Creative Labs Stops Guy From Making Its Technology Work Better
from the how-dare-you-help-people! dept
It appears that Creative Labs is the latest company to shoot itself in the foot over "intellectual property" issues. Apparently, many users have been upset that Creative has failed to support certain systems, and a user in the Creative Labs' forums started releasing drivers to make things actually work or work better. Creative struck back and has removed the various threads in their forums discussing these drivers (thanks to Joe for sending in the link). Basically, this user, Daniel_K was making Creative products work better, and Creative has forced him to stop, claiming that it's violating their intellectual property rights. From a legal standpoint, Creative is probably absolutely right. But from a business perspective, the move seems suicidal. Just read a few of the comments in the long thread following the announcement from Creative. Many people were buying Creative products because of Daniel's mods, and will now look elsewhere. This seems like yet another case of IP laws being used to hold back innovation, rather than encourage it.
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Filed Under: copyright, drivers, intellectual property, licenses, sound cards, tinkering
Companies: creative labs
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Another whopper
Creative Pressures id Software With Patents
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/28/1529222
Creative sues Aureal Semiconductor and it's superior A3D sound engine, forcing it into bankruptcy, and then Creative buys Aureal on the cheap.
http://www.answers.com/topic/a3d
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Creative has not changed.
They were a dirty company in the early 90's who didn't really care about there customers, everything instead was designed to give them total control over the market.
Nothing has changed.. I for one am not surprised.
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Say What?
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Update
My memory seems to have been slightly off; the FAQ page is actually on the forum, and the moderator in question doesn't seem to be a Creative employee. Still, it does seem extremely inconsistent to me.
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Re: Update
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>>>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.
That takes balls to say that to someone who is donating a driver stack to customers.
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Re: Mike Allen
What’s interesting is that they've tolerated Daniels work this long, and only sent out the 'cease and desist' once he started enabling features they didn’t want enabled (essentially messing round with their marketing strategy).
But manufacturing a high-end chipset and then scaling it down based on the different price-points in the product range is nothing new; you get exactly the same thing in CPU and Graphics Card chipsets. The difference is while Creative threaten legal action, Nvidia and Intel actively encourage people to mess around with their products in the form of ‘Overclocking’. They recognise that helping people get the most out of their products helps them retain customers in the long term, while trying to force people to buy a more expensive model might only increase short term profits at the risk of loosing them.
But it’s surprising that a company the size of Creative would handle something like this so poorly.
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Re: Re: Update
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Boy Cot
Along comes Daniel K who makes the drives work better, for a while he's tolerated ney even encouraged.
He asks for monetary help, hell servers cost money.
Creative sees that he is making them look bad, and boom, not so creative shuts him down. He's got a day job, he was doing this for the love if it, and he wanted to cover his expenses.
For this he gets shut down.
So when I need a good quality gamer sound card I will buy;
Asus
M-Audio
E-MU
Turtle Beach
Non X-Fi AzuenTech
HT Omega
Razer Barracuda
Never Creative
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Re: Update
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Re: Update
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Re: Boy Cot
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Two Points
1. If you have a car and buy parts from a third party to make your car run better, that is OK. Now if you buy a soundcard and want to install a third party application that is somehow considered a violation of so-called soundcard manufacturer's "intellectual property". Once you buy a piece of hardware, be it a car or a soundcard, you should have a right to tinker with it. Event to the extent of selling the "improvement". (Look at all the auto parts dealers selling third party parts.)
2. It seems to me that it would be unethical for Creative to remove posts from their website on this issue. (Even if it is considered legal.) I am surprised that his action has not been highlighed on TechDirt as a form of censorship.
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Nasty but understandable
Daniel_K was enabling a Creative card to work on Vista that didn't previously, stating that Creative should do one of 2 things:
1) Offer the guy a job and make the drivers officially available (upshot - no new sound cards sold)
2) Leave the drivers up and available to download (upshot - no new sound cards sold)
Why on earth would Creative want to do this?
The business model has to be sell new cards at every opportunity surely?
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creative screwed up
It's kinda sad when you have to use citizen justice like the bay just to bring out the reality of how bad creative is. I'm embarassed to have anything of theirs, but then again you think of how corrupt they are and its kinda on the level of Intel. AKA the "we suck the microsoft power teat" therefore creative soundcards are usually in most bundled PCs (thankfully not on barebones).
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Creative Zen Nano
I have a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum in my PC at home and the drivers for it have caused problems ever since I bought it years ago. It doesn't get along with my ATI All-in-wonder card at all.
So yeah, I'm done with Creative too. This just seals the deal. The only question remaining is, "Which manufactufer(s) has sound cards with all the fancy plugs and a remote?"
freak3dot
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Poor Decisions
And really they should have just recommended to him that asking for financial donation creates said above situation OR have reimbursed him for his efforts. But they shouldn't have released that notice.
By doing this, they've made it obvious that they are trying to force the older cards out to make everyone buy their newest ones. The amount of money they would not have made because of people retaining their older cards into Vista is far outweighed by the amount of money they won't be making from computer enthusiasts such as myself that will now abandon their products. And worse yet, many of us are the one's whoms advice are sought out for computer product recommendations by their family and friends.
