Users of iLoks–or people who have defended their use after I suggested that avoiding them altogether might be a good idea–may be interested in this discussion thread. It seems that if you don’t pay the yearly PACE protection money insurance fee for your iLok, if something goes wrong with it, you’ll get charged over $200 for its replacement. If you have the insurance, replacement is going to cost you over $100. Even better, it appears that this insurance policy actually doesn’t cover what it’s advertised as covering if the product in question is from Waves or AudioEase, whose products presumably represent a majority of iLok usage.
An interesting aspect of this is that these fees are being charged by PACE, not by the vendors of the software who are using PACE to protect their products. Once again we see how using PACE worsens the honest end-user’s experience in ways that are completely beyond the control of the maker of those products.
But hey, if you want to continue supporting this racket, it’s your choice.
