Legality of stopping activation of older products? (Battery 2, FM7 and so on)

catch-22

Hi,

How can it be legal to stop providing activation tools for paid for products to customers? In my case i need to install and activate older plugins like Battery 2 and so on.

I'm using a Windows PC and there is otherwise no reason why i shouldn't be able to run my paid for plugins.

I can't believe i'm in this situtation.

Kubrak

Yes, I cannot believe it as well. I am not a lawyer and even if I was, the law of different counries would probably apply...

But, IMHO it is not legal to stop plugin activation.

NI has explained that it is because of technical reasons. They had to switch off old server and so on, and so on. But being computer programmer for 40+ years, I simply cannot believe, there would not be acceptable solution to maintain activation of legacy SW.

catch-22

Thanks for chiming in @Kubrak

Yes, i also have some experience with software development and definitely don't see any technical reasons for this. You don't even need to be a programmer to come to that conclusion. The only reason seems money/too much work. I'm pretty sure it's legally highly problematic what we see here. In Germany, especially, there is better customer protection then eg in US. I just assume noone has challegend them legally about that yet. To me this is an unacceptable situation.

Rico010

Some companies allow older/dropped products to activate for free forever. Just make it free. Not so much companies do it, but I have seen some.

i am also concerned, if I stop paying Komplete upgrades… will my products stop working in some years? Does not make sense…

Kubrak

It is not sure products will work even if you pay upgrades.....

For example, NI has excluded Absynth 5 from K14. One day it will be EOL and one day might come time when it will not be possible to authorise it. Maybe, it will not happen ever. Who knows....

JesterMgee

Well it works for apple. They can simply decide when a product no longer receives updates and stop allowing updates which eventually causes software to not install due to devs dropping support and you are forced to upgrade. Just how the world works, you rent everything and own nothing.

Kubrak

Well, I am not in Mac world, but I guess one can install old unsupported program on old OS. If one has installation file.

But even if it is not somehow possible in Mac world, it is not how world works. And even more, it is not how it works in Europe. In EU there is different Copyright law, different protection of customers and so on. Or generally, the law is fundamentally different. It is not based on precedens...

JesterMgee

Has nothing to do with copyright, a dev can suspend support for a product whenever they like, it is written into the EULA upon purchase. I think you will find even local country regulations will not apply once a product reaches a determined EOL cycle, which is typically around 10 years.

It sux but just has to be accepted. I had to ditch a perfectly working firewire audio interface when I updated from Windows 7 to Windows 10 because the company no longer offered drivers for anything beyond Win7 and hacking the drivers was not reliable so there was basically no option but to invest in another interface or stay on an already antiquated OS. $600 I was not ready to spend but had no option.

Kind of the same issue now with people buying new mac M1 systems only to find that many of their beloved older plugins will not (and likely never) work because there are no VST3 M1 compatible versions. Some classics like Novation Bass/V station for instance or most of the Air Music / Sonivox range of instruments.

catch-22

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/92020#Comment_92020

1. Where does it say in the EULA they can drop support and/or activation whenever they want? That would factually mean this is a subscription without a time frame. Since i don't do subscriptions i'd have never bought anything under such conditions.
2. Support is not the same as stopping activation and pratically take it away from you. When they decided to implement a DRM system they should have seen this coming and prepared a solution for that case. They still can. I saw that problem coming all the years. Now we are here. It's their problem to solve when they decide to stop further development on a given product.

catch-22

Also because of the nature of plugins which may were used in thousands of projects by a single user backwards compatibility and long time support should always be an important factor all the time. My projects heavily rely on NI plugins goting back almost decades. Always bouncing everything is not an option in my case. I 'd have to store terrabytes over terrabytes of data since i often have easily 20-30 subversions of a single project. That would be highly inefficient.

JesterMgee

Where does it say in the EULA they can drop support and/or activation whenever they want? 

I'm not about to peruse the EULA but somewhere either in there or more likely, in the "Terms Of Service" there will be a disclaimer that there is no guarantee when software reaches "end of support" it will still function. End of support can mean the online services that author the product also cease to function, happens with games all the time. Now it would be nice to have these products converted to "free" products or have some kind of offline activation I agree since it seems kind of a waste to just have them die, but NI have a legal department and they would be involved in this kind of thing.

