they can uninstall / install games and not worry about it ever, we want our service viewed with that same level of trust and worry free mindset.
That being said, putting something to put some peoples' minds at ease in the EULA isn't a bad idea, and we can throw that over to our lawyers to see what they think. I'm not really sure it is necessary for most though since this is, literally, the first I've seen of someone bringing it up, and largely because of the rabbit holes the encryption discussion has taken people down.
If you tried to go that path for "defeating" the encryption, you would basically have to redo all the work that goes into taking the raw assets and making it into a functional product. Just ask the PAs how much work it would take to basically go from the raw geometry and make it into something which is fully functional and ready to sell. Its a lot of work and won't end up being the same as the original. If pirates end up doing that and not crack the actual DRM mechanisms, then it will definitely mitigate piracy by a whole lot since they couldn't do it fast enough with how much products we release, and it would end up being more of a knock off (there was one piece of encrypted content that was tried with that made its way to torrent sites and had all sorts of stuff broken with it).
"If you tried to go that path for "defeating" the encryption, you would basically have to redo all the work that goes into taking the raw assets and making it into a functional product. Just ask the PAs how much work it would take to basically go from the raw geometry and make it into something which is fully functional and ready to sell. Its a lot of work and won't end up being the same as the original. If pirates end up doing that and not crack the actual DRM mechanisms, then it will definitely mitigate piracy by a whole lot since they couldn't do it fast enough with how much products we release, and it would end up being more of a knock off (there was one piece of encrypted content that was tried with that made its way to torrent sites and had all sorts of stuff broken with it)."
That's my understanding of it also. I don't think that the encryption has been broken at all. Just a work-around that isn't worth the trouble that goes into it. When it comes down to it, it's probably much easier and less problematic, legally and morally, to just buy the product. Then there's always those who love to think they're getting away with something for free. Not realising that nothing is for "free".
Remember that there are quite a lot of product types where export could produce a fully functional version, in particular poses and additional texture packs, and to a large extent static props as well. Even characters can be mostly exported out without too much trouble (particular characters that are just presets of the morph packs). The main products where encryption should put a brake on exported versions, is clothing and large morph packs.
Edit: Forgot to add, if the characters were HD, you would lose that on export
There are no immediate benefits to me for DRM; long term benefits might be a reduction in pricing - but other companies are not known for passing on such benefits - I have no idea if Daz would do so.
There are very many positive effects of encryption; DRM is not encryption - it utilitieses it. A simple example is paying for my Daz store products; it uses encryption, and DRM isn't involved in that payment process.
There are disadvantages to DRM for each customer - they have been discussed ad nauseum; each customer decides if they wish to accept those risks. I don't.
I have no intention of accepting known risks for the possibility of slight or better benefits.
Call DRMed products, what they are: rented. Price them accordingly and fix their duration, and that may change.
Sigh, don't know why I keep replying to this thread but anyhow...
Tagging / watermarking won't work for a few reasons.
1. Part of the problem as clarified by DAZ_Jon is the use of stolen credit cards to make fraudulent purchases. In those cases DAZ is well aware of which accounts are involved, finding the people behind them and being able to take action however is not so simple.
2. As mentioned, if the tag is simple, then it's trivial to remove. The more embedded and difficult to remove the tag is, the more it could become a problem when using the file normally. Like steganographic watermarks in the textures. One that's nearly invisible to the naked eye could be removed by a simple filter. One that's harder to remove begins to affect the image visibily. At a certain point you're back to the problems of Encryption DRM.
3.While hopefully a small, or better zero, number, it may just end up telling them nothing more than whose account / computer is compromised. It'd suck to have cops or process servers coming to your door because someone in another country downloaded your library from either your account or your system. (While the off your system scenario is unlikely, stranger things have happened.)
While a file tagging setup could be useful if there are regular ongoing customers buying stuff and putting it on pirate sites, it sounded like the bigger concern was the bogus credit card thieves setting up fake accounts and buying things to redistribute. At least with the rogue customer, they're not getting a bunch of chargebacks.
Edit: Forgot about the technical issues of a tagging system. I don't think I'd trust an automated process to inject a tag into files on-the-fly as it would have to. Sooner or later it'd screw up and put the tag somewhere vital. It'd be a much more complicated setup than a simple key based encryption.
Rent implies an ongoing payment, without which the rented service or item is no longer amde available. That does not apply here.