Some thoughts about DAZ moves

First some facts.

Fact #1: On DAZ forums, DAZ officials have been buried under requests of official statements about the future evolution of the DRM scheme. In response, they officially refused to make commitments about the future.

Fact #2: In stark contrast to #1 reticence, DAZ officials are unanimously repeating that scripting and export capabilities won't be removed in future versions.

Fact #3: It appears that there are problems with some Studio tools for DRM-ed content and DAZ officials are pointing the finger at these tools not going thru established Studio APIs but trying to access directly the DUFs. The fix indicated is to update those tools to be "well behaved", read always go thru Studio APIs.

Let's see what we can get out of those facts.

When do you refuse to make written (i.e. legally binding) statements about something? when you already know that things will change and, needless to remark, not to customers advantage. Conclusion #1: Something more aggravating than the current DRM scheme is already scheduled to be implemented.

With scripting and export still available, the current encryption scheme is as watertight as the Toll Booth in the middle of nowhere in Blazing Saddles. Conclusion #2: Either everybody in DAZ is suffering from lead induced dementia or there is something else, not yet in place, that will build a long, strong and high wall on the sides of that Toll Booth.

DAZ officials are adamant that everything has to go thru Studio engine code. This means that Studio engine code has to be in control of everything.

Let's put all together: something worse is planned, this something has to prevent the trivial export/reimport of content and will be buried within Studio engine.

What can this "thing" be? I initially thought that DAZ would move to a browser-based cloud architecture but this theory is eliminated by DAZ insistence of using Studio APIs (if you go browser, Studio will become obsolete and whether people use APIs or not is irrelevant) so we derive that Studio will remain around, central in DAZ architecture.

The only thing that matches all the observed information is an evolution of DAZ_Connect that monitors your activity and, whenever you load a scene, you load content, you export content, you run scripts, it phones home to check whether you are allowed to do what you are trying to do. Checking might happen irregularly but still sometimes it will have to take place.

Let's examine the consequences of using DAZ Studio, Big Brother Edition:

Consequence #1: your computer has to be online. No ifs, not buts, regardless whether Studio checks every time or randomly, when it tries to go out it has to be able to do so. You are disconnected? phone line troubles? bad WiFi connectivity? sorry, game over. Oh, I was forgetting: when now DAZ cloud services tell you that the forum is offline, you do something else, in our case, you can close Studio and wait for DAZ to come back online. Enjoy your non-use of the content you bought.

Consequence #2: you are leaking telemetries on the content of your scenes, of your activity schedule and location, to everybody, from DAZ to hackers to law enforcement. Telemetries are never a good thing (it is not a coincidence that the first thing Windows 10 users do is to go thru all of them and turning them off). In this case, you cannot turn them off. Since we all perfectly know that is the most common usage of Poser/Studio, I hope that you are confortable with this kind of monitoring on your "art making". Should you belong to the limited category of users who can boast about their work in public, forget about doing confidential work for some party (e.g. legal presentations) with this continous leakage of information.

Consequence #3: related to #2. DAZ become a merry repository of information about questionable practices. The words "Ashley Madison" evoke anything ?

Consequence #4: monitor DAZ_Connect communications for the moment you are buying thru it content. Credit card infos are always yummy and, in this case, you have to trust DAZ programmers of having put into operation a secure communication path.

Now DAZ representatives and vendors will step in and try to dismiss what I have written. Weight their words remembering that their paycheck depends on DAZ management.