Appalling fraud and theft

    Quote from nakedzen

    Just to play the devils advocate for a while here, what is the actual consequence of this sharing? (Let's skip the moral pov completely).


    Remember when C-cassette sharing was killing the music business? Piracy has existed long before the internet. What it does is make your products more widely known, and works as free grass roots level advertisement for your future products.


    As an example, our EP has been out for under a month and I found a torrent sharing site that has shared it for over 100 times already. Of course it would be nice to have sold 100 copies in two weeks but let's be realistic here, how many people of those would've bought the ep or even known about it? I'm guessing zero. But our next album/gigs/t-shirts might sell a bit better because torrenting made it known to a wider audience. So I'm not advocating piracy, just saying there usually is a silver lining to it.

    Yeah, that is also the other Point.. a lot of big bands are pushing the t-shirts these days more than the CDs or PM3s.

    Leg em down and yackem smackem

    The profile selling market is a volatile one like many other techs and products in a digital and Internet space. Morals and ethics of a small community would be thrown out the window in a day if tomorrow there appeared many thousands more profilers appeared in the hands of users. People would find various ways to share profiles and probably even find some programmer to break the profile code and write a program where you could design your own amp with a few clicks of a button on your PC.


    Not trying to sound negative or revolutionary, just pointing out the realities of the resources and capabilities of people today.
    I buy plenty of profiles and many are worth their price and more for the time and resources put into them, but still know that I can go a lot of other places to find a lot of other products that you are paying for their time to allow a somewhat gray area of legality or ethics.


    To show I do value ethics though, I will state how profile theft can be thwarted with the Kemper 2. Make it optional to encrypt profiles, where each sale would include a one time unlocking code and each profile sale would have its own unique code. You would also need a PC program to unlock the profile to avoid manually punching in some crazy 32 or 64 character code each time (you would also want to start with a high bit algorithm to prevent easy cracking and need for revisions). Then pair that with a password-protected external storage access to prevent physical theft from the profiler via USB.


    Edit: I would even see if locking the output section could be done with the current Kemper as I have read that profile theft from musicians is already a concern and may be slowing the adaptation from them. More musicians using Kemper = more of other users hearing about and also wanting to use one as well.

    Edited once, last by K3MP3R ().

    Quote from andrewwarne

    The author of this post has been in touch and admitted he was wrong and I hope wants to wind the whole situation back


    He did ask me to remove his email address as he's been flooded by people wanting to join his site, what a sad indictment on a portion of our community

    Well at least nice that he want to delete the whole thing - better late than never. Also that he was flooded by people wanting to join the site after you posted it here seems to be quite sad. Usually I´m all for sharing - if the purpose of it is testing and the buying - but in that case I might think that this wasn´t such a community, maybe some, but surely not all of those in there did that. So hopefully he closes it down and it doesn´t open up again.


    Ah no, that wasn't me but Martin/Lightbox...
    Otherwise I agree
    ...
    :)

    Quote from lightbox

    This whole case and the wrong-headed attempts to justify are yet another deep dive into the abyss of human disrespect. Nothing new, it happens everywhere. Just hope that these folks get caught by the same disrespect someday.


    Yes, in a 'human' community a case like this had to happen some time and inevitably so.
    No surprise here.


    But children, remember that using pirate profiles builds very very bad karma.
    It can cause failure in your profiler and arthritis in your hands.
    Or something along these lines. ;)

    Where you smell hypocrisy I smell rationalization. The KPA emulates timbre and dynamic response. Those aren't protected intellectual property under any legal system that I'm aware of, and ethically it doesn't make sense to me to consider those someone's property either. It would be like saying a graphics software maker is being unethical for emulating a particular camera lens effect.


    You can debate whether profiles should be considered intellectual property, but when you buy a profile you agree to certain contract terms. What the OP describes is at the very least a breach of contract. TAF and Soundside could have gone with a "try what you like and donate what you want" business model, but they didn't. It's not anyone's place to second-guess how they run their business.


    Quote from Stevoe

    It's wrong yes I do agree... I also hope that none of the posters here have a Pirate copy or a movie or CD in their collections


    Just Saying............. :cursing:

    I hope so too.

    Everything downloadable'ware' can be and will be shared/'pirated'. The people selling and making money from such things unfortunately need to take this into consideration when starting the business. Fortunately they will not lose any money, they will just earn less. :P Or who knows... as stated previously this might also result in new customers...

    Well it's out there now, love it or hate it, it can't be taken back. The whole business model is shaky at best with no way to secure your product (I mentioned this waaay back when the profile makers were sussing the market out on here). As previously mentioned enforcing T&C's is probably the only route for recourse, even though I highly doubt these are enforceable.. in the UK at least. There's certainly no way to make it out to be a copyright issue as you haven't done anything other than place some mics and use a Kemper, nor will you hold any rights to the magic that happens inside the Kemper. The best thing to do is delete all mentions to it on here, because it's just advertising it to more people.

    Quote from coipu

    Well it's out there now, love it or hate it, it can't be taken back. The whole business model is shaky at best with no way to secure your product (I mentioned this waaay back when the profile makers were sussing the market out on here). As previously mentioned enforcing T&C's is probably the only route for recourse, even though I highly doubt these are enforceable.. in the UK at least. There's certainly no way to make it out to be a copyright issue as you haven't done anything other than place some mics and use a Kemper, nor will you hold any rights to the magic that happens inside the Kemper. The best thing to do is delete all mentions to it on here, because it's just advertising it to more people.


    might be a good point. Hower as the whole thing is hopefully deleted now and closed for good this thread should stay open to prevent shi..stuff like that from happening again

    I'm sorry to see this happening :( I wouldn't personally do it but, for some folks, if it is there they will take it. Unfortunately you are relying on honesty and goodwill which is why it's good this has been brought up on the main community for this product and that most people are pointing out that it's not right..... Trying to change people's minds by reasoned argument here is the only defense you have against it.


