You've been heard. Response re: 4.9 and Encryption
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I did say don't do it!
Hm does that mean all parody t-shirts are illegal?
What about a DRM flyswat with a puddle of no-quite-pastel colors splattered under it?
AFAIK, IANAL, Trademarks only protect the use of the images from a COMMERCIAL standpoint (i.e., trying to imitate the business so as to confuse customers and steal sales.) Parody, Social Commentary, and more are allowed under Free Speech so trademarks are still fair game to make fun of. Note, however, that the DAZ Forums do not guarantee Free Speech (per the TOS), and some might find such an image 'offensive'.
That's what I was thinking too. Please note, I only mentioned it as a joke! Not as something to actually do. Humour is still allowed here, right?
I am playing around with DS 4.9, but haven't messed about with the DC yet. Seeing other people having troubles isn't making me very enthusiastic about venturing out onto this ice sheet. But I will, I will. I want to test the Make a Wish stuff very soon.
BTW, "Splodey head", I love it. I think I'm going to start using that word and the phrase too. But hopefully not in reference to my own head.
Of course, I regularly wear a duct-tape hat to keep that from happening. Foil hats are only good if you are baking your noggin like a potato. I always use duct tape to keep everything inside...
Meanwhile,
"Now if you can spell this word correctly, you wil be crowned The Spelling Champion of the World."
"I'm ready."
"Splodey"
"Umm...can you use it in a sentence?"
"I said to her, there's no need to get all splodey head over something so trivial!"
"S...p...l...o...d...e...y..."
Buzzz!
We're very sorry; the correct spelling is "S-p-l-o-d-i-e".
Urban Dictionary: Splodie
Hey, it could happen!
Naked Vicky in a temple swatting DRM3D "flies". Or if you wanna be totally TOS-friendly she can have a bikini bottom and a Not-Daz-Logo tee shirt.
With or without Anatomical Elements? Surely some skimpwear would be the correct option?
o.o I've never heard splodie used ever, especially for that meaning. Things that asplode go splodey v.v
Been meaning to post this: BEA 2014: Why Tor Dumped DRM.
Some quotes from Tom Doherty (edit: this is two years after they dropped DRM)
“So far, the lack of DRM has not increased the number of Tor e-books online illegally, nor has it visibly hurt our sales,” Doherty said. “We decided that if we play fair with [our customer] they will play fair with us. And, you know, it's working.”
“Many of our customers have seen what can happen when vendors control proprietary DRM formats,” he said. “It hasn’t happened much in the world of books, but it has happened in gaming, music, and video, when a business went belly up or simply stopped supporting DRM formats, leaving customers with big stacks of content they had paid for, which only runs on devices now orphaned.”
It is an extremely skimpy bikini, better described as "butt floss". And all my Vickys (and Michaels too) have genitals. (There, I said it. Perfectly legitimate, non-vulgar terminology. None of this "Anatomical Elements" gibberish for me.) Although said body parts may not always be visible, it depends on how I pose and dress 'em.
Even more interesting is the article linked at the end of that one where Cory Doctorow covers how DRM can hurt those who sell their items through a DRM based vendor. Y'know, the people the DRM's supposed to be protecting.
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blogs/cory-doctorow/article/51292-cory-doctorow-a-whip-to-beat-us-with.html
Yeh, been altering some stuff in blender; not used it for a couple of years.
OK I think we all know that some of you aren't keen on DRM. So what are your ideas to help protect the people who invest in DAZ Studio and the vendor who provide the content.
Maybe someone will come up with something that could change it all, I hope so. It's easy to throw stones anyone can do that, but what about something that is a better option.
Don't be negative be positive make things better. The floor is open, lets hear it !
There have been pages and pages of suggestions. Some of them aren't really technically feasible because they're easy to get around (which DRM is too) others have been ignored no matter how many times they've been asked.
Since the thread is quite long, some of them were:
- Add verification for each new card used to purchase content, with CLEAR instructions that this is what is happening. After an initial delay, all purchasing would be as normal, fraud should drop signifcantly, content wouldn't have to be encrypted, since they said they know where the frauded stuff comes from anyway verified cards should be pretty trustworthy (strangely, zero answer to this, despite the fact that unlike DRM, it actually addresses the problem, and is far less of an inconvenience to customers.)
- Add some sort of identifier to products identifying which user bought it (Daz has said this won't work because it's easy to find, and also they know which accounts are frauding them.)
- Make encryption a New Release thing, and offer the product as non-encrypted after 3 months as a compromise (no answer to this, no real negatives found yet either. The types of items that tend to sell well longterm aren't well protected by the DRM anyway.)
