(H2O)Dear Steinberg customer,
Over the weekend of 12th and 13th of June 2005, illegal or ‘cracked’ versions of some Steinberg software products appeared on the internet. In tests conducted at Steinberg on these illegal versions, we have found that:
- Some of the illegal versions of our software are severely functionally impaired and do not run reliably
- Legitimate Steinberg products installed on a computer may be damaged if illegal versions of our software are installed on the same computer
- Some of the illegal versions cannot be fully deinstalled
- There is no reliably measurable difference in CPU and disk resource use between the legitimate software products and the illegal versions.
Furthermore, no realtime processing operations in our applications are contained within the code that interfaces with the USB Key, and no realtime processing such as playback or recording is affected by our copy protection system. Fact: the USB key has no measurable effect on CPU performance.
The next version of Cubase SX/SL and Nuendo, namely 3.1, is currently in testing, and is planned for release in August 2005. With many new features and smaller enhancements, the new update will not work with the illegal “dongle emulation” software that is being distributed on the internet. This and further maintenance updates containing fixes and new features will not be useable running these illegal versions.
Our USB Key is one of the most efficient and unobtrusive copy protection systems implemented in the audio industry. We will continue to widen the scope of its implementation, using the system to allow product rental, unique user IDs and other benefits in the future. The USB-based Steinberg Key offers access to the ever-expanding array of Steinberg products and related services, and is a technology vital to keeping them exclusively available only to Steinberg customers.
Thanks,
Your Steinberg Team