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Third Party Driver Modder Threatened by Creative Labs
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Comments (43)
Creative can keep their IP - and all their products.
12 earlier comments in the full thread.
Hmm.... We'll see what the definition of "tomorrow morning" is soon enough. If anything from Creative does get suspended (i.e., not able to buy online from them), then it may prove that the letter was real. At this point, it's all wait and see....
Well then ... http://www.boycottcreative.com/ ... that took no time at all.
Is it too early to call this corporate suicide?
EDIT: And evidently you can now also get the T-Shirt - http://www.cafepress.com/creativesucks
Is it too early to call this corporate suicide?
EDIT: And evidently you can now also get the T-Shirt - http://www.cafepress.com/creativesucks
Looks like some posts may be getting jacked with.
Mirror of the whole thing (just scroll down past the ads): http://creative.edited.us/
Deleted posts: http://creative.edited.us/deleted.html
Mirror of the whole thing (just scroll down past the ads): http://creative.edited.us/
Deleted posts: http://creative.edited.us/deleted.html
Quoting:Looks like some posts may be getting jacked with.
Looking over your copies of those deleted post I'd say that most of them were deleted fairly. Half of them contain loads of profanity. The other half is someone plastering the guy's e-mail address and other details on the forum. It's the kind of stuff I'd delete here on LXer as well probably.
There are a few posts in there that make me wonder why they were deleted, but only one or two.
Understood on that one. I have not yet gotten a reply from anybody at Newegg, and I have not seen any Creative products suspended as of yet, so more than likely, I'm going to assume that the letter was fake for now.
And look at what we have here!
[url=http://consumerist.com/373901/creative-sparks-customer-revolt-when-it-tries-to-silence-third party-programmer]http://consumerist.com/373901/creative-sparks-customer-revol...[/url]
On the front page of the Consumerist!
Update: Unfortunately, they left a few things out:
1.) Daniel_K was simply re-enabling certain features that were disabled in Creative's original Vista drivers.
2.) Phil O'Shaughnessy did not post the letter himself. He wrote the letter, but he didn't post it. The user Dale-CL, a moderator on the support forums did.
[url=http://consumerist.com/373901/creative-sparks-customer-revolt-when-it-tries-to-silence-third party-programmer]http://consumerist.com/373901/creative-sparks-customer-revol...[/url]
On the front page of the Consumerist!
Update: Unfortunately, they left a few things out:
1.) Daniel_K was simply re-enabling certain features that were disabled in Creative's original Vista drivers.
2.) Phil O'Shaughnessy did not post the letter himself. He wrote the letter, but he didn't post it. The user Dale-CL, a moderator on the support forums did.
Ok, confirmed.... The post from "newegg" was not real.
Quoting:Chat InformationPlease wait while we connect you to a Newegg representative.
Chat InformationThank you for contacting Newegg. My name is Wendy. How may I assist you today?
Thomas Holbrook II: I saw a post on the Creative Labs forums allegedly from the company you work for.
Thomas Holbrook II: http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board....
Thomas Holbrook II: That is the link to the post in question.
Thomas Holbrook II: It's related to an incident in which a higher up in Creative Labs ordered a forum user to stop providing modified drivers that would enable full functionality of certain sound cards (such as Audigy SE and XFI) in Windows Vista.
Thomas Holbrook II: I would like to know if somebody from Newegg did in fact post to that forum.
Wendy: Let me take a look into that. One moment please . . .
Thomas Holbrook II: Thank you.
Wendy: You are welcome.
Wendy: After checking, we show that the postings in the forums are posted by customers. We do not post in forums.
Thomas Holbrook II: The reason why I asked is that a representative from Newegg did post in another forum at one time concerning a customer complaint.
Thomas Holbrook II: They posted on lxer.com.
Wendy: We know that, but we do not post in forums usually.
Thomas Holbrook II: Understood.
Wendy: Do you have any other questions, or is there anything else I can assist you with today?
Thomas Holbrook II: Not really.
Thomas Holbrook II: So the user "newegg" issued a fake statement?
Wendy: Maybe some customer use that name.
Wendy: Do you have any other questions, Sir?
Thomas Holbrook II: No.
Thomas Holbrook II: Thanks for your time.
Wendy: You are welcome.
