When Pro Tools 11 was announced, on 7th April 2013, Avid DID also announce a change in the T&C for the student license. I remember it well.
This post
http://duc.avid.com/showpost.php?p=2026288&postcount=33 in April 2013 was Avid's confirmation that the old terms would apply to old purchases and the new terms to new purchases.
If you read the rest of that thread you will see there was some confusion that people on the free upgrades deal might have to pay $99 but that doubt was put to bed by the post I've linked you to, and others in that thread.
Avid's Tony Cariddi also posted at one point to confirm this as well .... but I haven't bothered searching for that one as well.
Students who bought a Pro Tools 9 or 10 license prior to 7th April 2013 got four years of free upgrades.
Students who bought a Pro Tools 10 or 11 license on or after 7th April 2013 got four years of upgrades at $99 per upgrade. So anyone in this category will need to buy a student upgrade for $99 to get Pro Tools 12. But carry on reading, further below, because the situation has changed for these students.
One other point .... some stores, like Studica for example, continued to advertise the four years of free upgrades deal for a while after 7th April 2013. In fact I bought one. I have been in an ongoing battle ever since. Avid point blank says they won't honour it, its the store's fault for advertising it. The store says it is the fault of Avid's distributor, and the distributor says it only supplied what Avid gave it. Over two years later this has still not been resolved. I just want what was advertised, but the three companies involved are all playing at passing the buck.
Anyway, with the announcement of Pro Tools 12, the student T&C have changed again. For students who bought a Pro Tools 11 or 12 license after the Pro Tools 12 announcement there is no longer a time limit on the number of years you can buy student upgrades for that license. You get a support plan for the first year and you have to renew that support plan every year at $99 per year.
For the students who bought a license under the four years at $99 per upgrade deal, things have changed. When they buy a $99 upgrade to PT12, they are given a support plan AND ARE MOVED ONTO THE NEW $99 per year support plan renewal T&C introduced for Pro Tools 12. Tony Cariddi confirmed this in a post, saying that they were similar plans.
But, and this is the important thing, under these new Pro Tools 12 T&C you have to PROVE YOU ARE STILL A STUDENT EVERY TIME YOU RENEW THE SUPPORT PLAN at student pricing in the future.
Under those previous four year deals (the free one and the $99 one) you only had to prove you were a student at the time of original purchase.
So you could buy Pro Tools in the last year of your studies and still be entitled to three more years of student upgrades even though you are not a student anymore. Now, as soon as you finish your studies, you can no longer have student upgrades.
Another point for clarity .... Avid defines you as a student if you are CURRENTLY undertaking a qualifying form of study, OR if you FINISHED those studies WITHIN THE LAST SIX MONTHS. So you can buy a student license after you have finished your studies, as long as it is withing six months of finishing.
Most students will be on three year degree courses. Many of those won't bother to actually buy Pro Tools until towards the end of their studies, when they can see the prospect of not having access to it via a campus computer. Thus they will be severely disadvantaged compered to the older schemes, as they may never be entitled to a student upgrade.
I posted a question about what happens to people who by upgrading to PT12 from the four years at $99 per upgrade deal are now on the new Pro Tools 12 scheme and how their entitlement to four years of student pricing upgrades is affected by the new requirement that you have to prove you are still a student very year.
To my knowledge that question has never been answered, and I take that to mean that once you upgrade to Pro Tools 12, the new T&C will apply. So beware, if you don't get confirmation otherwise, you are probably giving up your entitlement to four years of student upgrade pricing by upgrading to PT12. If I were you, I'd be fighting to keep the four years without having to prove you are still a student each year.
Finally, there is a different problem for people on the old four years of free upgrades deal. They were NOT put on a support plan, but were provided with a Pro Tools 12 license. Hence one problem is that they have not received the 12.2 update in their accounts (or hadn't the last time I checked, on 5th September, I'm away on holiday at the moment) because that has only been rolled out so far to people on a support plan.
In the webinar, the panel asserted that EVERYONE ON PRO TOOLS 12 IS ON A SUPPORT PLAN, which is a) not true, and b) the cause of the problem above.
The second problem for people on the four years of free upgrades deal is what happens if your four years end date is after the end of 2015. Arguably, we should not have to sign up to a support plan until our four years is up, but the deadline is 31st December 2015 otherwise licenses become frozen at their current version, forever.
Jeffro has set up a support case for me to get this resolved, and I have suggested that one option might be that if we buy a support plan before 31st December 2015, its expiry date should be set to credit us with the number of days remaining on our four years of free upgrades deal.
I'll let people here know ehen that support case gets resolved.