1.Curious Labs lost a lot of sales from Pro Pack due to warez versions being available. 2.It took almost 3 years for Poser 5 to arrive. It bootleg copies weren't so prevalent it probably would have arrived with all its cool features last year. 3. While its difficult to estimate how many warez/bootleg versions of Poser 4 and ProPack are out there lets take a hypothetical guess and say its 10%. That means that if you paid $329.00 for P5 then $32.90 is what warez cost you. 4. While P5 has some phenomenal new features, ask yourself how many others didn't make it into the final product because of lack of time and finances because so much of their product was given away for free in the past. No doubt there were a lot of hot features for P5 that never got past the drawing board because of these constraints. 5. When you register your P5 and ensuring that the creators of it get their due look at it as a down payment that you're making on Poser "6" and that when Poser 6 does arrive you will be paying a lot less for it than if CL didn't have these new security/registration procedures. I can guarantee you that when it does arrive Poser 6 will have a lot more features and will arrive much sooner than it would have if CL did not have the security measures they have in place for P5.

The key here is that any guess is hypothetical. Personally, I am more than willing to pay an extra $32.90 to avoid copy protection. In fact, if CL had just dropped the copy protection and charged $50 more this whole discussion would not exist. Nor am I interested in putting a downpayment on some future piece of software. The current version is what I am concerned about as tomorrow is itself hypothetical. The way things are going when Poser 6 arrives I really won't care. The danger is that too many others may feel the same as I. - Jack

1 - just like any other software around (with or without copy protection). 2 - doubt so. you are contradicting yourself with statement nr. 3, where you assumed it's 10% loss (where did you get that figure anyhow?). 3 - $329 is not how much this software costs, it's a figure that public survey people come out with, assuming that this is the market value where it'll had most sells. 4 - no doubt. but i ask myself why old bugs and design flaws did make it in poser 5 again. 5 - creators won't get any money from my registration, but from my credit card company. they will get my money even if my registration fails. let alone the fact that i don't like to register anywhere. any software that can be cracked will be. period. but, as well as i take precautions to keep my property safe without trying to involve third parties, i expect from software companies to do the same, without punishing buying customers,

period :)

Just some food for thought... How many warez kiddies would have bought Poser if no warez version were available? The likely answer is very few. Hyping up the so-called revenue loss due to piracy is a crutch. Elaborate, and ultimately, defeatable security measures are simply a way of assuming guilt, making legitimate users prove their legitimacy. I can understand gun-shy software producers wanting to protect their assets, but consider this: A convenience store near me is the victim of frequent shoplifting. Now, store employees will follow just about anyone who comes in, legitimate or not. I used to go there quite a bit, as it was on my way to and from work. Finally, I got tired of being shadowed, and decided a Circle K down the street would be the recipients of my business. My bottom line here is, I will not be getting Poser 5 until this nonsense is done away with. I will be looking very eagerly towards DAZ's project, and hope they'll learn from CL's folly. Jon

Consider this: Treat your loyal customers as criminals and they may be.

I don't buy the whole problem. Many of the profesisonal level systems have strong protection in place, and for good reason. Because it IS a useful tool in preventing software piracy. No, it isn;t perfect...b ut it IS valid and it does prevent some revenue loss. WindowsXP, 3DS Max and mny other high end systems do this - that's just part of life. Poser5 is a fairly good entrance into that market .. and that audience will not be at all concerned about this. Is that CL's only / primary concern? Don;t ask me, I don't work there. I just knwo that most fo the peopel I discuss Poser with in my professional capacity are interested in it for a lot of reasons... and none of them care about the protection method.

I haven't yet purchased P5 & have no immediate plans to do so. When pro pack was introduced security messures were discussed & abandoned, then CL cried foul becuase pro pack was heavily pirated. Yet they themselves distributed a crack in the form of an error with an update (I could be wrong on this one, I don't have 1st hand knowledge of this, but I remember seeing it mentioned here before) I personally did not buy PPP because I don't need it, the only feature that remotely interested me was the setup room. Using the demo I played around a bit with it & all I could do with it was as a shortcut to editing exisiting .cr2s to point to new meshes. the creation of new bones is beyond my meager abilities. I wasn't going to spend over $100 for that. How many people really have a need for pro pack? It was not designed for hobbyist like myself. As for what interests me about P5? 1. The new figures don't appeal to me much, I have too much of an investment in Mike & Vicky (As far as I can tell they are better figures to start with) 2. The face room only works with the P5 figures so forget that. 3. Texture creation with P5 - might be fun for a time, but I doubt it's long term usefulness. 4. Hair system - same a texture creation, the sacrafice of render time to quaility images is to high. waiting to see what people come up with by combining old hair props & textures with subtle hair growth. 5. Firefly rendering - haven't really decided yet 6. dynamic cloth - interesting & waiting to see more about it 7. multiple runtime folders - right now the biggest draw for me. Has anyone tried to use libraries on CD-R? I would love to burn theme libraries & save space on the ole HD. As it stands now I would pay up to $50 for P4 plug-in for this. (can you guess what I put on the P5 wish list?) My money will stay mine until I can see P5 being an asset to me instead of a hassle. I will wait until someone uses it successfully on a lower end machine like mine. I will wait for a demo. The Demo is what convince me to buy (and at the time I had to search for a copy for sale. It was when metacreations went down & curious labs wasn't ready yet)

