Creative, big corporation with disgusting practice

[polobunny]

As some of you may know, Creative drivers have been awful in Vista. Some enterprising users have been modifying the drivers themselves to restore or fix some of the crippled features for X-Fi cards. Daniel_K was one of them, until he got threatened by Creative for providing users with a decent solution, AKA using his packages.

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.

Message to Daniel_K - Sound Blaster - Creative Labs

[screwballl]

their protecting their property.... now if he was doing this to open source drivers or software I would understand the disgust but otherwise they have a product and are protecting their investment... they can't help that MS shafted the ability of software to directly use the hardware, instead they require the API layer which completely screws with video and sound based hardware access at the I/O level..

[Tech Geek Deluxe]

To be creative would be to employ him ... not fight him.

[drew and not u]

Originally Posted by Tech Geek Deluxe

To be creative would be to employ him ... not fight him.

Exactly. In what they'll pay in legal fees trying to stop him, they could just buy some decent code off of him and supply their customers with something other than awful drivers.

[Tech Geek Deluxe]

True ... they are hypocrites. He is being creative ... it would do them well to try to be what they name themselves and make it a win-win for them and the guy who has thus far worked for them for free.

They could pay some change ... offer a 2 year performance based contract for consulting and easily draft a tight non-compete so they would control him and benefit him and customers all around.

[PrOLifIC_onE]

Originally Posted by Tech Geek Deluxe

To be creative would be to employ him ... not fight him.

That is precisely what I was thinking. He was doing the work for very little as it was. They could pay him a modest salary or even pay him as an independent contractor, with the stipulation that all his future creative drivers go through them....

[polobunny]

The guy has to and will stop working on Creative drivers though, and many people will stop supporting Creative products (which are not supported anyway...) after seeing this, me included.

The funniest part is that Creative said there was no problem with him working on Audigy Vista drivers because Creative dropped support/wanted to push the X-Fi line down your throat (same line that has so many issues under Vista... go figure). The guy kindly asked for donations, never made anyone pay.
Creative, in my opinion, is making a terrible move in enforcing their intellectual property protection yadda yadda in this situation, successfully outraging it's fan base that were already mad for lack of support under Vista, OS that has been out for over a year already. And no Microsoft is not to blame on this, even if it's not possible to access hardware directly anymore. FULLY functional drivers should be available from hardware makers, even more when they themselves tout being "Vista compatible". Looks like "Compatible" takes a whole new sense in this sentence.
"It might work, but if it does, you don't get half the functions you wanted/bought this for..."

I wouldn't be surprised if Creative had a look at Daniel_K work for their next drivers.

And yes, I will really start boycotting Creative if this whole thing ends up like this.

[azianai]

i find it funny how the moderators obviously are reading all the comments but don't care, they only respond to daniel_k

[One4yu2c]

Originally Posted by screwballl

their protecting their property....

...while at the same time enraging customers (26 pages of angry posts and counting). Certainly most of us can understand why Creative would ask Daniel to cease offering alternative drivers, but would it have made more sense to support and/or ignore the modding community rather than threaten legal action against it? Particularly as integrated audio is quickly catching up to add-in soundcards, it's tough to take a PR hit like this.

I don't have the answer (that's for Creative to decide, and apparently they have), but I do think Creative made a mistake in making this public on their forum rather than contacting Daniel privately.

[polobunny]

Originally Posted by One4yu2c

...while at the same time enraging customers (26 pages of angry posts and counting). Certainly most of us can understand why Creative would ask Daniel to cease offering alternative drivers, but would it have made more sense to support and/or ignore the modding community rather than threaten legal action against it? Particularly as integrated audio is quickly catching up to add-in soundcards, it's tough to take a PR hit like this.

I don't have the answer (that's for Creative to decide, and apparently they have), but I do think Creative made a mistake in making this public on their forum rather than contacting Daniel privately.

Still, if at least they provided decent support, none of this would be happening. They dug a hole by not providing decent support for Vista users, built themselves a nice coffin by starting bullshit talk about intellectual property (which coincidently happened not very long after Daniel_K posts about DDL and DTS on Audigy being only a driver issue) and put a nail in the coffin by forcing Daniel_K to stop his work (which was saving Creative a fuck load of money because people were mass returning their X-Fi products after getting BSOD time after time or not being able to even get sound).
So much for being helpful.