Appalling fraud and theft

    Quote from PhilUK84

    I thought they would be encrypted to my account? Is this not the case?


    Of course not. There is no way for the KPA to do any of that at this current stage, and hopefully there never will be. Genie back in the bottle scenario, don't you think? It is a slippery slope - the KPA was clearly started with the idea of community in mind. For the first several months the KPA was out, I spent quite a lot of time making profiles and didn't even consider the option of making money from them - I just uploaded them to the exchange. After a while, a few started charging. Over time more and more did. Since the idea of charging came after the community was already up and running, and it was well known that there was no DRM in the KPA, it seems to me that anyone who charges for profiles, while charging is their prerogative, must have considered the fact that at least a certain amount of product was going to be lost to sharing. I personally don't have a problem with some rig sharing. Just as I don't have a problem with people who buy my music playing it for a room full of friends who haven't paid a cent for it - the word does get around, and experiencing something is the best way to sell it that there is. I can go and demo any guitar amp I want before buying it. Not so with profiles. These days there are pretty pricey profiles...before dropping several hundreds of dollars on them, I want to be able to use them for a bit before plunking down that cash. And since there is no way to demo them, it's pretty easy to see where the idea of sharing them comes in to play.

    If the Kemper had DRM I would have never bought it. Frankly this whole charging for profiles is bullshit and I wish it would stop. A profile is a set of parameters, nothing else. I didn't buy the Kemper with the idea of spending even more money on profiles.

    Quote

    If the Kemper had DRM I would have never bought it. Frankly this whole charging for profiles is bullshit and I wish it would stop. A profile is a set of parameters, nothing else. I didn't buy the Kemper with the idea of spending even more money on profiles.


    +1



    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

    I understand the issue. I've read through the thread and I do think it's a bit ridiculous, but on the other hand, expert mic placement and expensive, elusive amps that are professionally profiled can be difficult to find on the Exchange.


    Maybe I wouldn't have bought them if I knew then what I know now, but I just wanted to play and experience the profiler to it's best capabilities, not rifle through a billion (largely) mediocre profiles or go through a billion threads looking for recommendations.


    I only wanted the Bassman pack, 15 minutes later I had 20 profiles in my basket! :wacko:

    Quote from mikeb

    If the Kemper had DRM I would have never bought it. Frankly this whole charging for profiles is bullshit and I wish it would stop. A profile is a set of parameters, nothing else. I didn't buy the Kemper with the idea of spending even more money on profiles.


    I have really a very hard time understanding this.
    No-one obliges you to spend a single dime on profiles.
    As regards the "set of parameters"... well, any computer program (including the ones you've bought, if any) is a sequence of 0s and 1s, nothing else.


    BTW, each and every single literature masterpiece in human history is nothing but a sequence of short combinations of alphabetical letters.
    But, guess what?, someone on this planet is capable of combining them in a way that can make you cry or smile or laugh, or become sad, or happy, or ashamed. This is not certainly true for everyone.
    Now that it comes to my mind, Michelangelo's Pietà is nothing but a smashed stone, after all... Something anyone could create in a week-end.

    This is a riveting debate but what was the initial vision of the Kemper for it's buyer?


    Direct from the site......
    Download rigs from fellow users


    Enjoy being a part of the official user rig exchange for your Kemper Profiler. Compare tons of amps and download profiles from fellow users. Upload your own creations to the Kemper cloud, edit and amend tags and share them with other registered users.
    Imagine, virtually every amp available would be accessible to you through a fast, searchable and convenient rig exchange. Imagine to gain access to different models of the same amp for comparison...
    Help us to maintain a thriving exchange and start sharing now.


    The initial purpose is clearly to share amp profiles as a "community" of Kemper users.


    Can't we all just get along?

    "More Guitar in the Monitors" :thumbup:


    No we can't, because charging a small fee for professionally created bundles of profiles is not an ethical issue we should even be talking about.

    90% of the game is half-mental.

    Quote from DukeOURL

    Unfortunately, i didn't get all the money they made off of their resale. It was software.. in an industry that didn't have anything like my company had developed; very cutting edge stuff that a giant company wanted. I signed an agreement/license for redistribution with them and they paid me a deposit up front but when they sold the software to the huge account (international multi-location licenses), they didn't pay me according to the contract; it was taken care of.


    I used to have to keep my programmers off of Napster.. they'd store tons of illegal music on company servers and then serve it back out to the world. I had to let a couple go to stop it. It's just wrong.. I give away music that I write.. I sell some to provide for more distribution and I donate all of my profits to charity.. but all of this is my choice as an artist. So in the end, I believe it's up to the artist, creator, what have you, to make the decision as to how they want to address their creations. And so it goes for all of you who create really cool profiles.. and I'm happy to use freebies, there's so many that are just great; but I'd gladly pay for ones that I found that are commercial.