Support is not the same as stopping activation

It is if the method of activation reaches the end of life for support or the OS does not allow the older version to install anymore. Battery 2 has a solution via upgrading to Battery 4 as does FM7 to FM8 so there are solutions available, tho be it at a cost but that is still the option available to you and I am sure you would have an upgrade offer for these.

Can't expect old software to run forever... Battery 2 is like 2005 man. If you wanna use computers to produce music it's something you need to understand and plan for eventually something will stop working. One solution would have been to never update your OS and keep an imaged backup. Sit on WinXP forever. I've been through probably 6 DAWS and lost usage of hundreds of plugins over that time especially when having to move from 32 to 64bit, happens to us all, just move with the times as we all have to.

catch-22

Sorry @JesterMgee , no. No time or energy to go that road. So i'll leave it at that.

JesterMgee

Fair enough, guess when you ask a question on a public forum you won't always get the answers you expect, i'm not arguing either, I agree it can be frustrating having dealt with this many times in my life already, just it is/should be expected eventually and as mentioned, planning is key to avoid issues. Long of the short is, you can upgrade or you can move on. Nothing else will change, NI are within their legal rights to abandon 20 year old software and not sure there would be any legal way to argue that.

catch-22

Jester, what is your motivation? You sound like someone working for NI trying to justify questionable decisions. There are many people who agree with me on the issue presented here, i'm pretty sure more than there are apologists like you.

Kubrak

@JesterMgee

Quite contrary, it is also about Copyright Law. There was and maybe still is, that if legitimite user of copyrighted SW cannot use SW because of problems on developer side, user has legitimate right to disasemble code and make it functional.

So, for example using cracked version would be fully legal in this case. Or dissasembling plugin even thought EULA forbids it. Maybe that in case of dissaembling one could ask developer to pay for expenses.... It is not, sorry you cannot use time unlimited licenced SW, because we decided so....

And giving support to plugin and not allowing use it are two distint things. NI could go on with EOL plugins authorisation. It is simple. Users would use Service Center offline, send file to NI, NI would return file for SC. NI has explained, that they had to put down old system because of security problems. In this authentization path, no security problem exists.

Nothing else will change, NI are within their legal rights to abandon 20 year old software and not sure there would be any legal way to argue that.

That is real question. My bet is that NI would loose if it went to court. They just rely on the fact that no-one would sue them because of 20 years old plugins. And if there would be threat of that, NI would solve the situation somehow, so that it would not go to the court.

JesterMgee

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/92366#Comment_92366

I never said I didn't agree, I litterally said in the comment before that I can sympathise but I live in a realistic world with an understanding that when something gets to a certain age, it is likely to be retired and if it pisses off 6 people who are still using it, that's the cost of business.

It sux to lose software, I have also had it happen over the decades but the simple fact is it happens and we all move on. Like I mentioned, what about the 32bit VSTs I use to use that some devs never bothered to update to 64bit, or the fact if I want to use a mac moving forward there are some VSTs (and software) I cannot install because they are discontinued and have no VST3 version, or the games I loved to play online which I cannot now because they closed the servers and now I can't even setup a local game with friends. It happens and if we were talking about software that is a couple of years old that's one thing but we are talking about 15 year old products now which mostly have new versions you can update to and continue to use in the same way, most get less mileage out a new car.

And giving support to plugin and not allowing use it are two distint things. NI could go on with EOL plugins authorisation. It is simple. Users would use Service Center offline, send file to NI, NI would return file for SC. NI has explained, that they had to put down old system because of security problems. In this authentization path, no security problem exists.

And all that takes time, cost and support still to manage. No matter if it was classed as no support, people will still submit tickets if there are issues and again, what company wants to invest extra time in a product probably only 4% of people are still using, especially when there are updated versions available. Unless you have done an analysis of the NI network and their auth mechanism, you can't really say there is "no security problem", could be something we are not aware, maybe it is just a way to force users into new licenses, I doubt tho it would have been made to generate income, there would be very few users still hanging on to software from 2005.

I'm not defending any decisions here but also don't quite understand the surprise either.