Do not buy TC Electronics Spark 1.5 (OT) (Cons of copy protection)

[Mark Sottilaro <msottilaro@ppi2pass.com>]

Hey fellow loopers,

Recently I  purchased TC/Works Spark 1.5 sample editing software, and let 
me
tell you, it's a damn nice product.  So why, you may ask, am I 
recommending not
to buy it.

Horrible copy protection features.

It's rigged so you have to authorize a single hard drive to get it to work,
with a call and response code that you obtain from TC.  Problem?  I bought 
it
for my business which involves doing remote sound capture, via a laptop, 
and
then bringing the files back to a studio for editing.  Now I realize, after
I've already authorized my Tower G3, that I won't be able to  use the 
product
on multiple machines unless I buy more copies.  They suggested I just 
authorize
a removable disk, but by then it was too late, and I did go and  buy a jaz 
disk
(I needed one anyway) and they wouldn't give me another code to authorize 
it.

Screw that.  If anyone has a cracked copy, I'd love a copy.  As a person 
who
makes copywriteable material, I loath piracy, but when you honestly 
purchase a
product that you can't use in the way you intended because the company is
paranoid about piracy, the only people that suffer are the honest.  It's 
time
honest consumers (who spend huge amounts of our money on gear and software)
take arms up against companies that treat us like criminals because we're
musicians.  If someone who's reading this could forward this to Steinberg, 
that
would be swell too.  It's funny, after using a cracked version of Cubase 
on one
of my student's computers, I went right out and bought a copy!  I guess I'd
have to buy another copy if I wanted to put it on my laptop and use it 
live as
well.  Or just get a cracked copy of it!  Perhaps if companies learned a 
bit
from the music and film industries, they'd realize that making smaller 
profits
on many copies with good documentation, deters pirates, not huge price 
tags and
hackable copy protection.  I worked for a school that had to use a cracked 
copy
of a graphics program even though they owned it, because the hardware 
dongle
was causing problems and conflicts (not to mention that a lot of them were 
just
stolen from the lab!)  It's time for this crap to stop!

OK, I'm done ranting now.

Mark Sottilaro
Director of Multimedia Production
Professional Publications, Inc.
1250 Fifth Ave, Belmont CA 94002
Multimedia Production
E-mail:  msottilaro@ppi2pass.com