Hey farang... I was going to post after I saw you post this but I thought to myself, nahh, why bother. I was just going to tell you that you're wasting your breath - no matter how much you're right or wrong. The people here in this forum have already made up their minds concerning this copy protection and NOTHING you say will change their minds. I'd venture to say that if you brought up 100% verifiable facts they would still say that these "so-called" facts were skewed and that they were right no matter what. Essentially it doesn't matter. Considering what I've seen here in this forum - images and comments posted by enthusiastic users - Poser 5 is a success and after the mojority of bugs are fixed, CL will begin work on Poser 6 in earnest. In a previous post, Steve Cooper said that he and many of the staff went without pay for a time - they sacrificed quite a bit to get this software to us. YES, because they wanted to make money (hey, don't we all?) but also because they believed in the software. Poser 5 is an incredible package. And YES, it has bugs - and Steve Cooper explained the reasons about those as well. All software has bugs. And to those who are saying "but you shouldn't expect bugs" - get real. Of course I expect bugs. With the sophistication of software today, I can't believe that there is any software program (of substance) that doesn't have them. Hey willf - ever go into a department store with cameras? Do you think the cameras are for YOU? Of course not, you're honest. But to some people that feels like the store is treating them like criminals. They don't trust ME? Well screw them! Anyway farang - sorry I decided to post anyway. I agree essentially with what you've said. My advice? Don't post anything more about copy protection - you'll only receive negative comments! :) Good Luck & enjoy Poser 5.

I understand protecting your product and profits, but when that protection becomes an irritation to the consumer, you have to wonder if you have lost another 10% of sales. If your solution doubles your loses reasons 1-5 are also doubled. That 10% to warez will remain the same. Anyone who works in relail will tell you that a shoplifter of the caliber equal to the caliber of the warez kids is going to steal from you no matter what protections you put up. If you recoup 1% you call it a great success. Is that +1% going to make up for the -19% you now have?

and god bless.

...I was just going to tell you that you're wasting your breath - no matter how much you're right or wrong. Actually, I don't think of this as a matter of right or wrong but an expression of dissenting views. I have said elsewhere in this forum that Curious Labs has every right to their decision no matter how much I may personally dislike it. In another thread Mr. Cooper has stated his technique of bargaining. He makes an offer and expects a counter offer. If all goes well both parties eventually reach a compromise upon which they can agree. Well, in this case CL has made their initial offer which includes their EULA and copy protection. In turn, I am making my counter offer (as are others) defining what it will take to make me buy. Now it is CL's turn again. Surely if you can grant CL such privileges you cannot deny us the same. - Jack

Barbarellany; "Anyone who works in relail will tell you that a shoplifter of the caliber equal to the caliber of the warez kids is going to steal from you no matter what protections you put up." I own a retail shop and that argument is not the point sure there are skilled shoplifters out there but most security is aimed at the kids who are not so skilled which makes up the lions share of shoplifting and I am going to do anything I can to protect my livelyhood even if it may be a slight inconveniance to a vocal minority of my customers they don't like the tags or the occasional time the checkpoint system goes off for no aparent reason and I have to search their bags. they say they feel like a criminal and I have to appologize saying unfortunately theres no way to tell the criminals from the honest people it's sad but it's true. i have many friends who think there is nothing wrong with copying someone elses programs onto their computer thats the kind of thief this is aimed at and it will likely do a good job of detering those people

The problem with the shoplifting metaphor is that shoplifters take tangible items that can not be resold by the store.

The digital world is filled with intangible material. No matter how many copies someone makes of my web videos I still have the original and could sell it (or the rights to use it). I haven't "lost" anything unless someone who would have bought it doesn't because he (or she) got a copy elsewhere.

Opportunity cost ("we could have sold this much") is an estimate. You can't predict which people would have bought the item if they weren't able to get it for free. You also can't predict the number of people who got it for free (illegally) and then bought a legal copy for either the manual, the support, or because they'd test driven it and decided that it was worth the cost.

I can't believe all the warez copies are possessed by people who "would" have bought them legally. It would be impossible to determine the actual number because there are those who might not buy it today but down the road might change their mind. I've also seen companies have numerous copies of "unlicensed" software on their computers because they didn't keep good records when they moved them around as people switched departments or upgraded or what ever. No malice or intentional theft - just stupidity and poor record keeping.