Wendy: Thank you for contacting us. I hope you have an Eggcellent day!
Chat InformationThanks again for contacting Newegg. Once you know, you Newegg.
And it looks like it's about to get to 200 pages!
Wow!
Wow!
Quoting:Ok, confirmed.... The post from "newegg" was not real.
If it's not real then how did they get the account? If you click through to user newegg's profile then you can see it's registered with webmaster@newegg.com. From what I understand from other people who posted there, you need to verify your e-mail address before you can register on the creative forums. That means you need to be able to read mail going there...
Sander, Sander, Sander --
Surely you are not one to underestimate the ingenuity of hackers!!!
Surely you are not one to underestimate the ingenuity of hackers!!!
The creative boards hacked? Worse, newegg's webmaster e-mail address hacked? Possible, but not likely. More likely an enraged newegg employee who had access to the mail address and decided to post that without consent from higher up (and without any influence). I'm guessing someone is going to get sacked at newegg today :-)
Possibly. There is also another one too:
1.) Sign up and confirm.
2.) Post.
3.) Change e-mail address in profile.
1.) Sign up and confirm.
2.) Post.
3.) Change e-mail address in profile.
Sorry for the multiple posts. I'm doing a play-by-play at this point:
http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board....
Scroll down until you see a post from Dale, a moderator.
http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board....
Scroll down until you see a post from Dale, a moderator.
Well, this thing is now at 174 pages as of this message posted. So, what do you think? Will it get to 200 by the end of the day? 300? Better yet: over 9,000?!
This has been like watching a massive train wreck. Things are about to get very interesting.
This has been like watching a massive train wreck. Things are about to get very interesting.
176 and still counting.
I'm off to class for a bit. Let me know how it turns out. ;)
I'm off to class for a bit. Let me know how it turns out. ;)
Ok. I went to class and then work. Now I'm back, and this thing broke 200.
Here's a link of interest for those who want to keep score. Apparently, this isn't the first time Creative has done something like this....
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20040728-4048.html
Here's a link of interest for those who want to keep score. Apparently, this isn't the first time Creative has done something like this....
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20040728-4048.html
Creative does not appear to have made any official response as of yet. I will more than likely attempt to contact the PR person in a few hours to see if I can't get through to them.
Here's a wonderful opportunity for Creative to mend this huge PR disaster. All they need to do is say "April Fools! We started 4 days early to really get you guys going. Go ahead, make/distribute/use the unsupported drivers."
Ok, I've called Phil O'Shaughnessy directly to see if I could get a few comments from him as well as his side of the story. We'll see if he gets back to me.
On the other hand...
While I have NO problem with people turning their back on Creative, a well-deserved fate, a couple of things should be kept in mind:
1. He was distributing Creative software -- he modded drivers, he didn't write his own from the ground up 2. He was asking money for it.
They have a genuine IP issue with him.
If you believe that companies (like Microsoft) must respect the GPL, you must accept that other licenses also deserve respect.
Creative, on the other hand, deserves no respect whatsoever. A pox on their house. The last Creative product I got came in a tossaway computer somebody gave me. I tossed away the card.
1. He was distributing Creative software -- he modded drivers, he didn't write his own from the ground up 2. He was asking money for it.
They have a genuine IP issue with him.
If you believe that companies (like Microsoft) must respect the GPL, you must accept that other licenses also deserve respect.
Creative, on the other hand, deserves no respect whatsoever. A pox on their house. The last Creative product I got came in a tossaway computer somebody gave me. I tossed away the card.
From what I gather, Daniel_K asked for donations to support efforts (like many FOSS projects do) but wasn't asking for money in return for the driver directly. You could download it regardless. But this has no impact on the IP issues. Money or no money, the IP issue would be the same.
From what I gathered from the thread (I didn't read all 200 pages mind you :-), the main IP issue is Creative's, who apparently licensed some fancy audio technology only for Windows XP. The IP holder of that fancy tech gave someone else an exclusive Vista license. Hence Creative crippling their Vista driver to disable those features.
Quoting:1. He was distributing Creative software -- he modded drivers, he didn't write his own from the ground up. They have a genuine IP issue with him.
From what I gathered from the thread (I didn't read all 200 pages mind you :-), the main IP issue is Creative's, who apparently licensed some fancy audio technology only for Windows XP. The IP holder of that fancy tech gave someone else an exclusive Vista license. Hence Creative crippling their Vista driver to disable those features.
