DAZ Content and DRM
araneldon
Posts: 712
So apparently this is now a thing: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/64736/daz-studio-pro-beta-version-4-9-0-21/p2
This sort of thing isn't entirely new; previously we've had some encrypted content, though it was mostly limited to scripts and shaders IIRC.
Anyway, I just wanted to make this statement in case anyone at DAZ cares: I will never buy any content with DRM.
A request to mods: you might move this to the commons as it isn't really about DAZ Studio. Thanks in advance.
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DAZ, or someone, can you please explain about what exactly DAZ Connect is?
Read through the questions and answers here: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/64736/daz-studio-pro-beta-version-4-9-0-21/p1
If all of it is true, it could be a really good thing.
Yes, I skimmed it. I know how this stuff works, so please don't try to sell DRM to me as some kind of technical necessity, because that is nonsense. (This is aimed at DAZ, not Ati2.)
Not technical necessity at all.
My personal opinion: if it can stop at least half of the piracy that is going on, then it will mean more money for PAs. In turn, it means either more products for us, or cheaper products for us, or better quality products for us. Or they just keep the extra money, but even then: happier PAs mean better products.
I agree that it would be best not to have any form of encryption. However, I always feel sad when I see brand new products stolen. If this is a way to stop this, or at least make it less frequent, then I'm all for it. Again, this is just my personal opinion.
I very much doubt that piracy can be considerably reduced with DRM, because effective DRM is simply not possible.
Daz Connect is primarily an easier way to manage your content from within Daz Studio. A very large portion of our customer service tickets are asking about how to install and use content so this is a way to make it easier for everyone. A large amount of effort in the 4.9 release is also focused on improving the experience in smart content and new releases of both Iray and 3Delight were also integrated.
I think all the answers about DRM and encryption in 4.9 were answered in the announcement, but if you have more questions please let me know.
Handholding is fine as long as it doesn't constrain those of us who don't need it.
Having read the link I don't see what the benefit to the customer is. I have not found the need to continuously update my files in the past. I hope this isn't another Bluray. The DRM on that impacted the end user and had marginal improvements so I have never bothered with the medium. Still I hope I'm wrong. I have 4 computers at 2 locations which I regularly update by copying across. I have no interest in having to install on each instead. I think I will be avoiding this. If Daz is going to create this unnecessary hassle they better have some great benefits too.
Well I like the idea of incremental product updates for a start, being on limited data.
Ok, so if im reading this correctly, the content that we purchase (licence) that has this encryption enabled will no longer be available to download as a standalone file but will instead be stored in the cloud, whatever that is. We will then have to access DAZ connect in order to access and use the product in our libraries? Im confused about several points with this connect service. It sounds like none of our content will no longer be stored on our computers.
Anything you have already purchased will still be available in the existing format in your product library / DIM. You can also still install content through manual installs and DIM while still being usable in 4.9 without ever going online in 4.9.
No joke. This really needs to be completely optional. How long have we as consumers been having this argument about DRM and its effectiveness? 10 years or so? If piracy is still an issue, and we know it is, has DRM been effective at all in preventing it?
One of the big features of Daz Connect is able to do that wasn't possible with the existing distribution system is the ability to very easily update just the metadata about the product. We have seen a few products that had something miscatagorized or the like and the only way to ship out that fix previously was to update the entire file.
No, the content you access through Connect will no longer have a zip. The files will still be downloaded to and stored on your PC when you install them to DS, but you won't have an archive copy when they are unisntalled. Once installed you will be able to use them off-line (and if I understand it correctly you will be able to back-up your installation, though you would need to connect to the store once to use a restored back-up).
Copying those files across systems should work with a little extra work to let the database know something has changed behind it's back. We may add additional features during the beta to better support workflows like this.
Post 4.9 content will be available through Connect only?
So essentially this is DAZ's version of STEAM?
That isn't too far off of our goal. Steam, love it or hate it (most of us in the office love it) did massive leaps forward for managing your games and not needing to worry about license codes, install media, and completely changed PC gaming on the installation and organization / management side of things. We want installing and managing your 3D content to be that easy and painless so less time is spent by people struggling to get content working but instead focusing on using that content to make art. That is essentially the road, from an ease of use standpoint, we want to go down.
So am I correct then in assuming that any user who choses not to use connect, will simply have to accept the fact that they will not have access any new, post 4.9 content sold by DAZ?
Yes and no. At a minimum, people have to connect once in order to authenticate your account with Studio. Beyond that you can be completely offline by a feature set that will be in a future public beta (but before release). What it will allow you to do is download a package and offline authorization file that Studio uses to install the product. You'll still be using features of Daz Connect, just in a 100% offline mode beyond the initial authorization.
Ultimately you have to get online to download the content (can't download, even today, without it). Its just a matter of if the machine has an internet connection or if you want the convenient way or jumping through hoops way to get the content installed. Something has to connect to the store at some point though, be it your browser, DIM, or Studio.
I find this evolution extremely unpleasant but no comment will make you change your mind. What will make change your mind will be the sight of customers restricting themselves to buying the mininal amount of content (e.g. for Genesis 4, head and body morphs and that's all) with everything else bought elsewhere (e.g. Renderosity of RDNA). When this will happen (and rest assured that it will happen) you will backpedal like you did with G2 male/female vs. G1 one-size-fits-all.
I don't think I'll mind the DRM aspect per se, but I am a little alarmed after reading some of the announcement posts on how this will work. I have my own organization of content, divided into projects and art-type. It's sounding like *user-facing* files cannot be re-arranged, and/or I won't be able to (easily? at all?) place my content in custom runtimes.
