I think I figured out the two aisles of this debate.
When I see people who say that they love iLok, most of the time it's macOS users. When I see people who say they hate iLok, most of the time it's Windows users.
There is the answer, I believe. iLok on Mac and Windows is quite different, and for a very simple reason. It's not just about the way different OSes operate, more so about the fact that most efforts to remove protection happen on Windows.
Remember when Universal Audio came out with Spark and the Windows versions took noticeably longer to come out? This was because they were trying to find every single way to tighten the security with iLok. With the price drops on their plugins, they are heavily relying on the fact that they are the only way people can access their plugins. It does make sense, but it's to the point where you can't transfer licenses. It's them saying "we know you wanted UA stuff natively for a long time, it's out now and cheaper than others - you can only get it by buying it from us" and it makes sense, this has seemed to work very well.
Piracy would massively undermine this strategy, so they decided to go with iLok Cloud/dongle only. Both of these obviously are not possibly to reverse engineer or anything of that kind - the licenses are stored either on PACE's servers or on the dongle, not the user's computer.
Anyway, with that in mind, let's remember the tpkd.sys file which was iLok's windows driver implementation some years ago. Where did they place it? System32...
Now, I don't have to explain why that's obviously bad, but it is straight up interfering with fundamental OS resources. The only other audio company which interfered with system resources was Tone2 - it was a massive controversy. PACE ended up removing the tpdk.sys file, but still it shows just how far they were willing to go to avoid windows piracy.
And it does make perfect sense. You don't even need to work on anti-piracy measures on Mac as hard simply because most macOS users are (based on the prices of Apple products) are already at a point where they can afford plugins more easily than Windows users.
Windows is the universally common system for most people. And since it is user-friendly, supports all modern apps and is very common as I've said, people in areas and countries which are not so well off use it too. For them plugins are expensive and that's where it begins.
Protecting IP is definitely essential, but we have to agree that in some cases it is just pointless, because people using such products are not in the vicinity of target users anyway. People who have the possibility to afford software though and use the unofficial copies are just AH's.
At the end of the day, I do have to say that for legit users on Mac, iLok is frankly better in some ways. Due to iLok being "a tougher nut" to deal with, most iLok-dependent publishers can afford massive sales since they're not losing anything on piracy.
Anyway, maybe I'm completely wrong, but as long as this demographic difference exists between macOS and Windows, solutions like iLok will always exist too and will always tighten things more for the more commonly used platform.
Just to clarify, I use iLok on Mac and I'm satisfied with it.
When I see people who say that they love iLok, most of the time it's macOS users. When I see people who say they hate iLok, most of the time it's Windows users.
There is the answer, I believe. iLok on Mac and Windows is quite different, and for a very simple reason. It's not just about the way different OSes operate, more so about the fact that most efforts to remove protection happen on Windows.
Remember when Universal Audio came out with Spark and the Windows versions took noticeably longer to come out? This was because they were trying to find every single way to tighten the security with iLok. With the price drops on their plugins, they are heavily relying on the fact that they are the only way people can access their plugins. It does make sense, but it's to the point where you can't transfer licenses. It's them saying "we know you wanted UA stuff natively for a long time, it's out now and cheaper than others - you can only get it by buying it from us" and it makes sense, this has seemed to work very well.
Piracy would massively undermine this strategy, so they decided to go with iLok Cloud/dongle only. Both of these obviously are not possibly to reverse engineer or anything of that kind - the licenses are stored either on PACE's servers or on the dongle, not the user's computer.
Anyway, with that in mind, let's remember the tpkd.sys file which was iLok's windows driver implementation some years ago. Where did they place it? System32...
Now, I don't have to explain why that's obviously bad, but it is straight up interfering with fundamental OS resources. The only other audio company which interfered with system resources was Tone2 - it was a massive controversy. PACE ended up removing the tpdk.sys file, but still it shows just how far they were willing to go to avoid windows piracy.
And it does make perfect sense. You don't even need to work on anti-piracy measures on Mac as hard simply because most macOS users are (based on the prices of Apple products) are already at a point where they can afford plugins more easily than Windows users.
Windows is the universally common system for most people. And since it is user-friendly, supports all modern apps and is very common as I've said, people in areas and countries which are not so well off use it too. For them plugins are expensive and that's where it begins.
Protecting IP is definitely essential, but we have to agree that in some cases it is just pointless, because people using such products are not in the vicinity of target users anyway. People who have the possibility to afford software though and use the unofficial copies are just AH's.
At the end of the day, I do have to say that for legit users on Mac, iLok is frankly better in some ways. Due to iLok being "a tougher nut" to deal with, most iLok-dependent publishers can afford massive sales since they're not losing anything on piracy.
Anyway, maybe I'm completely wrong, but as long as this demographic difference exists between macOS and Windows, solutions like iLok will always exist too and will always tighten things more for the more commonly used platform.
Just to clarify, I use iLok on Mac and I'm satisfied with it.
Statistics: Posted by wayford — Wed Oct 30, 2024 4:33 am