I have a large network of folks that talk to me first before purchasing computer products and now I'm going to steer them all away from Creative products.
This one looks very good: HT Omega Striker.
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Re:
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Re: Boy Cot
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Re: Nasty but understandable
> at every opportunity surely?
And yet by their actions, they're driving away all their current customers and losing future ones as this story spreads like wildfire through the gaming community.
Doesn't sound to me like what they're doing is going to result in the sale of more sound cards.
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Re: Re: Nasty but understandable
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FTA: "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... When you solicit donations for providing packages like this, you are profiting from something that you do not own."
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Re: Poor Decisions
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donations are a way of saying thank you and helpin
Creative is being totally ignorant....as usual.
nVidia, and others have realized that tinkering is important for many people. They also realized that if they allow people to get the most out of their hardware then in the long run they will be considered favorably in the minds of consumers (the people paying for the hardware), and people will buy more from them.
The more open and flexible a hardware company is, the better they will be perceived by all consumers.
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Re: Re: Boy Cot
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Best of both worlds...
Come on, who wouldn't? I KNOW I WOULD !!!!
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Oh and.....
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Lazy Developers Made Creative King
The problem is that after they get your money for their sound cards, they abandon you for the other half of the equation: the drivers! Dan_K (any relation to Jeff K.?) has proven that the problems with driver support are either due to CL's incompetence (likely) or willful neglect (even more likely) and they finally decided they couldn't stand being shown up any more. Unfortunately, they chose precisely the wrong means to silence him and are not going to suffer the righteous wrath of those they've screwed over with poor support. A smart company would've put him on the payroll, smothered him in NDAs and then black-holed all his work. Creative ain't that smart, so instead they'll use IP laws to silence him with the community able to bear witness to their bullying. Again, not smart.
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I've seen a smart quote in Reddit that seems to disagree with you... it says "this is chess, not checkers".
I don't think he'd gain that much sympathy were he to become an arsehole to Creative. Although that's debatable - since both ways Creative still made a horrendously ethically bankrupt statement.
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I think this seems off, Mike.
Then he used the Creative site to ask for money.
Then they said, 'Hey, buddy, I don't think so.' and took some of the threads down and asked him to stop messing with thier product.
As a tech company, I'm sure they're fully aware that people will still be able to get the mods. It seems like they just don't want other people to profit from it.
In hindsight, they probably should have just hired him, but other than that, I don't really see a huge problem with this. The techs had a problem with him profiting from thier product, and said 'Attorneys, what do we do?' and the attorneys gave them good legal advice, bad PR advice.
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Re: Lazy Developers Made Creative King
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Re: Re: Lazy Developers Made Creative King
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Re: I think this seems off, Mike.
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Re: I think this seems off, Mike.
If he's offering something of value, what's wrong with asking for money? What's wrong with profiting even (though it doesn't appear that he was profiting, just asking to cover his expenses)?
He was offering something of value, so I don't see what's wrong with him getting paid to do so.
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Creative Bashing!
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You bought a Creative Product
I think my subject line says it all. Check the Legal info here. http://www.emu.com/legal/legal.asp
If you're going to boycott, you may want to actually know what you're purchasing. . . Emu is also predominantly a Musicians PC recording company. They do make some soundcards that can be installed in a pc. . which are amazingly very similar to the Creative Labs products....hmmmm.
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Re: Re: Re: Boy Cot
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I wish I'd known of this before I removed my card.
I waited for a year now, for new drivers, and so far, nothing has come available. The card is no longer in my system, and another Creative card will never be purchased by me again.
I should have just taken it back when I could have, instead of waiting for drivers that would never exist.
The funny part of all this, is that there are already links being passed around for these drivers. They will never go away...
EtG
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Re: Re: Re: Boy Cot
This would be akin to you writing a novel and then I translate a single line of text into another language(we'll say you quoted some Swahili proverb without translating it) and then I take donations from those who want to read those words because they think it will add to their understanding of the book but in actuality you wanted to put off that translation till you reached the fourth volume because it was a key to keeping the readers interested in the story and buying additional volumes.
I'm not defending Creative here but this is what it seems is their beef.
As for the Omega drivers, I think they are just to make sure you can use the cards PERIOD. I had to use them for my emachines laptop because Gateway/Emachines saw fit to not update their drivers and ATI put the responsibility for updating on the resellers, and come the next time I ran windows update, I lost video until I got those drivers.
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Re: donations are a way of saying thank you and he
You write a 4-volume novel. The first novel has an untranslated Swahili proverb that you leave how it is because it is key in keeping the readers interested until they read volume 4. I translate it and take "donations" for it and volumes 2-4 are massive flops because everyone figures out the mystery and they have no incentive to buy but I continue to rake in dollars when someone who just picked up volume 1 at a used book store decides to send me a donation.
Whether they are ignorant or not for taking some of the actions they did, he still didn't have the right to ask for donations without first consulting Creative since, afterall, he would then be getting paid even though they did most of the work.
