A warning about NI's software...

Recently I had problems with a legally purchased sample set in WAV
format that came with an NKI file which is compatible with NI's
Kontakt sampler. I run Kontakt's stripped-down sibling, Kompakt, and
found that the sample velocity switching wasn't right under Kompakt,
although NI maintain that the two products ought to be largely
compatible.

I then investigated the possibility of authoring a replacement .NKI
file to remap the samples for Kompakt (the file does *not* contain the
samples, merely defines the velocity switching points).

I found, to my astonishment, that NI deliberately encrypt these files;
each time you save an identical configuration the file is encrypted so
as to be substantially different each time it is saved. (this is true
both for Kontakt and Kompakt). In other words, simply press Save, name
the file x.nki, say, then press save again and name this file y.nki.
The two files are almost entirely different internally!

(I had already asked NI about authoring tools for NKI files to be met
with complete silence by NI. Presumably only NI's privileged business
partners may author sample sets or define velocity switching points
for existing samples, unless you want to grapple with the entirely
inadequate user interface within Kontakt - mapping 88 notes at 8
velocity levels would be a nightmare!).

I accept that NI need to protect their products themselves from piracy
but this, in my opinion, is a step too far. I understood that the file
format was undocumented but this deliberate action to make it almost
impossible to reverse engineer a file which the user is in fact the
author and legal owner of, is entirely unacceptable.

I deeply resent being held to ransom over information I legally own. I
accept entirely that vendors have no obligation to document file
formats. Nonetheless, users have a legal right to interoperate with
software and reverse-engineer these formats, should they choose to do
so.

Imagine if your favourite recording software encrypted all your WAV
files, so that you were completely held to ransom by the vendor.
Suppose Microsoft Word encrypted all your documents, so that you could
not open them with another word processor?.

This is an entirely separate issue from software copy protection.
While I find this irksome, and note that Cakewalk, for instance, seem
to manage quite well without this paranoia, nonetheless, vendors are
perfectly entitled to protect their software from unauthorised
copying. However, I draw the line at files *created* by this software.
I am the legal owner of these files and entirely entitled to expect to
be able to access their contents by any means I see fit.

I urge you to consider this attitude on the part of Native Instruments
when making a purchase decision. If you believe,as I do, that having
your files deliberately encrypted is an unacceptable business
practice, please make this known to NI and consider it when making the
decision as to which product to purchase.

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 05:22:36 -0700, Andrew Mayo wrote:

snip
I urge you to consider this attitude on the part of Native Instruments
when making a purchase decision. If you believe,as I do, that having
your files deliberately encrypted is an unacceptable business
practice, please make this known to NI and consider it when making the
decision as to which product to purchase.

I have always found their products sound great, and own B4 and Reaktor.

Their copy protection systems are really getting me down though.
I bought reaktor 3.04 which entitles me to a free upgrade to reaktor 4.
However, the procedure I have to go through to upgrade is so incredably
complex that I have never managed to upgrade successfully. It involves
about four different serials, reboots, removing dongles at certain times,
contacting web sites, emails, machine specific IDs that you get in return
etc.... Make one mistake and you have to start again.

Truth be told, I have still not managed to upgrade after four attempts.

I am not a total idiot, as I've installed Ardour on Linux from source many
times, which is in theory 'harder'. Perhaps I'm just used too used to
thinking logically rather than fighting some weird arbitrary copy
protection scheme.

The software does not feel like it's mine, even though I bought it. It
feels like some temporary access that only occurs only under some specific
conditions that could change or disappear at any time. I have the damm
dongle, that should be enough.

Sorry for the rant, but it really ****ed me off.

"Andrew Mayo" wrote in message
om...
(I had already asked NI about authoring tools for NKI files to be met
with complete silence by NI. Presumably only NI's privileged business

I had a similar problem as I was trying to make a Kontakt-Battery...

I accept that NI need to protect their products themselves from piracy
but this, in my opinion, is a step too far. I understood that the file
format was undocumented but this deliberate action to make it almost
impossible to reverse engineer a file which the user is in fact the
author and legal owner of, is entirely unacceptable.

Reverse engineering a deliberate copy protection scheme is illegal under the
DMCA, and is under the NI license agreement as well.

