You've been heard. Response re: 4.9 and Encryption
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TBF, a single streamlined theme is better for consistency of presentation than anything else. A subset of people may care about a dark theme, but there's really no point in developing one -- with the appropriate color grading, etc -- when the default works for the silent majority just fine.
One interesting thing I've also found in my (internet) travels is that light themes are much better for mobile viewing.
mtl1: Except, as has been pointed out, some people have handicaps that make it difficult to tolerate a UI like this.
But hey, it's all a matter of percentages. Clearly.
Mobile viewing? Don't get me started! It would be okay if the mobile version hid nested quotes like the desktop, but it doesn't. Once quotes get nested about 4 levels, the text is about 2 or 3 characters per line, and you have to scroll forever to get to the actual reply.
Um.. Sounds like you think they have some massive staff or something. They do not.
With the DRM narrative we have I don't think it's really possible to "move the conversation" any further than where it is. Either DAZ is teetering on the brink of financial ruin at the hands of pirates, in which case it's illogical that they haven't implemented DRM on every new release since day 1 of 4.9, since that's treasure chests of gold coins hauled out of the office doors every day by people with peg legs and parrots or DRM is a bad idea to get and should be put in the past so DAZ can start to do recovery PR to try to win back the lost sales. Right now we're in this inbetween twilight where there's still DRM products in the store, new products without DRM, a new DRM freebie a half a week ago, and no word on what the future holds.
No, I don't. I'm talking about places with like one coder who occasionally does work when he feels like it and a bunch of random mods and that's... it.
It's kind of hard to move the conversation along when the Daz reps avoid some of the issues. Yes, I keep asking the same questions, because I'm not getting any answers. Not even a "Gee, buddy, that's too bad, but it's not going to change."
Case in point: The customers who CAN NOT use currently encrypted products because we work on computers that CAN NOT, for whatever reason, be connected online?
Whether it is a work computer which would get us fired, or we live in an area with poor or no available internet, or our customers will not accept any work that contains DRM'd materials.
I don't recall that issue being addressed by any Daz rep.
And claiming that the main money loser is credit card fraud, so Daz is implementing DRM?
Okay, you can't tell us everything because, Corporate! But much of what you are telling us doesn't make sense.
DRM has nothing to do with fraud prevention. Fraud prevention should be treated in a thread separate from DRM.
Well - the GameDev problem only showed up after 6 months ...
Yeah ... I, for one, wouldn't buy DazStudio. I bought DS4Advanced (luckily I didn't fork out the money for the Pro version) ...
Which is why I said those purchasing it, should get a refund proportional to how much less than twelve months it was since DRM was removed and their purchase time of the paid-for version.
I would imagine that it would be highly confusing to many customers, particularly new ones, if there were two identical versions of a product in the store, ie with and without DRM. A paid for version of DS that can access the content without encryption would be a more practical idea. However no doubt this idea, like all our others, has already been considered by DAZ and discarded for "business secret reasons".
Nevermind. I don't care anymore.
Someone wanted a positive spin...
You fight piracy with transparency and with numbers.
Companies who supply uploading services do not want to be known for helping to share copyrighted material... IF... a lot of people know the content is being shared. But when lone individual copyright holders complain to these companies... the lone copyright holder usually gets the cold shoulder. I make comics with DAZ products. People share my comics. I ask the host company to delete these files... they either (a) ignore me or (b) ban my IP address from their forums where items are being shared. They can get away with it because I am a single voice. Consider if it were hundreds of voices and the threat of widespread public criticism... then these companies would have no choice but to delete copyrighted material.
I am myself delighted to see that we are all talking about warez and sharing and the discussion isn't being shut down. In the past any discussion of warez was always quieted quickly and everything was hush hush... and this approach allowed piracy to explode... it existed and no companies wanted to have any discussion of it for fear that the customers might discover piracy existed and suddenly stop buying products and just download everything for free.
1) Customers kept buying products. We know this or else NO PRODUCTS WOULD CONTINUE TO BE MADE FOR SALE.
2) Customers knew about this before the stores knew about it. In fact I bet it's customers who alerted the stores that copyrighted material was being shared.
The company must make a public attempt to try to stop the sharing. If the company makes no public effort then the customers start wondering why they're paying for it...
WRONG AGAIN.
I love Vendor X. Vendor X makes content that is unique in the entire world. No one else in the entire world is making content like Vendor X.
Do I as a customer want to make it commercially unviable for Vendor X to make money because of sharing and so causing them to stop creating their unique product that I absolutely crave? NOOO!!! This hurts the customer.
I know DAZ knows there's pirating. I know Vendor X knows. We ALL know it's widespread.
DAZ could charge more to make up for the possible income loss from piracy but the increase of price wouldn't sit well with the average hobbyist customer. It would create a forum thread twice as long as this one with a ton of customers complaining... not just us few here in this forum.
DAZ... your customers would help you show a spotlight on all the pirate sites if you'd let them. Your customers want to continue to get the fantastic goodies you offer. The customers have a stake in this as well. They want to see DAZ succeed ( even though they'll bitch about DAZ the entire time ).
Thanks for having these forums and letting us vent and give feedback.