Sorry if I missed that thanks for bringing me up to speed this thread has become huge !
The good news: There is indeed a 100% guaranteed sure-fire way to stop piracy dead in its tracks. No DRM necessary. Ever.
The bad news: It involves not producing and definitely not distributing any creative works. Ever.
I think we all know how well that one works out. But mind you, I never said it was a perfect plan. Just that it was a plan.
The only purpose of DRM is not to "protect" anyone, but to maximize profit. DRM will only do that if the value of purchases by thieves is greater than the value of purchases lost by normal customers who don't purchase because of DRM. No real way to quantify that.
Protecting Daz's profits would be better done by fighting credit card fraud, since that is where it seems (according to a Daz rep) money is actually being lost.
But Daz is implementing DRM, which probably won't increase profits, and not implementing credit card verification, which would.
Like I said earlier, this whole thing just doesn't make much sense.
My theory is that the entire executive staff was on the way to a company picnic, when their bus was in an accident. Now they're on some pretty hard-core painkillers, but insist on coming to the office anyway. And, no, it wasn't a short bus. I'd never say that.
I honor copyrights out of respect to the artists that create the material, be it music, books, or 3D assets. Offer quality product at a reasonable value, and I (as well as many others) will buy it. Daz and the PAs have done that 90-95% of the time.
There is a second group that have no thought or respect for the creative artists. These people will not buy this product. Tthey will find ways to circumvent the barriers placed around the product. Some will circumvent them just because they exist but have no intention of ever using what they unlock.
Of course, there are a few that casually share stuff with their friends. But then there are likely a few that start out with pirated content, get hooked, and become paying customers.
The end result is that DRM will not magically turn pirates into paying customers. That money you weren't getting from pirates? Yeah, it's not gonna start rolling in, now.
OTOH, your valid customers are trying to find their way through a maze just to be able to use the item for which they paid the right to use. Some customers aren't even going in the maze because it doesn't lead to the platform for which they would use the content. Others just won't go in it because they don't like mazes.
So, do I have an alternatice to DRM? Other than the suggestions already made, I don't. Except to reiterate: make content I value and can use, and I will buy it.
Value add, such as great customer service. DAZ Connect is supposed to make it easier to find and buy products you need which is another example, etc. I just quoted the head of Tor books on the subject. But the takeaway from Tor is that nothing needs to be done. They ditched their DRM and are doing just fine, without alienating customers or wasting significant resources on the DRM arms race. The article TesseractSpace linked to was also an eye opener.
You're kidding aren't you, you are saying they don't have credit card verification ???
Consider this -- if DAZ loses five customers that spent $10,000 each last year (so $50,000 total), does anyone expect DRM to somehow bring in enough sales to offset that?
Baen books has never used DRM. They even have a free library on their website where you can download books by some of their most popular authors, as a way of getting new readers to start reading their works. Jim Baen credited that as a major reason that Baen became the biggest sci-fi ebook publisher, passing Tor, which used DRM at the time.
They even included CD's of those books in their hardcovers, with the request that you copy them and hand them out to everyone that you could! (You were forbidden to sell them).
If you like Science Fiction, and want to read David Weber, Louise McMaster Bujold, Mercedes Lacky and others, (Yes, John Ringo, too, if you're a masochist) you can download copies from here: http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/
Now that's customer service!
I myself conside it wrong to keep it since I'd know longer legaly own it and yes I'd also consider it a crime. It's also morally wrong and IMO by keeping it you would be considered a pirate. I use DIM to uninstall anything returned, 3 items to date. I've no experience with encrypted files but suspect they could easily be removed with Windows Explorer or Directory Opus... even a program equivilant if using a MAC.
We're talking about verification as another, non-DRM site uses it. I'm not certain exactly how it works, but when you make your first purchase, there is a delay before you can download anything. It has caused problems there, because they don't warn you that you won't be able to download as soon as the transaction is approved. It somehow prevents people from using stolen credit cards, which Daz reps have said is a big expensive problem here at Daz3d.com.
Richard, How long would this process take to verify a lot of encrypted content? I've 1,601 non-encrypted products... what if I had that many encrypted products?
In addition to that Baen is also DRM free.
So, going to do my twice weekly drop in to comment on a few things, often of which is speculation without any insight into the actual going ons of running Daz. That being said, there are some suggestions and questions and comments which we, quite simply, can't or won't comment on because it goes quickly down into financial or transactional or business level information which, well, customers aren't privy to for any company ever. When was the last time you went to a local market and asked to see their books and didn't get laughed at / flatly refused? Yeah, it doesn't happen, ever.
