Where are the good olds day without piracy protection

[Chris]

I am very disappointed I bought a plane from a 3rd party designer (name I will not mention). The plane downloaded well until it came to the piracy protection. It would accept the license number they gave me but then the install would abort. I tried to contact the designer by e-mail but they were very slow with any support. I then e-mailed them again and they e-mailed me back with a very rude and disrecptful e-mail. And they also refused me futher acess to there sight to try and get the plane to work. I was refunded.

I will be doing no more business with this company. I wish we could do away with the piracy protection on 3rd party planes. This piracy protection is more of a hassle for the buyer then the little revenue that the designer is loosing. It has become such a hassle with the piracy protection now days with haveing to go on the internet and e-mails and put this key here and there. Because of the hassles with piracy protection I will be not buying anymore 3rd party aircraft.

I can not be the only flightsimmer that feels this way. 3rd party aircraft designers please take this into consideration on the next plane you design.

[kmentt]

Although I sympathy with what you suffered I´d say remember this is an international community, so you are interacting with people that think different than in the USA, where you are taught that money reigns, or "I paid so I have a right".

In some cultures/countries quality of life is still higher than money, thus a seller requires the same respect as the customer wishes to have. The seller and buyer are equals. The seller is not a "servant" of the buyer. That might be right in America but you are now on the internet...

I was once badly treated in a drugstore in Amsterdam because it was near closing hours and the owner wanted to go home (see his family, quality time, etc) he didnt give a toss for selling more and treating me positively. That would never happen in America.

On the simming world, even payware developpers work also for the fun of the hobby and wont accept the "I am the customer, I am the King" policy. Many are not in this business to get rich, but to cover some costs and develop their hobby in "their spare time".

This might not have been your case, since I dont know the full story, but I know many developpers still expect the money plus a thank you from the customer.

Russia, (and there are some good developpers here, Sweeden, Japan, Holland, Germany...this is not a Best Buy Mall.
LK

[kmentt]

Regarding piracy,
before this authenthication method, nearly 80% of revenues were lost in piracy. Right now all the good old paywares are spreaded all over softwares that can fish them just as they do with music mp3.

Nobody likes anti-terror inspections at airports either.
But unfortunately it seems to be necessary.
LK

[Chummy]

>...I was once badly treated in a drugstore in Amsterdam because
>it was near closing hours and the owner wanted to go home
>(see his family, quality time, etc) he didnt give a toss for
>selling more and treating me positively. That would never
>happen in America....

On the contrary, it's an all too often occurrence in the United States, except perhaps from those businesses that place a value on their customers.

Regarding the piracy protections, is it not better that the designers themselves also work to secure their creations?

Is it a component only of American culture to expect good value, good service in exchange for one's money? The English, the French, the Japanese do not mind if they spend what they've earned only to receive shoddy customer service?

Now, I know the frustration about software that glitches due to piracy protection, as I've a (non-FS related) application that repeatedly fails, and one never obtains the actual application. It's installed apparently off the web. After I asked a few times about the same recurring problem, the designer blocked my e-mail, making me oh-so-happy that I plunked down my money for something that doesn't quite work as it's advertised.

[flyking]

I couldn't agree with you more. I miss those good old days too. A time when you would often hear the phrase "Lets keep flight simming free" or other things to that effect. A time when it seemed that many people contributed to the flight simming community more out of a love for the hobby than a way to make a buck at every turn.

I've lost track of how many flight sim addons I've purchased over the years. I've never pirated any of these products. But I definetly feel like I've been victimized because of the hassles I now have to deal with when purchasing third party addons or reinstalling them. I recently contacted one of the distributors who make some of my favorite addons because I had to reformat and my previously purchased keys wouldn't work anymore for some of my aircraft that I'd purchased. I did get a response from them in a couple of days and a new key. But in this case I was supposed to remember which credit card I had used to make the purchase originally as a step in activating the new key. I finally figured it out on the third try and fortunately it worked. But guess what, I'm only allowed three shots at it and I've already used up all three of them just trying to reinstall the plane that one time. So if I want to reinstall again for some reason I'll have to go through the same hassle all over again. The problems with this process are magnified greatly if you happen own several addons that operate on these types of wrapper systems.

I contacted another vendor for help in getting needed keys to enable me to reinstall other addons that I had previouly purchased and received no response at all. So here I sit with addons that I purchased honestly and can't even use because of this vendors anti-piracy system and rudeness. Why should they care now--they've got my money and thats what its all about right? Oviously I haven't purchased any other products from this vendor.

