Creative Goes After Driver Modder

mullet

mullet

[H]ard|Gawd
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Aug 19, 2004
Messages
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http://forums.creative.com/creative...hread.id=116332&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

Daniel_K:

We are aware that you have been assisting owners of our Creative sound cards for some time now, by providing unofficial driver packages for Vista that deliver more of the original functionality that was found in the equivalent XP packages for those sound cards. In principle we don't have a problem with you helping users in this way, so long as they understand that any driver packages you supply are not supported by Creative. Where we do have a problem is when technology and IP owned by Creative or other companies that Creative has licensed from, are made to run on other products for which they are not intended. We took action to remove your thread because, like you, Creative and its technology partners think it is only fair to be compensated for goods and services. The difference in this case is that we own the rights to the materials that you are distributing. By enabling our technology and IP to run on sound cards for which it was not originally offered or intended, you are in effect, stealing our goods. When you solicit donations for providing packages like this, you are profiting from something that you do not own. If we choose to develop and provide host-based processing features with certain sound cards and not others, that is a business decision that only we have the right to make.

Although you say you have discontinued your practice of distributing unauthorized software packages for Creative sound cards we have seen evidence of them elsewhere along with donation requests from you. We also note in a recent post of yours on these forums, that you appear to be contemplating the release of further packages. To be clear, we are asking you to respect our legal rights in this matter and cease all further unauthorized distribution of our technology and IP. In addition we request that you observe our forum rules and respect our right to enforce those rules. If you are in any doubt as to what we would consider unacceptable then please request clarification through one of our forum moderators before posting.

Phil O'Shaughnessy
VP Corporate Communications
Creative Labs Inc.



Forum Moderator
Creative Labs
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SLASHDOT http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/08/03/29/046201.shtml

FreedomFighter writes "Since the release of Windows Vista, Creative has promised their Sound Cards as being 'Vista Ready'. Unfortunately, as many unlucky customers did discover, this is not true. What the users actually found were buggy, feature crippled drivers. Creative insisted that features such as Decoding of Dolby® Digital and DTS(TM) signals and DVD-Audio which worked fine in WinXP, would not work on windows Vista. With Creative releasing less than one new driver a year, things seemed bleak. Fortunately, a talented user, Daniel_K, was recently able to 'fix' many of the drivers, enabling the incompatible features and also fixing many bugs. Just today Creative has decided to put a stop to this. They removed all links to his modified drivers, and banned several users who were posting links to the now banned drivers."
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This just enforces the resin I do not buy Creative products. I understand some of the points they make however I feel that there software stinks. I also find it funny that someone has come along made stuff they say "cant" work in vista work. again showing that 1 they don't care, 2 they do stink at driver development 3 they don't want to spend the money to support the products they make.

I think someone should sue Creative for the lack of support of there 'Vista Ready' products. The last card I got from Creative was a SoundBlaster Live!. and do not see why I should spend my money on something that should FULLY work by now.
 
you dont need creative. behaviors like this are a sign of a company going down.

there are other sound cards and whats more,
companies like asus can now mimic that which creative does.
have you seen their critiques of asus's sound implementation?
they sound like a cry baby.

a real company would create and sell something worth while
they just sit back and collect money for a product that is years old now.

it used to be that a SoundBlaster was the card to have for compatibility...
it is not needed any more, not the with on board setups we have now, and with the other audio choices.
 
They should be offering this guy a job not telling him that they will sue him if he doesn't stop. It is bullshit like this that will bring companies down because they turn all the prospective buyers off.
 
I didn't read it that way. I read...

It's OK to make better drivers for Creative products.
It's not OK to make drivers for other products using Creative's code.
It's not OK to ask for donations for Creative's (altered by you) code.

Did I misunderstand? Seems perfectly fair to me.
 
It read that way to me upriverpaddler and I agree, if that is their basis then it seems fair. While I go back and forth on whether donations are fair or not, i can see how that could technically be "taking profits" from Creative... even if you only are paying for the work and not the product.
 
