ssgbryan posted at 3:55PM Fri, 29 January 2016 - #4252003

Razor42 - the pirates won't crack the product DRM - they will bypass the encryption in Daz Studio.

I love you guys, but vendors are delusional in thinking that piracy = lost sales. The people who download pirated content never had any intention of paying for the products, at ANY price.

However, not doing anything isn't the answer. Really there has to be a compromise between ease of use and the protection of assets. A lot of good vendors have left the industry because nothing was done to protect their work, and that is more of a loss than anything else.

It is obvious that DAZ's long-term goal is customer lock-in with a subscription model and/or renting 3d assets.

How would that work when most of the products in are vendor owned? DAZ, rendo, and RDNA are brokerages who deal with multiple vendors with multiple products with multiple prices. Products have one or more owners with different partner splits. It would be a nightmare to set up and maintain and is basically unworkable unless they plan to buy out every single product in the store. A brokerage is not like a music service where they deal with a few owners of the content for their libraries, so it's highly doubtful they could pull off any type of subscription service. They get their money from their content sales, that's why the application is free and unlocked so that anyone can create DS content for support of their base figures for their own use, provide freebies, or broker anywhere including DAZ. Having lots of content available is why a lock out of anyone wouldn't make sense.

The people that made DAZ great (and Steve Kondris) no longer work at DAZ.

There are some people that would strongly disagree. DAZ is in a MUCH better financial state than with the old management. Many vendors will tell you their incomes increased under the new management.

The new owners are looking for steady income streams - which CAN NOT be done with DAZ's current sales "structure". This is simple business economics.

Can you prove that? DAZ has shown that they can add new features including iray, get more customers, and offer their program for free because of their current sale structure. And they've done that for years. They can prove that with their sales and adoption of their content.

Coding-wise, it is a very short step from using DRM content to requiring DRM content. Anyone want to take bets on the next version of genesis (24 months out) being "DAZ-Connect"-only?

Connect isn't solely encryption so if it's easier for new users to install and use the content, I don't see that as a bad thing. Besides all the genesis content is being offered as DAZ connect now.