Now it's gotten to the point to where people are actually posting videos and links on youtube explaining how to get it for free - via pirating and keygens.

I'm a legit owner and have been since v5. I don't share keys. My registration never passes anymore. It doesn't say it doesn't pass, but the registration never goes through. Sony doesn't even send me a warning message about it, it just doesn't work. I try it now and again (whenever I re-install). There was even a place (when I found a link somewhere on this website to get an authentication key) where I wrote in a request for help with this, but it's been so long with no reply that I just gave up. I should probably contact them again about this. In the meantime, I've been using a patch. So does that make me a pirate? Actually, when it comes to the software I loved to use, I eagerly went out and purchased it once I had the money - it beat the college years of using old versions with broken functionality like this guy. I'm glad someone encouraged him to buy the real deal. I'll also note that I've had no difficulty with support. The only problem has been that the product does not authenticate, so at least Sony recognizes me when it comes to the important things. What do you guys think?

Have you tried calling the installation/registration support number? I've had a couple of cases where i had used up the activations. I called and within 2 minutes everything was reset and i had activated successfully.

people have always pirated, it's just now they're really dumb these days & asking for help. no more pirates vs paid owners (% wise) then years ago I'd say.

This has been going on for a VERY long time.
Vegas is generally rated as the most pirated software there is.
On the upside I guess if they're going to pirate something better they pirate Vegas. I borrowed that line from Bill Gates.

On the downside Youtube is full of Vegas "tutorials" that create the impression that the average user is a complete and utter idiot. I only watched one about CK to the end. The guy admits he can't get it to really work. He's comping a 4:3 scene into a 16:9 vid. Thankfully not too many people seem to be watching these. Still as the old saying goes 'you can tell a lot about a man by the company he keeps'.

Some here would probably choke at some of the to our face requests we get. Like:
"Your EX1 footage doesn't work in FCP!!!".
"You need the latest version".
"Well how about you give me a copy".

Then again why should we sweat over this. I'm certain those who should know do, if they don't, well what can one say. I guess it's one cheap way to market your products and what seem the only effective way to prevent piracy is to use an iLock and I think most of us would not take too kindly to that. It certainly doesn't keep me awake at night. I've got one client whose giving me a lot of work. He has the latest versions of every NLE including CS4 Master and guess what, he can't work out how to use any of them.

Bob.

i've had students come up to me and, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, tell me they downloaded a cracked / keygen, but can't do certain things. generally cause it's they don't know how, but i usually tell them that the trial is severly crippled and if they want all the bells and whistles (and they ALWAYS do), they'd better buy a copy.

for those who can't genuinely afford pro, i suggset they get studio - and that for what 'we're' doing it's as good as....

mind you, that said, i know a good few people running cracked versions of ps cs3 feeling they were ripped off by adobe with cs 1 / 2...

the only thing i have that's cracked nowadays is a stock whip..

leslie

I ran mostly cracked software back in high school, but in University I took advantage of all the student discounts. So I was able to pick up the CS3 Master Collection for around $700 instead of $2500, and it's fully upgradeable when i want to buy a retail upgrade. Same goes for VP8 and Cakewalk Sonar 7 Producer, which I picked up at considerable discounts.

I have been working in the software development business for many years, and I gladly pay for every piece of software I own and use. I have easily spent tens of thousands of dollars on software and have no regrets about any of it.

I know if not enough people do pay for it, then the software will just die.

The problem is with the couple of generations we have running about with very strong feelings of self-entitlement. They really do not think they should have to pay for anything. The worst of the lot don't even bother trying to justify the theft.

It is a shame. It ends up making it more difficult for the legitimate user. All this activation nonsense is just a companies way of telling us we are not to be trusted. I cannot blame them for it as piracy is a very real problem, especially for low volumn products like Vegas Pro and others of its ilk.

Hard to blame Sony, or any other company, as all they are trying to do is protect thier intellectual property and keep people employed who they need to further improve Vegas. Who we need to further improve it.

In the past twelve months there have been exactly zero posts in this Vegas Pro forum by any person with the word "Sony" in their user name, and a grand total of 38 by the "forumadmin." The fantastic CTO of Cineform posted almost that many -- and they were incredibly helpful -- just in the past few months.

Google News lists exactly 53 stories in 2008 which contain the phrase "Sony Creative Software." Google Search Results

and almost all of these are press releases, many of them by other Sony divisions, with almost nothing actually being driven from Madison.

There are no developer seminars, or any other active courting of the developer or user community.

