Thank you for letting me know, cause I've been planning to purchase Waves Platinum for a long time, and I plan to call them and ask about this before I make my purchase. I really hate when company's mess with their customers this way. Like waves isn't making enough money for them to begin with..

Thx.....

Once you check off that licensing agreement seems like you have no rights.

yep it's a bitch... gotta realize you dont own the prog... they do and you are purchasing a liscence... steinberg also is pretty hardcore about this...

NO TICKY NO WASHY ...

There is a thing called COMMON LAW. Unless there's a clear disclaimer on the box, I don't think companies can take advantage of consumers. It is very reasonable to assume that sometimes computers fail and software needs to be reinstalled on a new computer. It's still just ONE consumer using the same ONE software product. I don't think a company can charge you to re-authorize it.

I know I'm in the minority here, but 2 years without looking for updates or checking up on what's going on in the world?!?!? You can't even turn your back on a computer for 5 minutes before there are dozens of updates. You could have seen this coming a LONG time ago. The iLok authorizations for Waves have been going on for a long time...and for $40 you wouldn't be in this mess.
Now, I don't particularly care for the way they do all this now either, but that's life. Yes, I can understand your car analogy - but I don't think it's correct: this is not a physical item. Software has it's own set of problems - obsolesce, for example, is an issue for every program out there. And with rampant software piracy in our industry kudos to Waves for trying to do something about it - even if it's not the perfect solution, you gotta start somewhere.
Furthermore, think of your car analogy this way: if your mechanic says you blew a head gasket out of warranty (aka your computer crashed) you wouldn't yell at the car manufacturer, would you? You'd accept that as life, deal with it, and get on with your life...
I have tried a lot of plugins, and Waves stuff is WAY better than most (and better bang-for-the-buck to boot!). I knew their policies going in, and I have kept up with them ever since. I use my Waves plug-ins every day without remorse.

My 2-cents...

blew a head gasket

The software works FINE and I have the most current update (it hasn't changed). The problem is THEIR problem: Their authorization mechanism (which protects THEM - not me). It will not work without "re-authorizing". I already bought an Ilok for $40.

well dry your eyes and deal with it... while i sympathize greatly i also understand the need for such devices... perhaps you could come up with an alternative system which protects them from piracy as well...

The iLok system seems like a system that will work fine.

I don't plan on buying any more Waves products either. I'm still using W2k and all my Waves plugins are drive authorized. I decided to clone my master drive in anticipation of the original crapping out one day. If I were to upgrade to XP, I'd be in the same boat. My system is stable, plenty fast, and I plan on keeping it like it is.

One last point. Did you consider backing up your system on a regular basis? This is common practice for most people who value their data or who have valuable data. Again, something that would have cost you a very small investment but one that would have protected you against this hassle. Hind sight is 20/20 I suppose.

Huseph

Disk authorizations dont back up, I know where the Willie is coming from.

Dr. Willie

Try calling back, you might get another tech. Ive known many people who were switched to iLok without being WUP'd

There are 2 round robin call centers, one in Tennesse, and one in Israel, the guys in the US are jerks.

TVpostSound:

With all due respect, he mentioned that he had to reinstall after his system had crashed. If he had a recent backup, he could restore to a working profile. I could be wrong but would this not restore the system to a state where the authorization would still be valid? Or, does the authorization all of a sudden become invalid after a specified date? That indeed would be a scam.

Well, you should have your original auth. # when you purchased, and should be able to go through with the ilok auth. Their 'challenge' thing takes a bit to get used to it. I happen to like Waves. Their support is really good. They take a lot of bashing,, but someone cracked all there plugs a few years ago and they are very tight. If you registered your product they will help you with the ilok auth.
Buy the ilok and go thru with it. Owners of the Gold and up bundles get the IR free.

Waves finally authorized the product for me (free of charge). I'd be interested to see if anyone out there PAID to fix an "authorization" related issue. ?

Hmmmm.... Dr. Willie.
Seems you should be able to run the version you bought without upgrading if you want. Send them that e-mail and ask about using the version you purchased without the upgrade.
Once I got kinda pissey on an e-mail and someone called from the middle east and straightened it out.
I like the IR reverb with the Todd-AO scoring stage.

Hueseph

With ALL due respect, disk authorizations from floppies, DO NOT , I repeat DO NOT get copied to the new drive during a backup or drive clone.
Thats called copy protection, not only can you NOT copy the floppy, you can not copy the authorizations on a hard drive.

