As for the Kemper company, my opinion is that rather them putting time, resources and manpower into a project that decreases (the pretty low amount of) piracy, they should keep developing the product (which they do in a fantastic manner). Involving the…
This.
My opinion on that is the following:
As was previously stated by a few people, the business of commercial profiles is clearly not what Kemper was designed for. Commercial profilers used the device and thought "well, given my access to all the gear I have I might make a few $$ out of this" and that is all well and good both for profilers who earn money, Kemper as a company (because the better profiles are, the more people would buy it) and end users as myself (as I absolutely enjoy commercial profiles I bought). It was only the matter of time when the commercial profiles will become available for download for free or resale - it happens to ALL software. Copyright protection takes HUGE budgets even in the cases of software giants such as Adobe, Microsoft etc. Making some copyright protection on a restricted budget would most definitely make life more complicated for 99,9% of honest buyers, but will not stop 0,1% of 'pirates' anyway. Any effort in doing that is counter-productive for Kemper and effectively is a waste of both time and money.
I see the disappointment the commercial profilers have about the theft, and there are some brilliant ideas in this topic, but in software industry it just does not work this way. And I am sure that the percentage of 'pirates' in the Kemper community is miniscule.
Moreover, I live in Ukraine and read a couple of Russian guitar forums on a regular basis. Do you know how people buy profiles there? They make a group of ~50 people, pay 1$ each and buy a bundle for a group. If there was an effective copyright protection, I am 99% sure no one of them would buy anything at all. So that is controversial.
