Hauptwerk hackers, software thieves and vanishing samplemakers
This is my Forum entry where I ask for your help and input to discuss questions about hacking, and the seeming disappearance of several samplemakers.
The Voxus sampleset of the organ in the Grote or St Catherine church in Nijkerk in the Netherlands is almost ready for public release. I keep a keen eye on this sampleset, because Nijkerk is the town where I was born and lived for the first 20 years of my life - and as a youngster I played the organ many times. A few days ago the website messages relating to its release were edited. The page now includes the remark, in Dutch:
"De leveringsdatum was als gevolg van beveiligingsredenen uitgesteld".
Translated into English this means "as a result of security issues the release date has been delayed". Voxus also posted a new requisite: the Nijkerk sampleset will now ONLY work with the Advanced version of Hauptwerk.
Since my search for samplesets in the world of virtual organs began in December 2018, I've found traces of serious 'hacking' and 'software theft' during my extensive internet search for 'cheapies' and 'freebies' as a beginning Hauptwerk user.
I also noted that the "raw download files" for several samplesets (Sonus Paradisi, Voxus and Piotr Grabowski), downloaded to my Hauptwerk computer, "bluntly refuse" to be transferred to a USB Drive: even though I tried and tried, in my deliberate attempt to organise my filing system externally in an effort to pre-empt any PC catastrophies or any unplanned move of Hauptwerk and my sampleset downloads to a new computer -- if that would be needed. I'm convinced that "the lie" dished up by my computer ("file too large for this disk") reflects a deliberate attempt to stop me loading the file(s) to external drives (the first step of 'software thieves' and hackers!), and I have no ethical problem with these copyright protections imposed by the sample makers.
It has brought me ponder that several samplemakers seem to now have "vanished": I tried to contact several samplemakers by email -- but they all remained silent. I had no luck contacting "Akkerorgels", a Dutch samplemaker, when I became interested in some samples I discovered on the Contrebombarde website; I was unsuccesful in contacting the Australian samplemaker Nick Appleton, who sampled St. Augustine’s in Neutral Bay and St. Stephen’s in Penrith, both in New South Wales, and I had no response from Prospectum in Germany. Here's the list of Prospectum samplesets I was really interested in (even though I do all my building and exploring on a very tight shoe-string budget!) with the Contrebombarde page links:
G. Silbermann - Stadtkirche Zöblitz, 1742
https://www.contrebombarde.com/concerthall/organs/view_organ/148
Magnuskerk Anloo
https://www.contrebombarde.com/concerthall/organs/view_organ/62
G. Silbermann - St. Johannes Weinsberg
https://www.contrebombarde.com/concerthall/organs/view_organ/63
St. Peter und Paul Weissenau
https://www.contrebombarde.com/concerthall/organs/view_organ/200
My questions: is it true that these samplemakers have "vanished" or have gone out of business? What are your experiences with the issues I raised above?