NI to no longer allow registration of legacy products [NOW FIXED]

[Lawrence]

Never mind.

[Guy Rowland]

Quasar - FWIW I get your points loud and clear. Your battles however are not mine, and I suspect not many other peoples here by the looks of things. Life is simply too short to make points of principle on every historic decision taken by every developer. I've had broadly very good experiences with NI, think they've handled this latest thing very well and this bodes well going forward from my perspective. As and when this changes, my view may also change. I know you won't agree with this. But, FWIW, loudly complaining to everyone else here who doesn't quite share your aggitation doesn't really advance anything imo other than personal aggravation.

Agree to amicably differ and time to move on, perhaps?

[wst3]

I think you may be missing the point - and it is subtle, I think.

Few here are arguing that NI reversed a long held policy to support off-line activation. This is a fact, not an opinion, and it can not be countered. Once they allowed us to authorize libraries off-line, now they don't. That part is simple.

Calling this a betrayal, a lie, or "an abnegation of common human decency" (love the wording there) is an opinion. It is your opinion, and you hold it dear. And that's cool. No one here has suggested that you do not have a right to your opinion.

Where you run into resistance, I think, is when you position your opinion as fact.

NI is a company, they have a responsibility to their customers, certainly, but they also have a responsibility to their employees (to keep them employed) and to their investors (to return something on the investments). I can't prove it, but it certainly appears that the change in policy followed a large outside investment. Have you considered that part of the cost of securing that investment was tightening the authorization process?

There are no facts to support the need for the investment, or that the investment was unnecessary. Equally difficult, there are no facts to support the contention that the investment made any specific advances possible, nor the corollary, that the advances would have occurred regardless.

These are speculation, and speculation is not fact.

Do I feel betrayed? Yes I do. But after careful consideration (as one who has lost access to tools in the past through no fault of my own) I decided that for now I am going to continue to use Kontakt, and continue to invest in new libraries, where I see fit. Whenever possible I will purchase libraries that require the full version of Kontakt so as to avoid Native Access - for the libraries. It will continue to be necessary for Kontakt itself.

There is a risk. There was a risk when I invested in GigaStudio, and that was a far larger investment. I made my last investment in that product line when Tascam took over because I did not trust them. And all of that investment is very nearly useless now. I still have a GS machine, but I cant imagine it will last a whole lot longer. I may invest in G-Player, or I may just throw in that particular towel.

Sometimes the risk is not as obvious. I've lost access to Wizzoverb and Kantos completely, and I've lost access to any updates for Alchemy. Never saw any of those coming.

There are risks associated with investments in Native Instruments, MOTU, Presonus, Steinberg,and every other tool I use. The biggest, by far, is Kontakt and the associated libraries.

So yes, I feel betrayed, but I do not think they lied to me, nor do I think they did anything nefarious. They changed a policy, and that change had a negative impact on their customers, and they had to know that. But they moved forward anyway. This suggests that the decision was not made lightly. It is their company, and they do have the right (as stated in the EULA - another abomination, best left for another thread) to change their policies.

I am sorry that this has rented so much space in your mind. I decided long ago to evict it, and I would suggest the same to you simply because it falls into the category of "things I can not change".

[Quasar]

I think you may be missing the point - and it is subtle, I think...

This is a substantive response, thank you.

Yes, you are correct that there is a factual component (the policy changes and new activation software) and then a subjective, interpretive component (whether these changes are ethically justifiable or not).

With with the exception of the objective fact that they did lie to me, specifically promising that legacy offline activation would be maintained in a ticket response, I agree with everything you said, and your unfortunate examples of other software you lost do point out the nature of the reality being what it is, however one chooses to view it in the various specific circumstances.

The objective fact is that there was sufficient outcry over the recent "ending" of those older libraries that it forced NI's hand and they redressed that issue. There is no equivalent outcry over the offline activation change, nor is there any likelihood that there will be. This will remain true regardless of my own opinion about the fairness of that, which I have already made abundantly clear.

I will continue to be outraged over the lack of outrage, which I see as a profound moral failing on the part of the DAW community, but will leave it alone from now on, since I must accept the fact that others see this differently and have the right to their opinions as well, however tragically misguided I believe those opinions are.

So you're right about that. This falls squarely under the umbrella of things I cannot change. What I can change is how I choose to deal with it. But I will not speak of it on public forums again, except in support of anyone else who might have the same complaint.

OT, but the whole Niebuhr/Serenity Prayer and the follow-up analogy of "renting space in one's head" (a popular saying in one of the subcultures I inhabit) is something I have an intellectually complicated and ambivalent relationship with. There are times when viewing phenomena through this prism is appropriate and helpful, at other times not so much. The wisdom to know the difference I guess...

[wst3]

nothing more to say on the topic I suppose, but your OT comment strikes me as very interesting!

"OT, but the whole Niebuhr/Serenity Prayer and the follow-up analogy of "renting space in one's head" (a popular saying in one of the subcultures I inhabit) is something I have an intellectually complicated and ambivalent relationship with. There are times when viewing phenomena through this prism is appropriate and helpful, at other times not so much. The wisdom to know the difference I guess..."

Of course that last bit is part of the Serenity Prayer, which is something I've learned to appreciate. My wife was diagnosed with breast cancer about six years ago, and died from complications due to the cancer about two and a half years ago. Really since the diagnosis I've had to lean on the the fact that there are things beyond my control, and I need to learn when that is so or I will, quite literally, risk losing my mind. Which would probably be a bad thing.

The "renting space in one's head" is similar, but I waffle on it - there is certainly no reason to obsess about things you can not change, but the concept of renting space suggests that the problem has some control over me. My brother has re-framed it, and often says "do not rent space in your head to <fill in the blank>", which returns the focus to the control that I do have. I can choose to worry, or not.

Anyway, something interesting for me to ponder while I go do some yard work...

[Quasar]

Of course that last bit is part of the Serenity Prayer, which is something I've learned to appreciate. My wife was diagnosed with breast cancer about six years ago, and died from complications due to the cancer about two and a half years ago. Really since the diagnosis I've had to lean on the the fact that there are things beyond my control, and I need to learn when that is so or I will, quite literally, risk losing my mind. Which would probably be a bad thing.

Sorry for your loss, man. My mom died a few months ago from the same disease.

[wst3]

Thank you! It remains a challenge some days...

[MPM Prod]

I also use many of these legacy products. Can anyone began putting out options for alternative ways to keep these in our systems?
g.c.

You don't need to worry about keeping them on your machines; once auth'd, they are there forever.

The issue is when you go and build a new machine. How to auth them then?

Well, you add them manually to the registry. At least on a PC. Not sure about a Mac. You have to know how to do it, but it isn't complicated. You do still need the serial # you received with your purchase, however.

Cheers.

Could you walk me through the process of manually adding products to the registry? I have the serial numbers. I'm kind of desperate to get going again.

I can't believe that they bailed on the EULA - why even have one?

[Guy Rowland]

Hi MPM, welcome!

I may be missing something, but AFAIK you don't need to fiddle with the registry. Here's what Matt from NI posted:

Testing done for the Kontakt instruments

The OEM instruments listed here can now be activated in Native Access: https://support.native-instruments.com/ ... nd-of-Life

Native Access can be used on 10.9 and higher if you are using an older OS: https://support.native-instruments.com/ ... g-Systems-

These changes also fixed some known issues with 10.15 and it looks like some instruments can also be activated on Catalina (Colossus and Gold for ex)

We will send official communication around this via newsletter and of course update our announcement to remove instruments that are no longer affected.