My point?

This is an organization that is dead. This product is dead. The fact that piracy goes unchallenged is just another indication of a completely disengaged product management team. While you can't stop all piracy, you can sure as heck rattle the cages of those who are brazen enough to admit to it in public forums.

So, while I do not condone piracy, I think that what you are seeing is exactly analogous to what happens with an abandoned building: you get graffiti, broken windows, and eventually someone burns down the remains.

Happy New Year.

Humbug

EA's Spore was toted as being the most secure thing ever released (minus physical dongles, but in college I had access to a dongle-free copy of lightwave, so those aren't any use either). It currently has the HIGHEST piracy rate of anything out there, except maybe windows.

It's an estimate that 9 out of 10 copies everyone has of software is pirated. So for every legit user here, there's 9 more that don't own it. It goes with everything: OS, games, NLE, 3D, etc. All the anti-piracy measures haven't stopped it, and in many cases brought more people to pirate (that's the believed reason spore is so high. People at one time boycotted any games with the secrurom copy protection, several publishers felt the pinch & stopped using it).

When TMPGenc had their new mpeg-2 encoder that required a net connection all the time I went with the older version instead, because I want to use the software I bought, when I want. Vegas currently does that too, no need to re-activate every X days. When it hits that range, that's when I'll end up not using it.

Well, this thread has definately taken a depressing turn, lol. I hope SCS isn't really dead. Maybe VP9 will eventually come out and shock us all with great, new features.

When TMPGenc had their new mpeg-2 encoder that required a net connection all the time I went with the older version instead, because I want to use the software I bought, when I want. Vegas currently does that too, no need to re-activate every X days. When it hits that range, that's when I'll end up not using it.

I've used the new TMPGEnc 4.0 Xpress, with that new authorization thing; and it isn't intrusive at all. I've reinstalled Windows a couple times since buying it, and I just put in the serial number like always and it never gives me any trouble.

Believe me, I hate the idea of activation systems, as well; they irk me. But it's a fact of life, at this point.

I think Adobe has done it best, though, by including a "Deactivation" feature in their software that requires online activation. That way you never have to call in, since you can deactivate your license before formatting or moving to another system.

John, I usually agree with you, but I gotta say that in this case you are dead wrong. Maybe you are just out of the loop of things and don't know, but pirating software isn't just something subverts do, it is a part of the culture. Almost everyone pirates almost all the software they have. I can only think of 5 people I know besides myself that don't and they are all professionals. I don't pirate because I count on money from my software, so I'm never gonna get my fingers caught, I can't risk it. Also, I have learned respect and value in my days.
Truth be told, about 6 years ago, before I could afford it, I pirated Vegas and also some other sound software. I came to a point in my life where I realized that I had longing desires to express my art and I was being bound by only money. I just had to do it. I knew it was wrong but there was no way for me to even learn it or observe others using Vegas or any other video editing software in the town I lived in. I also downloaded Premiere and I learned to use them both. As soon as I was able to afford it, I bought Vegas as well as the rest of the software I use.
I know this seems like the regular story, a bunch of BS, but to a lot of people truly feel this way. I KNOW IT IS WRONG and I feel bad. I would have accepted punishment if I got caught.
This is not a justification, just my story.
Like 50 cent, I did what I had to in order to get out of the ghetto!

Just because the user name doesn't say Sony doesn't mean Sony folks aren't participating.

Your Google search was interesting. Here are some results that I found

Sony Vegas = 607
http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=%22sony+Vegas%22&btnG=Search&um=1

Sony ACID = 146
http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=%22sony+acid%22&btnG=Search&um=1

Sony Sound Forge = 117
http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=%22sony+sound+forge%22&btnG=Search&um=1

Adobe CS4 = 12
http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=%22adobe+cs4%22&btnG=Search&um=1

Improvements are always around the corner. In the last few years all of the core apps have come quite a ways - not without a few growing pains - but it's hard to say that there's a lack of effort towards innovation in the software.

Regarding piracy, with all due respect, I disagree with johnmeyer in that the more who are pirating a specific software means the more popular and sought after the software is... Not that the building is burning down anyway. And not that I would condone that and all software I personally use is legit license.

I would agree that more effort to prevent this is ideal, but it's really a cat and mouse game at the end of the day. The hard part is making piracy more difficult, but at the same time not alienating legit users who end up having to go through arcane registrations, call and answers, dongle hardware, activate / deactivate, and recite the alphabet in Sanskrit to get their apps running.