I'm not saying it's right to warez. I'm not saying the protection scheme is bad or good (I've seen more restrictive measures and I've seen less restrictive measures).

I am saying that when the Mac version comes out, as long as Poser 5 meets my needs, I'll buy it. I'm not going to take a protection scheme as a personal attack. I'm not too worried about bugs - I've rarely seen a program without them. These things come and then are eventually fixed or superceded.

Security is a fact of life, bugs are a fact of software, the world is imperfect, stuff happens, and Remember the Alamo!

I can't belive I got involved in this one. I've been doing so good staying out of these threads....

I don't have a problem with Protection of your software through some system. Heck, I when I get poser 5, If this form of protection is still in it, I will just ignore it the way I do the cameras in walmart. I have problems with the number of times you can install the software, 3 and have to get another code on the fourth, if CL thinks that you deserve one. I am constantly uninstalling and installing software to make the best use of my diskspace. Depending on what I am doing. If I doing a lot of poser, then I dump the games that I have installed and when playing games, poser gets dumped.

wdupre, I understand what you are saying and can't even say I disagree. Indeed I have expressed my sympathies towards CL's dilemma elsewhere. But I have reached that cantankerous age were I am no longer willing to be unduly inconvenienced. As long as I have alternatives I will take them and abandoning Poser is one of them. There are other ways to express creativity. Even the retail checkpoint system is dubious in effectiveness. I frequently purchase DVDs and CDs. For some reason their security tags are often not properly disabled after payment. As a result, I often trigger other retailers alarm systems. When this happens the staff is usually busy as I tend to shop on weekends. I am told I must wait until my bags are checked. In return I tell them "No. I am offering you the courtesy of letting you examine my bags. Do so immediately for I will not await your convenience. If you do not, I am leaving now and you may call the police." I have yet to be challenged and usually my bags are not examined. I am not even sure that your store's checkpoint system is a fair analogy. While you may indeed inconvenience your customer you only do so once during the purchase. CL's copy protection has the potential to do so again and again and again... I believe the people at CL to be friendly, courteous and as honest as one can be in business. But their business problems are theirs, not mine. One of those problems is to convince potential customers that copy protection is warranted. I remain unconvinced. No accusation, no slander, no innunedo. Just simple disagreement and retaining control of how I spend my money. That's not a problem... at least for me. - Jack (hmmm... just realized some of the above is not addressed to you but other comments in this thread.)

Comparing shoplifters to software pirates is inacurate due to the fact that shoplifters take tangible item that can be inventoried & calculated. Revenue loss due to warez on the otherhand is impossible to calulate. Say a person steals something that they would never buy, the store really is out money as they had to pay for their stock. On the software side of this person 1 "shares" with person 2, if person 2 would not have bought poser on their own for no reason, is the software company really out? Now I'm not saying that software merchants aren't losing money due to warez. But barbarellany has a point, how much are they losing to dissatified customers? At hat point do customers say "enough!" CL security measures by themselves don't bother me, but I worry about more companies following suit. If these extreme measures become acceptable, how much more of a hassle will it be when a HD crashes, when you must register ALL your software. It's enough of a pain just to install everything, add to that challenge/responses & dongles. CL promises to fix things if they go bankrupt, but what about the companies that follow? The big problem is that there is no easy solution to this that can satisfy both parties.

I've read a lot of threads the last days and here's my 2 cents : - copy protection : Does CL treat its customers as thieves ? I don' think so, but we have to consider the facts that some customers are. How do you think Daz models are available for warez Because "legal" customers distributed them. I experienced it myself, and I was surprised at how few people are aware of small business involved in Poser. From merchants sites to bigger sized societies like Curious Labs or Daz, they're not that big. Even if I consider warez copies aren't lost sales, they affect the future of any business. It such a protection good ? No, it will be cracked, but copies done to friends-family-"put anything you want here :)" will slow down and allow CL to have 2 or 3 months while they'll be able to earn some cash and be rewarded for their work. - bugs : any software has bugs. But I hate what is hapening in the industry, especially video games. The same game on PC and GameCube will be different. One will work perfectly or the other one will need 6 patches until he's able to run smoothly. Because GameCube doesn't allow you to install a patch, the work is finished. Law should force software companies to deliver working software ( even if a patch or two can be considered in the future, but it's not correct to sell something that is not finished ). Happy Boeing or Airbus do not think the same :) But I think nobody has really seen how hard Poser5 release has been. PPP helped them get some money, but I'm pretty sure P5 could'nt have been released some months later. - Mike-Vicky and P5 : so bad they aren't supported. Daz helped Poser establish itself as a good piece of software with their Millenium figures. That's really a bad point for P5, since a lot of people invested time and money on these models. - FireFly renderer : I'm sure some "bugs" are due to people mistakes ( not all of them of course ). Materials now work as Multi/Sub Materials and really need more attention to how you organize them ( see them as document folders and layers in photoshop ). And a composite raytracing engine ( mixing raytracing and scanline ) needs more tweaking too. For those interested, I think Face Room is based on "3D Me Now" technology ( quite sure since it's was part of my wishlists with screens and pictures :) but don't take that at a face value. So now, I'm just sitting and waiting for my copy :D N-B : French users should look at www.3dvf.com website. Tekila is looking for a Poser expert with some 3DSMax knowledge. May interest some of you :)