Remember (k) authorizations???? Those were cracked to be copiable.

Take it from me, I lived this agony for 10 years before Waves sent us serial dongles, we were using Protools 24 hours a day in 12 rooms, drive crashes (SCSI) were commonplace, hence the reason for moving to iLok.

Digidesign was kind enough to give you 2 auth floppies, when you crashed, you used the second floppy to auth Protools, then you called
Digidesign, and begged for another backup.
Waves never sent backups, but the right tech support there WILL convert to an iLok for free.

BRH

You have a point.
THough if Dr Willie had V4, then he needs to upgrade to V5 to get an iLok.
As V4 was floppy only, and they no longer deal with floppies.
If he had V5, they should and will iLok his auth.

TVPostSound wrote: Hueseph

With ALL due respect, disk authorizations from floppies, DO NOT , I repeat DO NOT get copied to the new drive during a backup or drive clone.
Thats called copy protection, not only can you NOT copy the floppy, you can not copy the authorizations on a hard drive.

Well, I have to say that's just overkill. If you have the dongle and you have an auth# specific to your computer(ip, mac address, computer/workstation/network group name), there's no way to make it work on another computer anyway. Even if you could, you'd only be able to use in on one computer at a time, unless someone found a way to duplicate dongles. I understand not being able to copy a floppy(they still use those?) but, you should at least have the flexibility to be able to backup your system.

you should at least have the flexibility to be able to backup your system.

Because if you cloned your drive, you could very well copy the auth to another person's drive.
Its a moot point now that iLok is in play!!!!!

I dread the day I lose my iLok. No software vendor will replace the authorizations on it. But if the iLok burns up, you can get iLok to replace
the auths!!!

I can sympathize with this situation and know of quite a number of users that are ending their relationship with Waves for the same reasons.

In my case, I can't even give my Waves Gold bundle away without paying $150, and pay at least $300 to upgrade to transfer the license (which is *not* specified in my EULA). This is v3, so to some degree I would understand the upgrade requirement, but there has not been a functional update to the any of the plugins I own since v3, yet they no longer work with Nuendo (as of v3). I still have older versions of other plugins and applications that have worked fine for years, so paying $300+ just to use the same plugins I originally purchased is absurd and I've told Waves support as much. Of course that fell on deaf ears.

I know another studio that recently transferred their system to a new drive (old one failing) and of course Waves requires reauthorization (Pace version). The engineer was told it would cost over $400 to "upgrade" in order to reauthorize. I don't know what version they have (v4 most likely). This upgrade of course is in number only - no new functionality or change to the plugins themselves. The studio has dropped using Waves because of this - mainly on principle.

There are numerous stories like this. Waves is the only company that charges for upgrades that only change the authorization process, but not the product itself. I would have no problem paying $40 to upgrade to a iLok version, but $400 is starting to sound like extortion. As customers we should be able to use the products we paid for. If a company wants to charge annual fees for using their products, then they should not be able to grandfather past users into a new agreement (which is exactly what Waves have done - dispense with older EULAs in order to enforce a new policy - if it isn't illegal (may be, I don't know), at least it is highly unethical). I know my company will never buy from them again.

In response to eveaudio's suggestion that a $40 iLok would solve this - perhaps for a few users it might (though I have not seen any updates that inexpensive), but for those of us that purchased a bundle back in v3, the requirement was about $260 a year for the WUP then, yet 3.5, v4 and v5 had no new updates to the plugins we owned. None. That would have been money wasted simply to change the version number on the "about us" screen. And that's why I passed on the "upgrade plan".

There are a lot of plugins on the market that have not required an update to continue functioning when the VST spec hasn't change significantly, and if they did require an update, it was either free (system/compatibility updates), or there was a value to it - new functionality, etc. There is a long list of plugins I currently own that have followed this practice. Waves is the only one to take the opposite approach.

Because if you cloned your drive, you could very well copy the auth to another person's drive.
Its a moot point now that iLok is in play!!!!!

Since all my Waves plugins are drive authorized, I'm curious to see if they'll function on my clone drive.

Funny, I've seen it in print somewhere that if you have iLock authorized plugins installed on a removeable drive, you can carry that setup to any studio and use it. Regardless, I'm staying with drive authorization as long as I can.