Licenses and national or global catastrophes ?

[EE-digger]

Hope you and your families are safe and sound !

I just quit work today and will take a break between waiting for the virus to settle down and part time contracting in months ahead, being a few years past full retirement age.

While signing out of our network for the last time I suddenly had an "oh cr-p" moment as I remembered to release one of my personal CAD licenses for the last time at work.

There should be a huge uprising against licenses served from remote locations and a demand for independent operation.

The reason?  Can you imaging some sort of major global or national event which caused a loss of internet access for a period of time ... or forever?  Yeah, I know lot's of important things would break along with yours but can you imagine if the tools and toys you've dumped $$$ into suddenly could not phone home and lost half ot their functionality?

Or how about taking it down a notch.  Due to shutdowns, when a license server breaks, it stays broken?

Maybe extreme but still disturbing 

[nctnico]

There is already a long thread about this; why cloud services don't work. Little over a year ago I bought a new CAD package with a physical dongle. I also have the rule that if I purchase a piece of software there has to be a cracked version available which I can install at will. I don't mind paying for software but it has to work whenever, wherever I want / need it.

[EE-digger]

My apology.  Things have been hectic and I did not search first.

[mcovington]

This is related to the reason librarians hate digital rights management.   They know that in the far future, they are not going to be able to play certain recordings (audio, cinema, etc.) even though they have the files and have perfectly authentic equipment, because the rights servers will have gone away.  Some movies, pieces of music, etc., may be lost forever.

[james_s]

This is related to the reason librarians hate digital rights management.   They know that in the far future, they are not going to be able to play certain recordings (audio, cinema, etc.) even though they have the files and have perfectly authentic equipment, because the rights servers will have gone away.  Some movies, pieces of music, etc., may be lost forever.

They'll have been cracked long before that. Most protection schemes are cracked within a short time of appearing on the market if the content is worth the effort.