If you read through the entire discussion on the Creative forums, you begin to see that Creative has the means for releasing proper drivers for Vista, yet management purposely withholds the technology so they can profit from people buying future Creative soundcards that are actually compatible with Vista. They chose to use the release of Vista as an opportunity to phase out old products and force people to buy new products. They also lied to their customers by saying their products would be Vista-compatible.

Creative does not need to hire Daniel because they already have capable programmers working for them. However, Creative does not allow their programmers to do their job because management believes they can make more money by preying on the upgrade chain.

Creative's big mistake was hiring the moderator who posted the thread, as he in effect made the situation blow up to crazy proportions and created huge negative press for the company. He could have silently deleted all the threads and privately contacted Daniel about the matter, but instead he posted it publicly for all to scrutinize. His wording was also ill-chosen. I'm sure he's looking for a new job by now.
 
It doesn't matter if everyone bought Creative products; there is no law that state that a seller has to provide a working product. The specifics of the case are irrelevant; even if this guy was only making drivers that are publicly available and nothing else, Creative is well within their bounds to sue this guy into poverty. It's not moral but its legal.
 
urm. Sale of Goods Act. Advertising Descriptions.

Creative advertised and sold the cards as Vista Ready/Capable.

Advertising and promising driver fixes then failing to deliver makes for pissed off customers.
I can see lawsuits forming on this one. Basic rights mean you should be able to get a refund for a non-working product. You bought it for a purpose. It doesnt work for said purpose. Refund. If the store refuses the refund then take it up with Creative. If they fail to refund contact your local trading standards.

Sad that creative stooped this low. But after seeing their empty promises for Linux drivers from 2yrs back and the driver fiasco over the Live cards (which was the reason i sold my Live and got a soundstorm board instead) it doesnt surprise me.

Glad i bought Logitech speakers too... after finding out that Creative changed the pinout on their speakers to stop the older speakers working with newer cards. That just smacks of milk the consumer.

Now they reap the crop they have sown.
 
Same way i read it upriverpaddler, all hes doing is the same thing they guy that does the youpax drivers does. he doesnt code or program he just mod chaing a few lines here and their to get around this and that.

I did that when I was modding Razer drivers for vista back when razer didnt have vista drivers. Taking the XP razer drivers and changing some line here and there to make i work and getting the control panel for it to work. And using X-merdian drivers to do it etc.

He messed up when he asked for donations. Thats setting your self up for a a lawsuit.That be like going into burger king, taking one of there burgers changing the meat to tofo and then asking for donations to help keepi making them. It be diffent if he was hosting his own site for the drivers, But he wasnt. You shouldnt need to take donations if your not hosting them on your own site.

They have the right to tell him what not to do with their code, they own the right to the ip not him. It be like some one changing a code in your game to alloud for something that shouldnt be there and then asking for donations for it.

So asking for donations, is like selling the modded drivers,all he had to do was just dont do donations. He would had been fine like he was.

if he wasnt accepting donations. Then I would agree with daniel. But since he was taking donations. Then I dont agree with daniel, Because I just see him making money off some one esle IP with a few line changes and a few copy and pasta of files. And everone acting like he coded the modded drivers and what not. When he didnt.

Youpax is safe because hes not taking donations for the drivers thats the only reason why creative haven gone after him all these years. Because taking donations for mooded drivers, is just like selling the drivers. Even if it wasnt his point of doing that if you understand what i mean.

And yea even if people stop buying, it isnt gonna stop them. because theres other people that will still buy it because they dont agree with daniel. or it doesnt bother or they dont care.

Because I would never sell my prelude over what happening in a forum. I like it too much to sell it. I dont want a Asus Xonar and go thru the razer barracuda 5.1 problems and hassle in vista and i not gonna go back to XP which I dont like any more. I enjoy EAX3-5 too much to just throw my card away.


daemionsos they repost the thead that has the drivers you need back on the forum. After the assault they got the other day.
 
I believe the last straw was when he said that one of his driver releases would depend on donations. That's the same thing as asking money for something you don't own. It was just after this announcement from him that all this mess took place, because he's being doing these mods for a very long time and nothing happened.
 
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