I've worked in retail for many years and I'm familiar with the problems that dishonest people and shoplifters bring to the market place. But I'm glad to say that the company I work for doesn't treat everyone that comes through the door like a criminal because of the abuses of a few.

If I purchase an addon I believe I should have the freedom to install it, remove it, re-install it, delete it, re-install it or whatever the heck I want to do with it as long as its on my own computer system and I don't do anything dishonest with it. Most of the current addons I've purchased aren't cheap and when put together represent a large investment.

I truly enjoyed my first years of flight simming. I had alot of fun then and couldn't wait to fly. Yes, there were anti-piracy safeguards built in to the addons that I purchased at that time but I found them much easier to work with. If I kept my keys and documentation I could reasonably expect to re-install my addons on my computer whenever and as often as I needed to between my re-formats, hardrive upgrades, etc.

I haven't purchased any flight sim addons in a long time and I haven't flown my simulator in months. I hope someday to be able to enjoy this wonderful flightsimming hobby the way I once did in what were for me "the good times".

[jeffhunter]

Yeah, right. I've never been treated badly or rudely in the US...NOT!! I don't think it matters where you go, some people have no idea.

Jeff

[keaja]

I have no problem copying and pasting a CD Key and passing alot cheaper for my aircarft. If there was no Anti-Piracy technology going on, then the developer would have to charge a ton for a few customers who would actually buy it.

[Bruce]

i think you'll find things used to be worse in the good ol' days, i have IndyCar Racing still on my PC, this from the early 90s so i think is the eara you are thinking of, the copy i have is actually on CD but was originally on floppy. The game has something that most of the games had in those days; anti piracy protection, and i can tell you this compared toi what we have today it was a major pian in the #####, so you have to enter some code each time you install the software, how would you have liked to do that each time you run it, and not just a fixed key; in those days software/games came with big hich hefty manuals and when you wen to tstart the game you would be presented with a screen aking you to type in the 4th word on the 7th line of the 2nd paragraph on the 315th page, if you made a mistake you would be locked out of the game and would have to restart it and next time you would have to find a different word. this is bad enough but if you lose the manual your game is no good, so things have improved, although i do aggreee it is a pain but we must blame the thieves not the developers. Unfortuantly the practice usually only hurts the genuine customers the theives will work a way around most of the protactions withinb a few hours of the product being released, needing to have CDs in the drive to paly games it the biggest exapmle.

[ajmitch]

My main gripe with piracy protection is with MS for their 'Activation' requirement for Windows XP. I have done many rebuilds and re-installs on my system and several times XP has refused to activate online and even using the telephone option, saying that I had already activated it x number of times which exceeded the number of times that I was allowed to reinstall it. Heated phone calls to MS meet with someone who can only apologise for MS's overzealous protection efforts, but assures me there is no limit on the number of times I can re-install.
Believe me the air has been very blue when that happens.
On the other hand, I have purchased downloaded software from Lago and PSS and had to reinstall after rebuilds. The keys for the Lago software, I keep in a file, (backed up on CD of course) so they are always at hand should I need to re-install.
With PSS, they give instructions on how to create a back-up so that you don't need to go on line again to re-install. However, should that ever become necessary, it has never been any problem. My login to PSS shows which products I have purchased and I can re-install on line anytime.
The only time that I have had a terse response from PSS was due to my own obnoxious comments to them.

[jwenting]

Wouldn't it be great if all customers were trustworthy and noone would attempt to rob the store and then come back and demand to get free warranty replacement on the things they stole in the first place?

This is exactly what happens all too often these days, which is why ever more elaborate protection is needed in software to make sure the person attempting to use it is indeed the one who is entitled to that use.

The alternatives are either software that is so hiddeously expensive that the one or two who buy it cover the entire development and distribution cost for the tens of thousands who pirate it, or a subscription based service where you never install the product but use it always remotely after paying for that single use. In the first scenario noone would buy it in the first place because of the cost involved so all software companies would go bust and there would be no more software, in the second case the customer that gives out his account name and password will pay for everyone whom he gave it too as well.
Major problem with the second approach is privacy protection but I do see the software world moving that way and fully expect that within the next 5 years the majority of commercial software will be distributed using such a system.
If you don't like it, you have the option to not use the software of course, but your operating system may well be among the first to require a subscription based service for core components...

If people were honest and trustworthy there would be no reason for paranoia.
Sadly the vast majority of people are neither but instead are nasty scheming #####, especially when it comes to respecting the property of others.