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Re: Re: donations are a way of saying thank you an
Also for paying you for the translation of a Swahili proverb that is the only thing holding interest for the next 3 books the author is not very good. The people that would pay for that are not to bright since they could search for the proverb on line to find a translation or use a free translator.
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Here's A Thought...
Reminds me of something I hear all the time:
"No good deed goes un-punished."
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Re: Two Points
As TechDirt points out in this thread, purposefully interfering with their customers' enjoyment of their own product is not a smart business move. Hopefully their customer base will show them the errors of their ways. The 2100+ posts in that thread overwhelmingly seem to indicate there is an upcoming shift in purchase decisions for many.
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Digg
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Re: Re: I think this seems off, Mike.
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where can I get the driver's
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If Creative doesn't want to write Vista drivers for older cards, that's their right. When they stop someone else from fixing those drivers, they're forcing users to abandon perfectly good hardware for no good reason other than their greed.
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Re: Nasty but understandable
But such thinking is what will put them out of business. They should be looking to capitalize on the customer base they already have by making them happy customers and thus increasing their overall customer base via networking.
Increasing sales by forcing repeat purchases by existing customers offers a very limited future.
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Re: Re: donations are a way of saying thank you an
On top of that, if someone did translate your Swahili proverb and sell that translation, there is nothing AT ALL wrong with that. You are hoping to snarf more money from your customers in order that they get YOUR translation. Someone else is beating you to the punch, possibly doing it at a lower cost, delivering faster or making the information more easily consumable. It's not like you have an artificial barrier like a patent on the Swahili language, do you?
In this case, CL has sold a series of electrical components that work just fine, but have only enabled a couple of them via their driver. Someone else enables the rest of them (they are, after all, sitting in the customer's computer taking up space and energy...oh AND THE CUSTOMER'S MONEY).
If CL doesn't want their customers, people who PURCHASED their product, to use the things they sold, then they shouldn't have sold them.
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TeckDIRT does not understand real innovation!
Michael Masnick, you sound just like Piracy Coalition members who love to talk about innovation. The problem is that what they describe as innovation has nothing to do with actual invention.
Most certainly I can agree that Creative has committed a public relations blunder. But to characterize this as an example of intellectual property law run amok only serves to demonstrate a profound ignorance of both law and the essence of invention.
Ronald J. Riley,
Speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.patentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 9 pm EST.
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Re: TeckDIRT does not understand real innovation!
Ronald, so far the only one displaying a profound ignorance (willfully, it appears) would be you. Can you explain how this is a result that "promotes the progress" in any way?
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Creative probably can't tell us what is really goi
1. Microsoft has agreements with the content producers (record labels, movie houses, etc.) to put digital rights management into Vista, which apparently they have done. I can't provide a link right now, but I have seen this referred to since before the official launch date of Vista. It affects high quality sound and high quality video. It can degrade the performance of an HD display or a "high definition" audio component to standard if the component doesn't have the built-in DRM hardware.
2. Hardware vendors who want access to Microsoft's example code and "licensed" APIs to craft their drivers have to agree to support the agreements Microsoft made. (See 1, above.)
3. Allowing high definition sound to be played through their hardware via software that circumvents the DRM parts of Vista would land hardware vendors in hot water with Microsoft and the content providers.
4. It isn't easy, even with Microsoft's help, to create functional, stable drivers that work with the bloated DRM code in Vista that the content providers have saddled Microsoft with.
5. If Creative Labs does not actively try to suppress the distribution of drivers that endable the high definition sound without working within the (computationally) cramped confines of the DRM software and firmware, they may be seen as "aiding and abetting" violation of the agreements made with Microsoft, and therefore, with the content providers.
6. To keep the DRM-hating law-abiding consumer who just wants his/her sound from his legally purchased (CD, download, etc) to work (under "fair use" clauses of the copyright laws) on his new high-definition sound card or MP3 player or whatever from decrying everything touched by Microsoft, Microsoft (probably, no proof) has had every hardware vendor and independent software developor sign all sorts of "non-disclosure" agreements to muzzle them about all the back room deals being controlled and coordinated by the content producers.
Creative's "hands" may be shackled by some agreement they cannot even acknowledge exists!
[If you "sleep with the Devil", sometimes you get burned!]
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The bottom line of the matter....
The fundamental problem we have is that software manufacturers have had it all their own way for far too long with the unilateral practice of licensing their products, rather than a straight retail sale of the product.
This doesn't happen anywhere else in the field of commerce or manufacturing; the implied rights of the software writer (as in intellectual rights) apply in every other form of retail manufacturing, but only the software industry seems to be able to claim those rights (a) in their entirety and (b) in perpetuity.
That to me is totally unfair and restrictive to the point of being farcical.
The whole effigy is directed at ensuring that this sort of chicanery can be carried on under the umbrella of the law and stopping anyone else from improving on, or otherwise modifying the product to suit their own needs.
High time that licensing system was scrapped, and software writing houses reverted to a plain-and-simple retail sale basis.
JB.
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