In my last post, I wrote about the current EU petition about stopping game makers from being able to summarily remove customers’ access to games they have purchased. Following, this week I want to describe in further detail how I believe it impacts the world of creative professionals and the software we use.
This is a substantially longer post than usual (more than 1 500 words!), one that I have worked on over several days. I hope it will be an interesting and thought-provoking read, even if it is still largely ancillary to the usual subjects of this blog (which I will get back to!).
But first of all, I want to remind you again to sign the European Citizens’ Initiative “Stop Killing Games” as soon as you can, if you haven’t already. The last day of the petition is July 31st, but don’t put it off longer than you must, or you might end up forgetting about it until it is too late. Signing should only take you a few minutes.
Finale & MakeMusic
On August 26 last year, the president of MakeMusic, creators of the scorewriting programme Finale, announced that development on Finale would cease and that purchasing Finale was no longer possible. It would receive no further updates, and after one year – meaning, less than two weeks from today – it would no longer be possible to install your copy of Finale on any new devices, or even old devices if you needed to re-authorise your copy, such as if you installed a new operating system.
Authorising, if you don’t know what that entails, means confirming that you own a legitimate Finale license by validating it over the internet against MakeMusic’s online servers. MakeMusic would, in other words, take those servers offline permanently one year after their statement. They could have devised a patch for Finale to change the online-required validation to a simpler, offline-only version. Instead, this meant crippling every Finale user who wanted to keep using the programme.
MakeMusic encouraged Finale users to migrate to Dorico instead, even going so far as to offering a serious discount – almost 75%! – on the “professional” version of Dorico for any Finale user, regardless of whether they were on the latest version of Finale or one from many years ago.
However, there were enough angry Finale users who liked their programme of choice and didn’t want to switch. The website Scoring Notes published a lengthy presentation of Finale’s rich history that is well worth a read, both for its own reason and to help understand the deep engagement many feel toward this programme.
Not only did MakeMusic anger its own users, but it drew the ire from the wider professional music community, sparking widespread criticism. This led to MakeMusic amending their initial statement twice only the next day, including an extensive list of questions and answers as well as going back on the one-year limit on future installs of the programme.
While Finale appears to live on, they explicitly state that the authorisation service “will remain available for the foreseeable future” – in other words, one day your access to Finale will still be crippled – and that Finale might not work with new versions of Windows or macOS. The latter is understandable, given that they have ceased development, but the proverbial axe still hangs over Finale’s head even if the immediate threat was removed.
Dorico & Steinberg
Dorico, which has been my scorewriting programme of choice since I switched from Sibelius 7.5 several years ago, is developed and published by Steinberg, famous for the recording and audio production programme Cubase. For decades, Steinberg relied on a hardware- or software-based license solution called “eLicenser”. It used an encrypted USB stick with the license key (or keys if you used multiple Steinberg software) on it, or later alternatively an eLicenser programme on your computer with encrypted key storage on your computer.
Recently, Steinberg has migrated to a server-based solution which is practically similar to MakeMusic’s. You manage and activate your licenses via a special complementary application that only serves this purpose. It is installed along with Cubase, Dorico or any other Steinberg software. Similar to what the issue is with Finale, it means that to use your own software, you need an internet connection to activate it the first time you use it, and that Steinberg can essentially make it impossible for you to keep using the software you’ve paid for any time they want to, for any reason.
The eLicenser system was often derided and widely criticised for many, mostly valid reasons. However, at least it meant that you had a physical key (for as long as it worked) granting you access to your software that nobody else could exercise control over, including Steinberg.
Copy Protection
Software licenses and various forms of copy protection have been in use for more or less as long as computer programmes has been sold and distributed. Allowing the use of legitimately purchased software while curtailing illegal use and distribution has led to a myriad different solutions over the years. More onerous and restrictive forms of copy protection and software validation have, ironically, led to increased breaking of these protection systems and the sharing of illegal, pirated software.
Frustratingly for legitimate users, these pirated versions of programmes have often been easier to install and use simply because they have removed these very restrictions that really end up only plaguing legitimate, paying users.
Computer and video games have their own great number of different protection schemes. Several have been found to decrease games’ performance or even the performance of the entire computer system because these copy protections run continuously as background processes, draining the computer’s resources.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, copy protection often required you to have the game’s manual or other physical items included with a boxed copy, to answer questions or provide a password in the game that was available in the printed material.
Contemporary internet-based game distributors like Steam and Epic Store act as their own copy protection, requiring the use of their own proprietary base software as a “launcher” that you must use to play whatever game you purchased from there. Note that the game distributor GOG, formerly “Good Old Games”, has a launcher but does not mandate its use. It offers separate downloads of install files for each game; in fact, GOG makes a point of not including copy protection (“DRM”) in the games it sells.
Reaper & Cockos
One example of a programme that handles copy protection very differently is a competitor to Cubase, as well as other similar digital audio workstations: REAPER, developed by Cockos. While REAPER does include a form of copy protection, it is consciously designed not to be invasive, obtrusive, complex or abstruse.
When you purchase REAPER, you get a text file that contains your license information. To activate REAPER, you simply point the programme to that file. It opens it, validates the info inside, and you’re done. No internet connection or proprietary server necessary. As long as you have an installation file and your license key file, you can reinstall REAPER.
You’ll Own Nothing
In November 2016, the World Economic Forum posted eight essays imagining what life might be like in 2030. The essays were written by members of its Global Future Councils, an interdisciplinary think-tank comprised of hundreds of experts from academia, business, government, civil society and organisations. The essays were simply meant as “what-ifs”, as optimistic or pessimistic visions of the future to start, or add to, the global discussion.
Danish politician Ida Auken wrote an essay about a utopian future society based around a kind of sharing economy, where most things are no longer owned but rented long- or short-term, or provided as a service. In Auken’s idealised society, this means low-cost, well-maintained public transportation, free digital communication, and durable, well-made products like machines, clothes, and so on.
Auken’s essay has since become infamous. The future she envisioned rests on the supposed benevolence of governments, corporations, multinational entities. Towards the end, she briefly mentions that “once in awhile I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy”. Everything she does, thinks and dreams (!) is recorded. “I just hope that nobody will use it against me,” she writes, but leaves it there. Literally her next sentence is: “All in all, it is a good life.”
While I absolutely do not subscribe to the various conspiracy theories that surround the World Economic Forum in general or that relate to Ida Auken’s essay in particular, there are quite apparent problems with the kind of society she depicts. For very obvious horror examples, read Human Rights Watch’s report from 2019 on mass surveillance and repression of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, and then The Atlantic’s article from 2021 about how that technology is both being implemented throughout China and exported to other countries.
This Affects Us
In a practical sense, not owning things is already a reality in many ways. Computer software is one of them. You think you purchase a programme, but you only get a license to use it under terms that the developer or distributor can change at any time, meaning that you didn’t actually purchase anything tangible at all (as tangible as digital software can be, anyway).
In the case of the EU petition still currently collecting signatures throughout July, the focus is on computer and video games. However, it is only the first step on what should, in my opinion, be a longer and more substantial journey toward actual ownership of what you have bought and paid for.
If you are a citizen of one of the European Union’s member states, I urge you to sign the European Citizens’ Initiative “Stop Killing Games”. Please do it as soon as you can. It should only take a few minutes. The last day of the petition is July 31st. Even though it has passed more than 1.4 million signatures, the more it gets the stronger a signal it sends to EU policymakers.
Thank you.