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Toontrack started to impose license transfer fees


Sander Verstraten

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7 hours ago, Doug Rintoul said:

This basically kills the used midi pack market. The only thing worth transferring now are big ticket items. I am glad I bought a bunch just before this went into effect.

Midi pack addiction is no laughing mater. As of late, I've been living on the street breaking into cars and robbing tourists to support my midi pack habit. I would then resell old or substandard midi packs to go buy more midi packs! One midi pack is too much and 1000 isn't enough. Hell, I really need to quit this lifestyle...

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40 minutes ago, antler said:

I don't think it's completely unreasonable - why would someone buy some software and then sell it on to someone else in <30 days?

I can see someone buying licenses during a flash sale and then reselling them for profit at some discount to people that missed sale.  They would pocket the difference.  Regular users wouldn’t do this likely.

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6 hours ago, Paul Young said:

Physical vs. digital is not a good comparison.

You keep saying this but I don't get it. When you buy a CD, are you buying the content on the CD or the plastic and foil it comes on? When you buy a book, are you buying the paper and the ink or are you buying the content contained on said physical medium? I have yet to hear a coherent argument on how digital is different than physical. I am serious about trying to fathom the difference because, at this point anyway, I cannot see the difference. Paul, is there some article or something that explains this out in a rational way that is easy for a dense mind like mine to comprehend?

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34 minutes ago, Doug Rintoul said:

You keep saying this but I don't get it. When you buy a CD, are you buying the content on the CD or the plastic and foil it comes on? When you buy a book, are you buying the paper and the ink or are you buying the content contained on said physical medium? I have yet to hear a coherent argument on how digital is different than physical. I am serious about trying to fathom the difference because, at this point anyway, I cannot see the difference. Paul, is there some article or something that explains this out in a rational way that is easy for a dense mind like mine to comprehend?

Digital is a license.  We make the mistake thinking we own the software but we own the license.

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5 hours ago, sarine said:

Unpopular opinion incoming!!

Re-selling software licenses seems like a stupid concept to me.

When I buy something it's under the assumption that I'm going to use it. After I have done so, why should I be entitled to get my money back, while the software developer/vendor has sold the product once although it's been "used twice". Makes no sense to me. When you buy the product there's no clause that says you get compensated for the amount of time you did not use the product - the value of the return of your investment measured in increase in productivity or just plain enjoyment is on you to evaluate. If you can't accept the risk, may I suggest you look into subscriptions instead - and while you're at it stop complaining about the subscription model!

That said, I think offering possibility to refund within a reasonable time window after purchase would be a good & fair practice, and some developers do provide that.

If you're in the habit of buying and reselling licenses so much that you feel entitled to get what is practically a free leasing contract indefinitely, i.e. you feel your rights somehow violated because the developer has the audacity to charge a petty amount for license transfers because those alone make your finances look un-sane, I think it's time to inspect one's own spending habits.

Depends on how much the product costs and how much it gets used.

I bought Session Drummer 2 and not once have i used it on a project.  That isn't cheap software, you can buy a used drum set for the cost of it...which can be resold at zero loss.  

The idea that a purchase of a few hundred bucks that has not material worth is only valid for a few years of use is equaly absurd in my book.

I only fail to resell software becuase it seems worthless on the used market.  

 

If the plugin was $5, then yeah that is a you bought it either use it or put it in the trash, but when you are talking about software that has no real resale value where you could have gotten close to somekind of hardware counterpart - that is where the resale thing is a sticking point....which also has an additional cost of ownership with upgrade costs, etc.

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3 hours ago, Doug Rintoul said:

You keep saying this but I don't get it. When you buy a CD, are you buying the content on the CD or the plastic and foil it comes on? When you buy a book, are you buying the paper and the ink or are you buying the content contained on said physical medium? I have yet to hear a coherent argument on how digital is different than physical. I am serious about trying to fathom the difference because, at this point anyway, I cannot see the difference. Paul, is there some article or something that explains this out in a rational way that is easy for a dense mind like mine to comprehend?

When you buy a digital licence, used or not, it's always brand new to use. CD and books can wear after some time.

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4 hours ago, Doug Rintoul said:

You keep saying this but I don't get it. When you buy a CD, are you buying the content on the CD or the plastic and foil it comes on? When you buy a book, are you buying the paper and the ink or are you buying the content contained on said physical medium? I have yet to hear a coherent argument on how digital is different than physical. I am serious about trying to fathom the difference because, at this point anyway, I cannot see the difference. Paul, is there some article or something that explains this out in a rational way that is easy for a dense mind like mine to comprehend?