Ooops, wrong account :) It's not PoserStyle point of view, but mine. joelegecko

Virtual (or hardware) dongles are no protection, unfortunately. Hackers will make cracks for either one if they can, although I don't know why they want to do it. Honest people will buy Poser 5, but the ratio of wares copies to legal copies will always be huge for any popular software, so I think Curious has to accept that. One way to avoid illegal distribution is the "dumb terminal" idea like Larry Ellison wants to do: have all the software on servers and then control access to it on an IP-by-IP basis. But that's not realistic economics right now. The only estimate I have ever seen of the wares/legal ratio was from a developer named Simon Fraser (sp?), who said the registration rate for his downloaded shareware was only 0.5%. This means about 200 illegal copies for every paid copy. So I can see why Curious wants to control it, but virtual (or hardware) dongles are not going to succeed. They may cut the wares ratio down, but wares dudes will still steal it every chance they get. The only bright spot is that dudes who download it are usually too stupid to use it, so they only download it to add to their collection.

I Curious Labs keeps pissing off its paying customers, there won't be a Poser 6 because they'll have driven themselves out of business before they ever have a chance to get it out. I for one will not be buying the program EVER unless Curious Labs does away with the activation and forced registration (even Microsoft isn't as offensive with this, and I can't believe I'm actually saying that. At least you don't have to give any personal information), makes the EULA less restrictive (and gets rid of the clause that says they can terminate the license at any time), AND issues a public apology for trying to shove such an obtrusive protection scheme and restrictive EULA down our throats.

You know everytime this debate comes up. All I can seem to remember is the Amnesty CL did for all the Warez's so they could go legit last year. Regardless of whatever rationale CL had for doing it, it left a bad taste in my mouth and ever time I see some comment that CL needed this protection to keep sales up and prevent warez I want to barf. Okay maybe not barf but you get the point. Basically I'm disgusted with their bullshit. Yeah I got P5 and had I known that this protection was in there before I preordered I probably wouldn't have ordered it just because they treat me like a criminal while giving the bastards who really cost them money a free pass. I got 4 words for CL if they try pulling this crap with P6: Daz's Upcoming Render Tool. Remember who keeps you in a job and where your loyalties lay or you might find yourself unemployed faster than you than you can say "Curious owns the CR2 format!" .

"The only estimate I have ever seen of the wares/legal ratio was from a developer named Simon Fraser (sp?), who said the registration rate for his downloaded shareware was only 0.5%. This means about 200 illegal copies for every paid copy." How can he estimate the # of people who downloaded, didn't like it & deleted? Rather big ego of him to assume that everyone who DLed kept his program. How many of the DLs were corrupted & needed to be repeated? (considering how often it happens to me)

...registration rate for his downloaded shareware was only 0.5% Well it used to be that in direct mail marketing a 2% repsonse rate was pretty good and 1% was okay. 1/2% doesn't seem completely out of line. - Jack

Would all of you stop crying?You buy a program and it has copy protection on it.Big Deal.What's the point?You bought it didn't you?

...What's the point?You bought it didn't you? Ahhh... no, a lot of us refused. That's the point- one which may be of some concern to CL. - Jack

I dont think I have ever bought a substantial software programme that I havnt checked out first using ''available testing environments'' It was only by using such a copy of P3 to check it out that I bought p4 and then pro-pack.(despite pirate copies of both being available). In no other market except this electronic one is a product sold with the proviso 'its got a few problems but buy it and we'll fix it later and even if the bugs mean you cant do what you want to do and your business suffers we will not return your money' . I would venture that wares contributes more than it detracts. It generates a mass publicity machine for software that other manufacturers would pay big bucks for and reaches people who would not neccesarly have tried it or even known about it. If I had made a programme I would place it on the servers just for the advertising value. Anyone who is going to use it proffesionally is probably buying. I dont have to get in to the obvious arguement that software producers work hard and should be paid etc , that goes without saying , my point is that I believe wares is not as big an enemy as is believed. Most copies are collected for kudos or for trading power (probably for porn, now there is exploitation we could talk about!) THese may not be popular opinions here , but they are mine.

and it is only in software industry that the manufacturer isn't responsible for anything that may happen to your hardware or software when running their product. like "i built your house, but don't hold me responsible if it crashes!".