> They have a genuine IP issue with him.
They would have a genuine IP issue even if he wasn't asking for money. but they might be willing to ignore it in that case.
He should take the open source drivers (preferably BSD ones, so he could keep his improvements), rework them for Windows and improve them in the process. Then Creative wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
They would have a genuine IP issue even if he wasn't asking for money. but they might be willing to ignore it in that case.
He should take the open source drivers (preferably BSD ones, so he could keep his improvements), rework them for Windows and improve them in the process. Then Creative wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
Quoting:Hence Creative crippling their Vista driver to disable those features.If I'm understanding correctly, Creative disabled, but did not remove, the code for the features in question. That would be a rather bone-headed move on their part, I think.
If all Daniel_K needed to do was "flip a switch" in the software, then this goes even deeper to the matter of software patents and "IP" in general:
http://gus3.typepad.com/i_am_therefore_i_think/2008/03/why-n...
> If all Daniel_K needed to do was "flip a switch" in the software,
Then he should release a separate program to do so and not distribute the drivers at all.
Then he should release a separate program to do so and not distribute the drivers at all.
>Then he should release a separate program to do so and not distribute the drivers at all.
Yup. It might still expose him to threats under DMCA, but that seems a little horsey.
Yup. It might still expose him to threats under DMCA, but that seems a little horsey.
This shows the ridiculousness of the whole concept of "intellectual property," which is based on taking away the very-long established principle of first sale. You can legally mod and resell all kinds of products. For example, there is a huge aftermarket automobile modding industry, where shops take stock vehicles and hot them up in all kinds of interesting ways. You could do this with any product- toasters, bath towels, bagels, anything at all. You can even do it with books, music, and movies. Weird Al Yankovic has made his whole career parodying other people's songs. The National Lampoon parodies everything. There hasn't been an original plot or storyline since Shakespeare- they're recycled endlessly. If books and movies were software, you would have to pay license fees to someone for "boy meets girl" plots. It's insane. Creative is being very stupid; they already got paid, and all Daniel K is doing is making their sucky products usable.
TC -
You are very close to correct, but this case is a little bit different from that. Daniel_K was distributing Creative's software.
Had he just distributed patches, you would be spot on. If he had purchased one copy and distributed one copy, you would also be spot on.
At any rate, the big issue on this is that Creative is not merely a crappy vendor, but a stupid one.
You are very close to correct, but this case is a little bit different from that. Daniel_K was distributing Creative's software.
Had he just distributed patches, you would be spot on. If he had purchased one copy and distributed one copy, you would also be spot on.
At any rate, the big issue on this is that Creative is not merely a crappy vendor, but a stupid one.
Quoting:If I'm understanding correctly, Creative disabled, but did not remove, the code for the features in question. That would be a rather bone-headed move on their part, I think.
I'm not deep enough into it technically, but this is what I think as well. I read a response from Daniel to a user who complained about cracking and popping sound, even with the patched driver. Daniel blamed it on the DRM path in the driver. So I'm assuming he's patching Vista drivers for his work and nog e.g. patch XP drivers to work on Vista.
Dino,
Just for clarification. Daniel_K was going to use the donations to acquire more Creative cards so he could test his modifications to make sure everything worked. At least, that's what I got out of the whole thing. This thing has spread like wildfire. I may give that one person who wrote the letter a call tomorrow (btw, I believe that info is publicly available anyway). If I get a chance, I'll let you know how it goes.
Just for clarification. Daniel_K was going to use the donations to acquire more Creative cards so he could test his modifications to make sure everything worked. At least, that's what I got out of the whole thing. This thing has spread like wildfire. I may give that one person who wrote the letter a call tomorrow (btw, I believe that info is publicly available anyway). If I get a chance, I'll let you know how it goes.
Quoting:I'm not deep enough into it technically, but this is what I think as well. I read a response from Daniel to a user who complained about cracking and popping sound, even with the patched driver. Daniel blamed it on the DRM path in the driver. So I'm assuming he's patching Vista drivers for his work and nog e.g. patch XP drivers to work on Vista.
I do remember reading something to that effect. This could very well prove Peter Gutman correct when he warned about the problems of Vista's DRM.
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