    :thumbup:

    90% of the game is half-mental.

    "A profile is just a set of parameters. nothing more"


    LMFAO. "The internet is a series of tubes!" You do realize that the KPA uses over 60 parameters that all interact with each other and use a range of I think 0 - 16,000 values. The chance of two people stumbling onto identical parameters is probably far less likely than winning the lottery...twice in a row.


    Want to test it out?? Download a hex editor, open a .kipr file and just start mucking around in the largest blocks of information towards the end. You're looking for a starting tag of F0, then the next 2 bytes are the block length, and an ending tag of F7. Don't come crying to me when you brick your KPA, though. Definitely don't ask me how to make X profile sound more like Y. Kemper has done something amazing, and I won't even claim that I could begin to understand how it works, let alone control it. I definitely don't recommend you manually edit profiles, but I also recommend that most commercial profiles (from my experience) are worth buying.


    And considering most profile packs are like $5-20, and you spent like $1400-2000 on the KPA, I don't see what the big deal is. You don't want to pay for profiles, you don't have to. Enjoy the thousands of free rigs on the Rig Exchange.

    This thread is hillarious... Some of you need to spend more time playing guitar...


    Look it's really that simple, if you don't wanna pay for profiles, don't. I mean after all, it's about a 50/50 split on this forum on the opinion of commercial rigs and whether or not they are better than the free rigs. With this logic, then it'a really up to you and what you wanna do with your money, just like with anything else in life. And also on that note, don't expect people to spend hours and hours profiling an amp through 50,000 dollars worth of studio equipment for FREE. That defies all logic, I don't care if the Kemper was founded on " sharing" or not, it's jus going to go against basic economics. The commercial guys are providing a service. Whether or not you think that service is worth it: again, up to you. I DO however think there are quite a few " commercial " guys that have no Business charging for profiles in the least, but hey, that's just my opinion. :)


    I also believe something should be developed to try profiles before paying as well, this I think would be a great idea.
    It's also probably not right that someone Is selling all commercial profiles cheaper on eBay illegally, however notice none of the " big" commercial guys stepped in to voice their opinion on it, that should tell you something.

    The point is, that professional profilers don't seem to have prevented people from exchanging free profiles. I don't see how they contraddict the "original spirit", which AFAIK is living very well :)

    Quote from viabcroce

    The point is, that professional profilers don't seem to have prevented people from exchanging free profiles. I don't see how they contraddict the "original spirit", which AFAIK is living very well :)


    The point is based on the hypocrisy of the subject title. How can someone complain about copying and distributing a product when their profit is leveraged off the creativity of someone else?

    That's an absolutely ridiculous statement. Amp manufacturers aren't selling a schematic or a description of a sound. They are selling you a physical circuit in a chassis with knobs, switches, tubes, transformers, etc. A quality amp uses quality components and is generally difficult to replicate at a much lower price.


    Every record that features a guitar "profits off the creativity" of an amp manufacturer. They must be hypocrites when they complain of piracy.


    Profile creators don't just buy and virtualize an amplifier. They're seeking to capture a very narrow aspect of that amplifier. The tube quality, amp settings, room, mic, mic position, cab, mic pre-amp, volume, post-EQ, and other variables are part of what is being captured.


    Regardless, if an amp manufacturer claims to offer a classic "British" tone, does that mean he's profiting off the creativity of Jim Marshall?

    This thread throws up an interesting aspect of commercial profiles: what are they worth?


    I mean, I find it conceivable for someone to get inside a major studio like Andy Sneap's and download a sh*tload of amazing sounding stuff. Now if he was to put it up for sale, what would they be worth?


    It's only a few kb per file. But sound and tone is so important to a good record. If you could have John Petrucci's album tone, or Joe Satriani's, or Eric Johnson's amp tone, how much would you be willing to pay?


    I honestly believe that's the future of the Kemper. Actual sounds used on actual albums. The price point? I guess it depends. There was a time (and it still is) when artists jealously guarded the settings on their amplifiers and FX so that no one could imitate them. But nowadays, with internet sharing, things are so different. Not much money made. Perhaps it could be a revenue stream for an artist, sort of like clinics.


    There's so much more to an album than tone: some of my old records sound better than stuff captured in state-of-the-art studios of today. The magic was in the overall product, not one cutting edge tone. Do I want that tone?


    Hell yeah. But does it mean I'll sound exactly like that record? As they say on TGP (over and over), tone is in the fingers. So many variables, I don't see myself spending $1000s on a profile pack ever, but I don't find it inconceivable that someone might.

    I don't think we should stop at not charging for profiles. We should offer our music for free too if you use the Kemper.


    After all, it's not like you're really working. You're having fun, so should share that with the KPA community!


    I've even questioned why CK charges for the unit instead of just handing them out, that crazy guy.


    He's made his money, it's time to give-it-away-give-it-away-give-it-away-give-it-away now!