You are the legal owner of the file, but you are NOT the legal owner of the
file format, and have no rights to it thereof. If a company wishes to
release the format, that's their choice, but if they don't, you have no
rights to it. Much the same way that we can write whatever file format we
want on our hard drives, but FAT32/FAT16/NTFS formats are all owned by
Microsoft.

I deeply resent being held to ransom over information I legally own. I
accept entirely that vendors have no obligation to document file
formats. Nonetheless, users have a legal right to interoperate with
software and reverse-engineer these formats, should they choose to do
so.

Users have no such right to interoperate with anyone. Reverse engineering is
also not protected under any laws. If anything, it's the opposite - the DMCA
makes it a crime to reverse engineer any form of protection.

Imagine if your favourite recording software encrypted all your WAV
files, so that you were completely held to ransom by the vendor.

The NKI format doesn't encode the wave files, only how it's applied to
Konkat. And even if it did encode the samples themselves, if it was such a
big deal to everyone, they wouldn't use Kontakt.

Suppose Microsoft Word encrypted all your documents, so that you could
not open them with another word processor?.

Isn't that the way it is already? ;-)

copying. However, I draw the line at files *created* by this software.
I am the legal owner of these files and entirely entitled to expect to
be able to access their contents by any means I see fit.

That might be what you expect, but copyright law does not support your
position.

--Neil

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 13:39:58 -0700, Neil Bradley wrote:

big snip
That might be what you expect, but copyright law does not support your
position.

True. It's just a shame that the software is cracked in a week, but the
copyright protection inconveniences legitimate users.

(I'm not the original poster who Neil replied to, but I care about these
issues.)


--Neil

"philicorda" wrote in message
news
On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 13:39:58 -0700, Neil Bradley wrote:
big snip
That might be what you expect, but copyright law does not support your
position.
True. It's just a shame that the software is cracked in a week, but the
copyright protection inconveniences legitimate users.

Yup. I really hate it because I couldn't write the translation software I
wanted (to be able to export Kontact to Battery). ;-(

As a software developer myself, I understand why it's there and why it's
necessary. I don't like it either...

--Neil

"philicorda" wrote in message
news
On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 13:39:58 -0700, Neil Bradley wrote:
big snip
That might be what you expect, but copyright law does not support your
position.
True. It's just a shame that the software is cracked in a week, but the
copyright protection inconveniences legitimate users.

Yup. I really hate it because I couldn't write the translation software I
wanted (to be able to export Kontact to Battery). ;-(

As a software developer myself, I understand why it's there and why it's
necessary. I don't like it either...

--Neil

"Neil Bradley" wrote in message ...
"Andrew Mayo" wrote in message
om...
(I had already asked NI about authoring tools for NKI files to be met
with complete silence by NI. Presumably only NI's privileged business

I had a similar problem as I was trying to make a Kontakt-Battery...

Reverse engineering a deliberate copy protection scheme is illegal under the
DMCA, and is under the NI license agreement as well.

I absolutely agree with you re copy protection and the DMCA. But this
is not the point because

(a) Kompakt the program is copy protected. However, the NKI file is
not 'copy protected' at all. I can load it on another machine; it is
not tied to my machine in any way. The encryption is not to copy
protect it, it is to prevent me authoring NKI files myself. Yes, I
can't reverse engineer NI's program files to see how the licensing
keys work, but (see below) NKI files I sure as hell can under the
DMCA.

(b) the DMCA permits reverse engineering in order to interoperate with
other programs. In this case the 'other program' is a simple program
to allow me to define sample names and velocity switching levels that
will then create an NKI that will perform this task when loaded into
Kompakt or Kontakt.

Producing such an application would be perfectly legal under the DMCA.

(note that SoundFont files were reverse engineered by the user
community, for instance, and now there are tons of utilities to manage
them. This is all perfectly legal).


You are the legal owner of the file, but you are NOT the legal owner of the
file format, and have no rights to it thereof. If a company wishes to
release the format, that's their choice, but if they don't, you have no
rights to it. Much the same way that we can write whatever file format we
want on our hard drives, but FAT32/FAT16/NTFS formats are all owned by
Microsoft.