If I create a physical object, let's say a sculpture, and sell it to you - it's yours but also with limits. I.E. unless there are special circumstances (which I'm not going to cover here) you're not allowed to make duplicates of it. And if & when you do sell it, unlike with software, I the creator/artist/programmer/development company don't have to worry that you (or your friend/relatives/internet chat buddies) have residual copies or clones in your garage, basement, home or business.
Indeed the closest thing to having software behave like hardware is probably is a one activation license for iLok/Pace/ or something similar and god how everyone whines about those.

As previously mentioned you don't actually own software - you are paying for a limited license to use it and often it's only for personal use i.e. you can't rent it out.
There's another twist with software - if you hire me as a contract programmer to write a program for you, unless we have a specific agreement stating otherwise, I own the code.
Software as it is expected to work by the end user is a very different animal from hardware.

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4 hours ago, Paul Young said:

Digital is a license.  We make the mistake thinking we own the software but we own the license.

Yes. I understand this and agree with this. But is that not true of music as well? Whether it is on a CD or resides on my hard drive  is, to my mind anyway, irrelevant. The intrinsic value is in the music itself, not the medium it comes on. The digital verses physical argument was applied to computer games. At one point it was argued that you could resell a game as long as you bought a game on DVD.  But it was a different story as soon as software was able to be downloaded. To me however, the DVD or the CD is just the medium of distribution.

I just bought a Komplete 13 upgrade. It came (mostly) on a hard drive. Just because it came on a physical device does not change in any way what I can do with the upgrade. 

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1 hour ago, TheSteven said:

If I create a physical object, let's say a sculpture, and sell it to you - it's yours but also with limits. I.E. unless there are special circumstances (which I'm not going to cover here) you're not allowed to make duplicates of it. And if & when you do sell it, unlike with software, I the creator/artist/programmer/development company don't have to worry that you (or your friend/relatives/internet chat buddies) have residual copies or clones in your garage, basement, home or business.
Indeed the closest thing to having software behave like hardware is probably is a one activation license for iLok/Pace/ or something similar and god how everyone whines about those.

The physical argument though falls down when you talk about CDs, DVDs, and perhaps even books. The artist or writer did not produce the actual CD or book. And unlike a sculpture, books and CDs and DVDs can be easily mass produced. Which, as you said has led to attempts to try to turn the non-physical into physical, vis a vis copy protection.

So I guess I agree with you and Paul, but would argue that CD, and DVDs and maybe even books do not constitute physical.

This does not however, determine whether ownership of a license should or should not be allowed to be sold or transferred to someone else.

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CD, WAV or MP3, final customer never buy the content. The customer buy the right to use the content for limited purpose.

If I remember correctly, in EU there is a simple rule: if you have bought something you can sell it. Explicit statements in contracts/licenses/etc. violating that rule are void (as usual when something violates laws). But some fee is allowed, to compensate addition costs (un/re-registration, etc.).

I think license transfer fee under 10% of the price is reasonable for current crazy world, taking into account Google and Apple take 30% from all payments in all apps, just for the fact the app is commercial and works on corresponding platform...

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I don't have anything nice to say about Toontrack, but my Grandma always said "If you don't have anything nice to say about someone, just say that they suck."

They suck.

And they are greedy and customer unfriendly. 

Oops. I've said too much!

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On 7/8/2021 at 5:01 PM, Doug Rintoul said:

This basically kills the used midi pack market. The only thing worth transferring now are big ticket items. I am glad I bought a bunch just before this went into effect.

Didn t even knew there was one ...

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5 minutes ago, Zo said:

Did even knew midi packs could be sold , i would have piked some for sure ...

I bought a bunch for $12-$14. Toontracks was always prompt with the license transfers. I don't begrudge Toontracks charging a license transfer fee; I just wish it was proportional to the cost of the original item, not a flat fee. 

Edited by Doug Rintoul
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If you buy a Toontrack MIDI 6 Pack, you get 6 generic serial numbers which an unscrupulous person could theoretically sell on to make a profit. If you buy a book of 6 short stories, you could theoretically rip up the book into 6 parts and sell each of them on. However that's probably less likely to work out.

Thing is, whether you rip up the book or not, it's likely to deteriorate with use and eventually, someone's probably going to buy it again if they really like it. With a serial, your software isn't* going to deteriorate until you can't use it, so you (or whoever you sell it to) is unlikely to buy another license.

Also, there's a point of support and its cost. If you buy software, you'd usually expect the developer company to provide support no matter how old it is. If you phone up a company e.g. to tell them that a washing machine no longer works, but it's out of warranty, they'd most likely either decline to help or ask for a maintenance fee. A software parallel to this would be WUP, and I get the feeling that people here don't like it that much.

* Yes, software can become incompatible with an OS, but that usually happens at a slower rate. Also, this doesn't apply to e.g. MIDI packs

Edited by antler
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