Richard, why don't they do a survey and let people weigh in with an organized format? As long as the survey is designed appropriately, they can have more than one tool (sales) to help make their decisions. I had 18 counties and 3,000 employees to manage as a Regional HRD Director, and when we wanted to get valid input about proposed changes or how things were progressing after something new was introduced, I did the surveys. You do have to know how to do them in an un-biased manner, with some open-ended questions for input in addition to other types of questions, but I think Daz should do one. (There Jon, there's a concrete suggestion from someone who has been in upper tier management for a state agency. And an ex-professor that knows what good research entails. And you need these folks' input, not just sales!)
There wouldn't be two products, just additional download options if you qualify. It may have been discarded, but it wasn't specificallty mentioned. I also do not recall any comment on selling DRM free versions at higher prices like at Cornucopia3d.
I wold think a survey asking "Do you want DRM?" would return a near unanimous "no". Adding a blurb about why it's wanted mightt bring some positives but it's clear that a lot of people believe DRM is doomed (possibly rightly, for all I know) and there would be arguments about whether the question was fair. I don't know if Daz is planning a unbiversal or targeted survey, but if they are I would have though the time to do it would be once people have some experience of the system (from the freebies etc.) and once daz has some idea of its effects on both infringement and sales.
Alternatively, asking "Do you want PAs work to be protected?" is just going to give a unanimous "yes" response. I would be interested in hearing some others' suggestions on what sort of questions would actually be good to ask, though.
If, as reported, people are using stolen card details to buy content for sharing would higher prices for non-encrytped content make an iota of difference?
Can't see it would.
But waiting before allowing new customers to access content, until the card payment is know to be valid, is a possible solution to the payment issues.
DRM doesn't stop fraudulent access, where the payment method is stolen, until you know it's stolen; so while it might limit the time a pirate has to access the product, once they have access, its too late. I mean a computer only registers itself as valid once, then the thief just disables/doesn't sign in, I presume. It would need to phone-home on a regular basis for that to stand a chance of being effective measure. I hate to think how this forum would react to that - some of us are mildly (
) irritated over the once.
So DRMed or not, I don't see how it protects you from pirates using fraudulent cards or paypal accounts; that needs an alternative measure.
(Feel free to ammend this if needed.)
I certainly don't mind waiting, as a new customer, and I doubt many would; even where I'm protected from fraudulent purchases, it is still seriously annoying to deal with it. It happened last year when Rendo go hacked. I now only use Paypal. And whilst they can be stolen, I'm sure there are measures to verify they are valid, and the customer merely has to wait.
Heh. Just received that "Thanks for your loyalty! Here's an exclusive extra 10% off new releases!" banner entitling us to an extra 10% off all new releases all weekend.
It says "We sincerely appreciate your continued loyalty."
I assume everyone else got this too? Cos if not then they've clearly misread the situation - they've already lost my loyalty
Man bribery why didn't I think of that Lol!
I got an extra 40% off
♦
The loyal-er you are the bigger the discount, mine was 25%.
And most of us doubt DRM will either, it's just about slowing down piracy and someone from DAZ IIRC mentioned people (real customers) sharing cotent with friends, so in that scenario DAZ may make more money if the friends would not have purchased the content if they did not have easy access to it. On the other hand, the reality is that once DRM is broken in 4.9, it will just become a hassle for legirmate customers. This whole thing is a joke, because it will only stop some piracy up until someone breaks the DRM. Which takes us back to wondering what other motives DAZ may have for this and concerns about DRM escalation.
Wow, glad I waited for the weekend. And now I need to think about adding some additional items to my cart.
I'm only a 10% loyal :(
Of course I just bought stuff the day before I was a loyal, and I'm not really planning to buy anything until next week, so my 10% loyal isn't that relevant.
I've not got one, but I'm not loyal at all any more; just been shopping at rendo. Then again, 10% or 50% off nothing is still nothing. :)
Only 10%, guess it's better than a sharp stick in the eye, but I can't see much use to a discount that small. But it hardly surprises me that Loyalty is measured in recently spent $ and not time as a customer. Or the fact that I've still spent money here despite the severe technical issues I'm suffering under. Nope, now it just feels like another slap in the face.
Yeah now that I know other people got much bigger discounts, presumably because they've spent more recently, it really does feel like a diss... haha
Not that I care anymore anyway.
The rationale of DRM cutting down credit card fraud is, "Why do so few people shoplift grand pianos? Because it's so difficult to sneak them out the door." Supposedly, if the pirated goods are too difficult to use (while causing a mild discomfort at most to legit customers), pirates won't bother grabbing the goods with fraudulent cards. They'll move on to easier targets.
I don't agree with that theory due to all the keygen type programs out there, but I see the logic behind the idea. I think it may stop some casual file sharing among friends, but they aren't the ones doing the credit card fraud. It's already been shown that some types of content isn't protected at all by the DRM. If DAZ doesn't lock everything down, pirates may simply continue with their credit card fraud and just target the "not very well encrypted stuff". But that's assuming that the pirates are motivated by financial gain - not just "what can I hack?", and assuming they can't develop a keygen to unlock the content. The more DAZ locks things down, the more hassle it will be for legit users - less compatibility with outside programs, possible slowdowns in DS as it has to unencrypt everything, etc.
I'm not totally against the idea of some sort of DRM being implemented, but I think the manner DAZ is implementing it is awful. DAZ Connect is terrible. It screws up over a decade of organization and workflow for me. (And I'm not the only one in the "dinosaur brigade" who hates DC.) Forcing production machines to go online to get their unlock file is wrong in so many ways. I'd go on, but I've tried to explain the issues several times already in this thread, to no avail.