No paint artist in the world keeps all of his or her paints, spatulas, brushes, and canvases under foot. Each of us has our own way of organizing our work area. So I'd be very discouraged if there's no way to:
A) Install content to arbirary runtime folders
B) Move any and all user-facing files to suit our organizational preferences. These preferences include things like mixing content in ways Daz or the PA would never consider. Such is the nature of art and artists.
Please remember that not everyone who uses D|S is a newbie. Some of us are artisans with many years of experience with 3D software. Some of us are recent converts from Poser. Don't give us a reason to return to it.
I encourage you to read through the complete release announcement to find out the full "extent" of the encryption that Daz Connect adds. As @Daz_Jon stated, in order to download any content from our store you have to connect in one way or another this just adds an easier way to get the content.
Please give 4.9 a try and see how much easier and nicer it is compared to the previous ways to get content loaded in. Let me know if there is anything you think that could be improved in the new workflow.
While we reserve the right to backpedal, I will also remind you at how successful Steam has been even though it's DRM system is far more restrictive than our system. What we believe made Steam successful and what will make Daz Connect successful is because both systems had the primary goal of being user-friendly instead of trying to restrict the user. Our primary goal with 4.9 was to bring a better method of getting content installed in Studio.
So... with DIM I download to a temp folder on my desktop and then sort, rename, and move files around (no, I don't want my files inside a vendor named folder! And I want vehicle poses in with the vehicle, not in the pose folder, to name a few things I change) and then merge with my library files on 2 different machines.
Will we still be able to do this? NOT use catagories, just do it the way I've been doing it since .09 alpha and before that with Poser.
Like Tobor said, this is alarming to put it politely, and lots of us are not newbies.
Please DAZ, don't Big Brother us!
Sassy, please read http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/932651/#Comment_932651
Please read this thread: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/64736/daz-studio-pro-beta-version-4-9-0-21/
There is an FAQ with lots of the answers you guys have questions on.
That's the point Cris... I don't want to use catagories. I've used them with some things in my runtime that don't have DS files but we shouldn't be forced to do that with the DS files. I don't use smart content. I'm perfectly happy using the content tab like I always have.
If you guys can tell me we'll be able to download to a dummy file and re-sort the way we want, then I don't have a problem with any of the other stuff. LOL If not, then yeah... I have a big problem. :(
Yeah. This is just all kinds of fail. Have I mentioned how many times I've needed to edit content because someone left in a Windows only file path? I don't fancy waiting to use something I've purchased until somebody finally gets around to doing an update.
Then, there's the moral aspect of punishing your paying customers in order to change the behavior of people who will never become paying customers.
I know that this doesn't solve all of your problems but Daz Connect has better path handling than previous versions, so it should at least help with those problems. It should also make small fixes come a lot faster because we can push out single file changes extremely easily.
As to punishing customers, give it a shot and see if you really think that the new features in 4.9 are punishment. I believe that it is a large improvement in usability to get new and updated content far easier than before. Also, read through the FAQ and see how much we have done to make sure that the encryption doesn't get in the way of it being a useful product.
"Categories" = Fail. There needs to be a way to use existing organization trees, or else there's too much split locations. I don't need to remind anyone Daz assets aren't the only ones we have.
Comparing Daz content to STEAM content is a lark, to say the least. Game players don't care where the constituent files are.
Back before Steam and when it first came out, gamers used the same argument of it took control away from them. When mp3 player software first started auto-organizing where your music was placed and stopped exposing file paths in favor of sorting / filtering based upon ID3 tags with smart playlists, a similar reaction was had by those that had been organizing their music by hand in their own way and saw years of meticulous effort being thrown away for what was viewed as an inferior way to organize it. In both cases, and other cases of similar type things (manually organizing and keeping on top of it out of necessity versus automated and fast tools that had more convenience and saved massive amounts of time) the time saving and convenience ended up being the expected norm.
I know that doesn't make it any better and is, seen to a degree as patronizing or a complete miss of an analogy and appears as a non-sequitor, but one thing still is true. For the majority of users, especially new users, managing and organizing content is hard, time consuming, and causes a lot of people headaches and struggle with constant issues of "why doesn't this work for me" and is a major stopping place for people who aren't used to that sort of manual management of files on their computer. If those tasks can be automatically done in a way that allows customizing the views of it so you can organize, sort, and filter in ways that make sense, the time savings and not needing to devote time to the "management" side of dealing with content means more time to actually use the content. So, a lot of effort and time has been going into the new ways smart content / content library works (and the tools for getting non-Daz items organized in app) to try to make it so the work of "which files can I move" or "where do these files have to be located" gives way to more powerful and flexible ways to associate, search, sort, filter, and ultimately use your content.
To a degree being able to move around files still exist and the methods it used, especially for 3rd party content still works (not going to just do a complete break from it). But more and more we want to introduce new, faster, and more powerful ways to handle your content. As with any new ways, it means a change of what some are currently used to, and for many a decade or more of being used to it, and that is hard. I don't know if you can currently move around user facing files that are downloaded via Daz Connect, you would have to try or get a response from one of the developers to see if it currently works or is on the list of things to work on. However, if you haven't tried the out the new model of how to organize or deal with your content yet, I would encourage that to see if the time savings and convenience is something worth using in some cases.
I don't want to spark a debate on what the "better" way is as it is all personal experience and completely subjective. But try it out, give us feedback. We do care what you guys think and want to make a product which will be the best experience for as many people as possible, so if you have suggestions for it on things we can do to improve, especially during the beta on such a new thing, please give it.