Confession time.

I hear you GoodTime, your sins are forgiven because you're legal now. Years ago I started NLE with Pinnacle ver 6 which i bought along with fx libraries. A friend gave me a pirate copy SV6. It took me about 6 months (lets face it, you can't learn vegas in 30 days) to get to grips with Vegas as I was so used to Pinnacle at the time. I was so impressed with Vegas that I bought Pro 8 that was just released at the time. I'm waiting for SV9 which I will pay for, so c'mon SV come get your bucks $-)

I hope SVCS will forgive me.

NO……not Pinnacle…..please……. you didn’t

@ XFX
LoL!!

I COMPLETELY disagree with you JohnMeyer. First of all this is a user forum.... I'm not sure why you would see a pile of Sony names here. Forum Admin responds when they need to. Second, you need to get out more often and see the sites :) Every general editing site these days has Vegas mentioned in it. It wasn't this way as early as 1.5 years ago. I see a great lot of posts from pissed off pinnacle/Ulead/Avid/....etc users jumping onto the Vegas band wagon..... but rarely do I see a post the other way around. Developer seminars are usually left up to the users and have little to do with the software writers. I know that Avid Liquid used to have lots of seminars and although they sometimes had speakers there..... it was all pretty much user generated and Avid was rarely involved on any official level. And this line here: "I think that what you are seeing is exactly analogous to what happens with an abandoned building: " I think is just so far off the mark it's silly.

I am currently in Iraq on a military deployment. There is a bizarre run by locals that sells a ton of pirated movies, games etc. I haven't looked in there but I've seen people buy stacks of xbox 360 games on DVD. Not once have I seen a pirated PS3 game or movie come out of there. With the cost of a blank blu-ray disc being as high as it is, it just ain't profitable for pirates. Especially if they burn some blu ray coasters. I haven't seen any pirated PSP games either, for similar reasons (no profitable way to pirate UMD media).

I know this doesn't have much significance for Vegas, my only point is that it's not impossible to do accomplish protection. But it could also be argued that the vendor better be sure what they are trying to accomplish. UMDs worked for games (as long as Sony continued to release desirable firmware updates to close the hacks), but the uniqueness of UMDs killed it as a medium for movies. And I would guess that the sales of standalone blu ray players (vs. PS3) are not so good.

"It wasn't this way as early as 1.5 years ago."

You're right, there. A few years ago the SCS developers were regular posters here and on the audio forum. At least one of them still does post on the audio forum. That's why we do expect so see a pile of Sony names here. We used to be kept to some extent up to date with bug fixes, ideas etc, etc.

Bob.

"You're right, there. A few years ago the SCS developers were regular posters here and on the audio forum"

And a few years ago General Motors, Chrysler.... etc weren't talking about bankruptcy either. EVERYBODY is cutting back Bob..... get over it.

JohnMeyers, I should point out that SCS has done serious high-end development work with Blue Ray, so, SCS is not dead. Sony is doing some product re-alignment, which I do not what exact plans are, but consumer electronics like cameras are moving faster that plan to broadcast engineering designs. Sony does have "many" optical ics capable for any market demand, but Sony, like anyone else, is faced with a lot mid-ware customers and products that does not have cash to change or write-off. I don't think any camera engineer worries about designing 1080p, but 4k and 8k, yes, with clean design and low power demands. Future optical ics probably will apply vector analysis, replacing pixel compression issues, and lower processing power for transmission and editing.

I was not trying to make any point about the relative rate of piracy of Vegas vs. other software. My ONLY point is that Sony Creative Software's interaction with their users and the development community has never been stellar, but it now absolutely stinks. Their lack of response to open piracy is just simply another example of their unwillingness to engage their own user community.

As for cutbacks due to the bad economy being a factor, I do not buy that for one instant. As long as a company has even one light bulb turned on and one employee, that person should spend part of each day talking to and interacting with customers, and there is no more efficient way to do that than in this forum.

As a few others pointed out, we used to get several posts a week from some of the Sony engineers here in the Vegas Pro forum. We now get zero. This shows a complete lack of will to succeed; no understanding of basic business practices; and a total absence of corporate pride.

I spent my career (I am now retired) consulting with startups and small software companies. I know what it takes to win, and I know what it looks like when a company is losing.

Again, this has nothing to do with hard economic times: this has to do with the character of management and what values they instill in their employees and what culture they create.

This forum is a treasure trove of people and ideas, and it has been ignored, and is being ignored.