    As to the parallel with ripping off MP3's. I'm not condoning that at all but I would say it is different.....


    I'm in my mid-40's and for years there was the campaign that said that home taping would kill music and that piracy would wipe it all out / the industry wouldn't exist.


    Time has proven that to be not true. Whilst it is undoubtedly the case that billions are ripped off each year, most record companies still make a pretty decent living it seems. Again, this is NOT me saying piracy is ok - it isn't. What I'm saying is that, wrong as it is, piracy has not closed down the music industry.


    With Andy or Soundside.de, you have individuals who spend a lot of time doing this. They get paid by us in return for their time and knowledge in creating cool things. If their profiles don't sell, there is every chance they will stop doing it and then we all suffer..... They lose a business, we lose cool sounds.


    Even if you leave the moral aspect out of this (which you shouldn't) it's not good for the community at all.


    As for the argument that people shouldn't be charging for profiles..... Well maybe they shouldn't. But if someone decides to charge for something, that is what gives it value. If you do not agree with the principal then you should not pay them for their profile but equally you should NOT just download it for free. Go and use one of the other 6000 that are free. If it's offered for sale rather than the rig exchange, you've got to respect the wishes of the person who made it. No one is forcing you to buy it ;)

    Quote from K3MP3R

    To show I do value ethics though, I will state how profile theft can be thwarted with the Kemper 2. Make it optional to encrypt profiles, where each sale would include a one time unlocking code and each profile sale would have its own unique code. You would also need a PC program to unlock the profile to avoid manually punching in some crazy 32 or 64 character code each time (you would also want to start with a high bit algorithm to prevent easy cracking and need for revisions). Then pair that with a password-protected external storage access to prevent physical theft from the profiler via USB.

    A better system would be to bake an RSA public/private key pair into each Kemper unit, if there isn't already, and allow users to read their public key in base64 text from the info page on the unit itself. Then when buying commercial profiles on the site users submit their public key for their Kemper with the order, and the website encrypts their specific download with their specific Kemper's public key. When their Kemper loads the profile it can decrypt it with the private key, decryption is nice and automatic and no other Kemper units can read the profile.


    There are other problems with this though, like what if I have more than 1 Kemper? Do I have to buy the same profile multiple times? What if my Kemper tanks and is replaced with a different one? etc.


    Anyway, I think what we're seeing here is the same market response we've seen in many other kinds of digital media:


    There are some users, let's call them group A who will pirate content regardless, if piracy were impossible they would not purchase the product. These users don't comprise any lost sales.
    There are also some users, let's call them group B who pirate content because they perceive it as too expensive, or a poor value compared with the effort required for piracy. These users are potential lost sales that could have been achieved through lower price points or simplified delivery or making the legal product less restrictive.


    If a system as proposed above were implemented, no additional sales would be gained through group A, some additional sales might be gained through group B, but sales would also be lost as the perceived value drops when what they are buying becomes tangibly less valuable (restricted to a single Kemper, PITA to manage multiple Kemper's, etc.). As to whether or not that would be a net gain is debatable.

    Edited 4 times, last by parlance ().

    The last thing I'd want in Kemper is bs copy protection. I'd not buy a machine where developer wasted their resources on pointless stuff. Have enough of this nonsense with ilocks etc. Pirates will pirate no matter what, normal users will suffer.
    I'd certainly not buy any profiles if I had to activate them and manage licenses. Too much hassle.

    No matter what encryption, password, hash, dongle ... it could and would be cracked. There's no such thing like secure copy protection.
    But what we certainly can do to prevent this desease from spreading all over the place: We can stop them from using these forums and similar places to make their illegal offers public.

    Quote from lightbox

    No matter what encryption, password, hash, dongle ... it could and would be cracked. There's no such thing like secure copy protection.
    But what we certainly can do to prevent this desease from spreading all over the place: We can stop them from using these forums and similar places to make their illegal offers public.

    yeah, probably the only thing a community can really do. But sadly this thread seems to have not just the intended effect - which would be to stop the whole thing - but also obviously that a lot of people wanted to actually join that "I don´t really know what to call it" due to the post here. So whats the right move? Keep the thread going or delete it? Which one is more effective?

    Well, if I were Moderator/Administrator here, I would certainly store the first post (in its original version) internally for future reference and then remove everything that links to a document, email address, even user name from the public post. There are better ways to handle these users backstage. It's good that this has been brought to our attention, but I think it would have been a bit wiser to not disclose the username, mail address and Google Docs link publicly.


    No reason to remove the thread, no reason to stop the discussion. This community IS strong enough to show disgust and refusal to tolerate this.

    When I bought my Kemper it came with pretty much every TAF profile made, along with tons of SoundSide, Pete's...


    I can only assume these were all bought and paid for legally as the seller claimed.

    Quote

    When I bought my Kemper it came with pretty much every TAF profile made, along with tons of SoundSide, Pete's...


    I can only assume these were all bought and paid for legally as the seller claimed.


    With TAF profiles they are all in your account when you purchase so if you knew the other users account details, which hopefully he might have passed on to you when you brought your KPA. When you login they would all be there :)



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