We did a lot of discussion and debate and tried other things to stop piracy and fraud, and still do and try other things all the time. None of the things brought up here are new. We have discussed, at length, and done a lot more than just that which hasn't been brought up. So things like "validate first purchase" where you have to prove you are legit, watermarking content, using steganographic techniques to *really* watermark it, unlocking it after a certain amount of time, etc. we've discussed well before we even started actual work on Daz Connect. Are we going to do them? No, not at this time. Why not? Because some of them are just plain bad ideas, or they weren't a good fit for the company at the time, and the reasoning behind it, refer to the first paragraph as to why I'm not going to go into it in detail unless you become an employee at Daz (off topic, we're hiring for various positions, would require relocating to Salt Lake City or already living here... we really need to post "Jobs" section on the site this coming week).
Oh, and just so you guys know, as Steve mentioned earlier, for those that are having problems with Smart Content or Content Library not being as functional, we are going to be releasing a "hotfix" version here which fixes a number of bugs and makes things a little better. And after that, we'll be working on a bunch of things we think will make it better as fast as we can that I encourage you to keep your eyes open for that beta when it gets closer to release. If there is enough interest, since it is a big change and making both Smart Content work flows as well as Content Library based work flows work well is important, and your feedback on that will be very valuable in getting it right. If you're interested in getting notified of it when it comes out, PM me with the subject "DS beta notification" I'll compile a list of people to send out an email to when its ready so you don't miss it.
If you already had the content downloaded on your system and just wanted to use it? About 1-5 seconds. If you didn't have the metadata and wanted to use it through Smart Content and have some of the other nice things that comes with it, it would be roughly a ~100MB download, so if you're on a non-dial up connection, 2-5 minutes depending on your connection speed. If you didn't have the content on your system so you had to download it? Well, however long it takes to download.
Also, I don't suppose some of you can move the conversation going on here forward? It is just been mostly circular for the past week and not covering any ground. If all that is getting posted is the same opinions by the same people over and over, then either a Daz employee or a mod will probably going to get sick of it and step in at some point. I absolutely encourage robust and active dialog and conversation if its going someplace.
Careful ... Poser11 is DRM too! You have to have a machine that goes online from time to time or it deactivates on you!
http://my.smithmicro.com/poser-pro-11-system-requirements.html
Yes, there is something about a permanent activation on that page - but the portal where you could request it is still offline after 3 months since Poser11 was released. I wouldn't bet on it.
(I have P5, 7, PP2012, PP2014 - and that's it for now)
Thanks for your response~
Speaking only for myself, I think it's natural that things are going to be circular anyway because there isn't really a way to progress beyond specific topics until someone official addresses them (like you did here.) For example the watermarking thing was brought up several more times after you addressed it, and so we had a reference to reply to the people asking anew. But without actual answers, there's only so far a conversation can go before specualation reaches disapproved of levels because we don't have any answers to the questions ourselves.
Maybe it isn't useful for others and maybe some will do that boring try to lawyer every word of a post thing, but for me, official posts and discussion on various topics are incredibly helpful. When company employees will actually speak to customers about various issues or features or whatever, it affects my view of that company a lot.
Do I particularly like the answers? Well, it's not like they're what I want to hear, but that's fine. It's still worthwhile. As you say, I don't need to know the inner financials of a company; but sometimes I do need to hear "yes we looked at this and it wasn't viable."
Well, just to be fair: I like the white and HATE white text on black ground. I am only reading the RDNA forums because there is the option to switch to a lighter theme.
So, I am with you: an option to switch between light and dark would be great.
On page 41 of this thread, I proposed a solution to the DAZ Connect/DRM controversy that would leave everyone happy. It was summarily dismissed by someone with 13K posts. That's fine. Perhaps I didn't explain things properly and he misunderstood?
What I proposed was 2 versions of the same product. Not 2 different products. Daz "Legacy" would be Daz "Pro" with Daz Connect and encryption removed. Both versions would otherwise be identical. Product support would be the same for each version since they are the same software product.
Why split the software? Well, I have a lot of Gen 3 (V7), Gen 2 (V6), Gen 1 (V5), and V4 products that I would like to continue to use in Daz Studio as Daz Studio improves. However, I refuse to be a part of Daz Connect.
Having spent thousands of dollars at Daz, I don't see how splitting Daz Studio like this causes Daz any problems. All they have to do is change a few lines of code and, viola, two versions of Daz Studio. Everyone is happy, right?