"Vray registered legal users list" AKA "Lets make life harder for warez monkeys"

[lukx]

Good point Bobby!

I can't quite agree. Even the plugin makers have problems to keep up with new max versions
Example itoo plugs. Ok we got rail and forest for 2013 but still in beta

[peterguthrie]

Good point Bobby!

[glorybound]

upgrades are happening faster and faster, and legit users have a hard enough time upgrading legit software. I can't imagine trying to find cracked versions of all my plug-ins, that I would use to run my bogus company. Or, heavens forbid, that a bogus plug-in screws up my computer. This is a risk that I'm not willing to take, and it shouldn't be a risk that a client shouldn't have to worry about.

[AJ Jefferies]

Focus on your own work instead of trying to hunt down warez users. This is a battle you cannot win.

I 100% agree with this. Software developers have a hard enough time shutting down pirates, if you were to do the same it would become your personal Moby Dick

[andybot_cg]

Martin,
For the sake of argument... Maybe you are spending too much time and money on what you do. The other software out there (Modo, Blender with cycles, Sketchup with so many quality rendering plugins, etc.. the possibilities continue to expand) keeps improving and makes it easier in legitimate ways to do better work more quickly. Also, as others have mentioned on various threads, clients seem to generally put speed, customer service, and price above quality.

Andy

[PIXELBOX_SRO]

instinct:
NO, i dont find its a bad thing....i surely dont want anyone hold me off from working just check out our studio and discs for no apparent reason, BUT on the other hand, the only thing that prevent people from going rogue is faithfullness and THAT is today very scarce

what i criticize and what made me write this post is that todays "pirates" can produce very high quality work and some of them even have very good and reliable services so they can compete very well.....but we cant compete with them when it comes to pricing for apparent reasons.
so how can you make yourself "better" to justify the higher pricing?
Legal use of soft?
nope...stating that youre using legal soft will earn you nothing (respect amongs faithfull customers maybe perhaps)
Quality?
nope....today the quality is so high that some of the customers dont recognize the differences and go for the better price
Speed?
no....i have some offers from China for a guy that can do massive projects within a week for 500 bucks!!!....so he puts our production in the pocket
Service and Global recognition?
perhaps yes, but this will cost you big bucks and loads of time

So yes, i have to agree with someones reply here....its a lost fight.....but it surely doesnt mean i cannot get angry over it when i ve put som much effort into builting something thats productive, yet legal.

[instinct]

Here in Czech be have BSA. They can only come to check your soft upon being alleged by someone together with some proves. They cant do just random checks. So the process of uncovering the dodgy freelancers is very slow (if any).

Erm...and you find that a BAD thing? Wait till a freelancer (that is angry for whatever reason), or a competitor (for "business" reasons) sends these guys over costing you a lot of money and time...to prove that you are not guilty...Microsoft has a weirdo part in their EULAs that allows this. Which leads to our IT spending a lot of time proving we are legit instead of maintaining our infrastructure...thank you, but no thank you.

This goes along with the way DVDs and BluRays are set up nowadays. Shitloads of warnings and anti-piracy ads, followed by non-skippable trailers sometimes. I payed Money to see the film. I don't need to watch your ads, nor do i need to be threatened by a stupid FBI warning. And then these hassles are removed for the people pirating the movie. Thank you again, but no thank you again.

If the anti-piracy measures do nothing but hassle the legit customers, than they serve no purpose, hurt your case and cost a lot of money.

Kind regards,
Thorsten

[PIXELBOX_SRO]

Bobby:
you can buys MAX for 3.500? Lucky you! Our prices here are 4.700!!! Hows thats sound? )))
We have two licences for which were paying subscription which is not cheap either considering the updates are so crap

I am not bothered if someone uses pirated soft to learn and once he starts making money, he buys it...Thats fine with me. People have to start somehow.
The problem really is that once those people find out, they can get away with it easily, they dont bother their soft is stolen.
There are no means to hunt those people down probably....
Here in Czech be have BSA. They can only come to check your soft upon being alleged by someone together with some proves. They cant do just random checks. So the process of uncovering the dodgy freelancers is very slow (if any).
Load of people here work in a way that they have a small office with PC and Blender on it to show to authorities they use lagal stuf, but at home, they have a beast with VRAY, MAX, SOFTIMAGE, MAYA, ZBRUSH, MUDBOX, NUKE, OCTANE, MARI etc....

[MoonDoggie]

Recent innovations (over the past 5-7 years) in creating mostly functional "non-commercial" software is doing good things in this regard for the up side. Also educational licenses are affordable as well, these are good steps in the right direction.

[glorybound]

we'll all be running software through the cloud, you watch and see. The 3DS max server will talk to the V-Ray server...

I'm sure the pirates think they are doing a good thing; steal from the rich and give to the poor, just like Robin Hood. 3DS MAX cost $3,495.00, which is more then some people make in a year. Some people go to school, learn on the school's computer to get their foot in the door, but school has become astronomically expensive. In the illegal users heads they steal the software, learn how to use it to get their foot in the door, and the boss will buy a legal seat of the software when they get hired.

[simmsimaging]

I've thought a lot about this as well. Given that I'm not a software developer I assume there are many factors that I am totally unaware of, but I think spending a lot of money and time on anti-piracy is probably a lost cause. If the software is desirable it will turn up in a torrent sooner or later.

My suggestion would be to consider selling Vray for a lot less money, so *some* pirates would turn over, and charge a membership for access to the support and forums. For me, that has been just as important as the software. Probably wouldn't fly with the user base though

/b

[pailhead]

I´d like to see softlocks like in Vray 1.09 coming back. "Yo dude.. my animations is flickering what am I doing wrong ?"

You just run it through backburner and problem solved.... there is no way to protect anything. Sooner or later, all of us will be looking into a new career.

[MoonDoggie]

I disagree. Software companies cannot prevent piracy. They can make it difficult or use security by obfuscation to make life for disassemblers harder, but in the end. There's still a

asm:
call regScheme
cmp eax
jz 00401BE9

Somewhere in those op codes of the executable that can be changed to negate it. I really like what some game companies are doing to thwart piracy. They make the game randomly unplayable/buggy. This is bad publicity for them when people start complaining the game is buggy or screen turns black, but it's actually an anti-piracy built in.

Anti-piracy is not an option worth pursuing for me. Some meaningful measures should be taken of course by all software companies, but at the end of the day, I still think educating our clients about the problems we face trying to explain why someone somewhere else can charge 1/8th of what we're asking is more valuable. When you get someone else to care about an issue too, they will in turn educate others, which will further your cause.

[glorybound]

I still think software company's could prevent piracy, if they wanted to. Software piracy has been around as long as software, and I have never seen a real effort to stop it. I betcha, if you stopped piracy, sales of software would go down.

[MoonDoggie]

I appreciate the gusto Martin. I'm conflicted as I understand the comments regarding an un-winnable fight.

Let's think about one route where Chaos Group makes an list available on their site a list of registered users -Companies or persons. This would allow companies who want to hire a 3d artist to check the site for a legal user. The problem is, our clients don't care what software we use. I can tell them I use V-Ray but it doesn't matter to them, so why would they check? It sounds like it'd have to be industry-wide of all 3d software, adobe, and all renderers to make anyone care.

Now, the pro is you can spin this for your personal/company marketing. If Chaos Group published the list, we, in marketing ourselves, can point to the list and say "That's me, a fully legal user", and can say to our client that we're glad they care about software piracy and honest work, this works for them too.

I don't have any solutions just more questions.