Actually the ownership of FAT is somewhat unclear. However, in any
case


(a) Microsoft have patented the FAT format and may not unreasonably
refuse others to license those patents. NI (as you have discovered)
are using restrictive trade practices to prevent licensed owners of
the software interoperating with it in ways not provided by NI
themselves, nor may they author sample content compatible with NI's
software. I suspect under EU law these practices *may* be illegal but
no-one has so far taken action to test it.

(b) WRT other file formats such as the Microsoft help file format,
the .DOC format etc. Programs exist (e.g Robohelp, Star Office) which
can read and write to these files. The authors of these programs
reverse engineered the file formats in order to do this. This is legal
under the DMCA.


The NKI format doesn't encode the wave files, only how it's applied to
Konkat. And even if it did encode the samples themselves, if it was such a
big deal to everyone, they wouldn't use Kontakt.

I didn't suggest that it encrypted the wave files. I used this as an
analogy i.e how would you like it if your work in, say Cubase, was all
encrypted.

As for being 'a big deal'. Obviously it is not a big deal to some
people. I respect this. But for some this kind of thing is not an
acceptable business practice - and, in the same way investors choose,
say, companies with a proven track record of ethical business
practices, so, as purchasers, we have the right to choose which
software vendors we support.

Technically, NI's products work quite well and are deservedly popular.
But I find their business practices unacceptable. Hence the post.

"Neil Bradley" wrote in message ...
"Andrew Mayo" wrote in message
om...
(I had already asked NI about authoring tools for NKI files to be met
with complete silence by NI. Presumably only NI's privileged business

I had a similar problem as I was trying to make a Kontakt-Battery...

Reverse engineering a deliberate copy protection scheme is illegal under the
DMCA, and is under the NI license agreement as well.

I absolutely agree with you re copy protection and the DMCA. But this
is not the point because

(a) Kompakt the program is copy protected. However, the NKI file is
not 'copy protected' at all. I can load it on another machine; it is
not tied to my machine in any way. The encryption is not to copy
protect it, it is to prevent me authoring NKI files myself. Yes, I
can't reverse engineer NI's program files to see how the licensing
keys work, but (see below) NKI files I sure as hell can under the
DMCA.

(b) the DMCA permits reverse engineering in order to interoperate with
other programs. In this case the 'other program' is a simple program
to allow me to define sample names and velocity switching levels that
will then create an NKI that will perform this task when loaded into
Kompakt or Kontakt.

Producing such an application would be perfectly legal under the DMCA.

(note that SoundFont files were reverse engineered by the user
community, for instance, and now there are tons of utilities to manage
them. This is all perfectly legal).


You are the legal owner of the file, but you are NOT the legal owner of the
file format, and have no rights to it thereof. If a company wishes to
release the format, that's their choice, but if they don't, you have no
rights to it. Much the same way that we can write whatever file format we
want on our hard drives, but FAT32/FAT16/NTFS formats are all owned by
Microsoft.


Actually the ownership of FAT is somewhat unclear. However, in any
case


(a) Microsoft have patented the FAT format and may not unreasonably
refuse others to license those patents. NI (as you have discovered)
are using restrictive trade practices to prevent licensed owners of
the software interoperating with it in ways not provided by NI
themselves, nor may they author sample content compatible with NI's
software. I suspect under EU law these practices *may* be illegal but
no-one has so far taken action to test it.

(b) WRT other file formats such as the Microsoft help file format,
the .DOC format etc. Programs exist (e.g Robohelp, Star Office) which
can read and write to these files. The authors of these programs
reverse engineered the file formats in order to do this. This is legal
under the DMCA.


The NKI format doesn't encode the wave files, only how it's applied to
Konkat. And even if it did encode the samples themselves, if it was such a
big deal to everyone, they wouldn't use Kontakt.

I didn't suggest that it encrypted the wave files. I used this as an
analogy i.e how would you like it if your work in, say Cubase, was all
encrypted.

As for being 'a big deal'. Obviously it is not a big deal to some
people. I respect this. But for some this kind of thing is not an
acceptable business practice - and, in the same way investors choose,
say, companies with a proven track record of ethical business
practices, so, as purchasers, we have the right to choose which
software vendors we support.

Technically, NI's products work quite well and are deservedly popular.
But I find their business practices unacceptable. Hence the post.