Downloading a torrent but you purchased the software
HI guy’s, I’m one of those people that buy hardware and don’t really look at the paperwork inside because of the excitement of using said hardware. Anyway I purchased a midi key board and discovered I was given a free copy of NI’s Kore and licence key. However after installing it and the service center it won’t let me register it. when I try do it offline via the service center html doc, it block’s my NI account and when i try do it online via the service center it keep’s wanting to upgrade the service center. I have emailed them but to no reply since Sunday and since I am in South Africa, it’s not so easy for me to pick up the phone and scream at a consultant. So here’s my question, Would it be wrong to download the exact version of the software from a torrent site ?
Did you try letting (or even) upgrading your Service Center and then re-installing it? And if the problem persists sometimes all it needs is a re-install of Service Center itself on your computer. However to answer your original question, no. I do not think it’s immoral to torrent something you already have paid for, but I do prefer having the legit version since I did spend my hard earned money on the product.
Okay so maybe I’m updating wrong, but I did re-install everything but still the service center won’t work, It say’s it updating and I even put the target destination folder to a new folder on my desktop and when it’s done the folder is empty and when I start it up again it updates again. @ColdFuzion, your right I had the legit version of FL5, for more than 4 years and I was unable to update it so I simply upgrade myself to Studio One 2
Is it wrong? No. It’s like if I buy a vinyl record there’s no point in ripping it if I can just download a copy.
That’s just my opinion and there are some people on here who are very serious about antiquated IP laws and protecting the rights of big copyright holders.
I thought you were allowed to have digital back-ups/copies of any format providing you own an original?!?! Hence why you are allowed to copy CD’s to itunes/ipod for example and backup software in the event of a crash.
We are not incriminating the forums, or anyone on them. We are actually saving people right now. This is a very important issue, and I think it’s important to have discussions on it, as long as its not telling people to pirate, or where to pirate from I don’t see the problem in it.
I work for a software developer. We treat the software as two entities; the media and the license. These days we provide download links to our media rather than shipping out DVDs. In addition the user get license keys, serial numbers that activate an entitlement to the product. We have never tracked nor cared about where someone gets the media from, but we do care out the validity of the license.
Our activation system is pretty old and is getting updated on the next release but even now I can track a serial number to a specific IP address, see how many time someone activated it and how many times they tried to activate it after it has been disabled (we limit the number of activations).
Our software is not consumer software but most of the same principals apply. Should we discover someone is using our software illegally we will inform them that we are aware of the situation and require that they perform certain steps to deactivate the license. They are then also required to submit proof of deactivation which we also validate. If we don’t get a response pretty swiftly our legal team sends a cease and desist and we would follow up with further ways to legally remedy the situation if the person or company didn’t comply. Our software sells from $20,000-$500,000 so it is different from downloading a torrent (although I have seen our stuff appear on torrents, ebay and craigslist).
If you were to be discovered using the software (I am not sure how often NI’s Service Center phones home or what information it passes back to their activation server) NI would certainly have the right to remedy the situation legally.
If you are not getting things working through Service Center, pick up the phone and call them. They should be able to sort you out. Most software companies don’t want to waste time and money chasing pirates and should be willing to help out in a situation like this.
All is sorted now after a week of waiting. Interesting though many of the things mentioned here though, 1 last question and this is an answer probably found in the EULA that no one ever reads, With a program like Ableton, many producers will have it and want it installed on their main desktop studio pc and maybe would like to have it on their laptops for live use, can one licence be used for this?
I agree with you totally, but with torrents you’re distributing pieces of the file you’re downloading to all of the other machines in your swarm as you’re downloading it, and this continues if you seed. That’s not just technically illegal in many countries - it is illegal, as you’re helping to distribute whatever it is you’re downloading to pirates. The risk of getting caught is very small, but it’s still a risk that people should be made aware of.
