Creative Backs Down on Vista Driver Debacle 228
In the wake of last week's driver debacle, Creative has finally decided to back down for PR purposes. Modder Daniel_K, author of the offending Vista drivers, has had his posts on the Creative forums reinstated. According to Creative the move was to avoid infringing on other company's IP. "Daniel_K is incensed by Creative. 'They publicly threatened me, just to show their arrogance,' he told El Reg by email. He told us that Creative contacted him on a chat session. 'They were sarcastic, ironic and asked me if I wanted something from them, as if I were expecting something,' he wrote. 'It was my protest against them and would like to see how far it would go.'"
first post! (Score:5, Funny)
Good for him (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good for him (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good for him (Score:5, Insightful)
I kind of wish they would die, if only so we wouldn't have to let down so many disappointed people who bought Creative's X-Fi and Audigy hardware thinking it would be a good card for home recording only to find out that it utterly sucks at it. Between the high latency and all the post-processing it does to make the sound "better" (much of which is apparently hard to turn off), it's about the worst possible choice for that use, yet Creative seems to market it as though it would be good for that. Not to mention that the sound quality on the inputs just isn't up to snuff compared to even the cheapest M-Audio hardware.
At a minimum, the company deserves the corporate equivalent of life in prison without parole for the number of people the company has harmed with their product claims.
Re:Good for him (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Good for him (Score:5, Interesting)
Still no true 3D positional audio through EAX either, just some hackneyed binaural cues. It's a shame, but I guess that's just how the stone rolls.
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Thanks,
Since reading this incredible arrogance from Creative...
I don't want to buy another sound card from them again. I was just wondering what might be some good competitors to which it seems you've answered.
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I've been looking at the whole Creative situation for a little while now - I used to be a big fan of their hardware. My first SB16 kicked so much ass during the Glory Days of Microprose and Windows 3.11...
So, naturally, I was disenheartened to hear how poorly this was handled. But, angry lawyer-speak aside, my understanding is that Creative had a few (legitimate) problems:
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I can't say that I've ever really followed developments in sound hardware, so I'd always assumed that Creative must be pretty good, given their market dominance. Stupid mistake, now I think of it.
Someone else in this thread said something about Ensoniq - I think I have an ES1371 based card lying around somewhere...
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They've been making fantastic audiophile-grade cards for Win machines for years.
Word of warning though, their older stuff (Santa Cruz in particular) does NOT play nice with Linux, despite being generally fantastic on Windows machines.
Best audio setup I ever had was back when on my old AMD XP1900+ box running Windows XP with my Santa Cruz card hooked to my Monsoon 5.1 flat panel surround sound speakers. Not uber powerful
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Because I have one (X-Fi, got it included in my PC) and while it's an acceptable sound card(How hard is that, really), it would be absolutely useless for recording.
I used Guitar Rig just for giggles on it, and the latency is so bad (even with the rather good Asio4all drivers) that it's useless for serious use.
I think it would be criminal if they advertised it as something serious for recording.
Re:Good for him (Score:4, Informative)
The thing is, at the time of Ensoniq's implosion, they were eating Creative for breakfast in the soundcard biz. Ensoniq was first with PCI soundcards which were "Soundblaster compatible" (meaning they worked with old DOS games that talked directly to the SB16's ISA-bus register space; that's completely irrelevant now but a big deal back then) and Creative couldn't get their own stuff to work. And Gateway was buying Ensoniq's cards by the boatload, and other PC vendors were looking at doing the same.
It really is too bad that Ensoniq had issues that lead to Creative buying them. Basically, Creative didn't care about the musical instrument side of Ensoniq; Creative just bought Ensoniq to shut down their better competitor.
Re:Good for him (Score:5, Insightful)
An important thing to note here is that a dedicated soundcard is no longer a necessary component of a computer due to onboard sound. A large part of Creative's market are going people who decide on their own to buy a soundcard for some reason, and which card they choose will depend quite heavily on some geek's opinion.
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Re:Good for him (Score:5, Interesting)
Last time this subject came up, I said that onboard sound was more than good enough: multiple people proved me wrong, and indeed, i was, so I'm not going to try and argue that. However, point is, for 90% of people, the computer will be functional as is. Games will run fine, their MP3s will play fine (and I can't hear any noise introduced by the board during playback, and its quite limited and hard to notice during recording... of course, not viable for professional work), everything will be "good enough" to the average joe (as opposed to videocards, where even Joe will realise really quickly that his onboard video isn't good enough when he can't even run a 3 years old game on his machine).
So that means that ALMOST EVERYONE who buys a sound card, knows what they want. Low noise, professional features, instrument ports, specific encoder/decoders support, and they'll want quality (and the tone of your post is quite in line with this statement).
So Creative cannot sell shitty feature-less cards easily. They have to have a LOT over an onboard card for someone to want it.
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Re:Good for him (Score:4, Interesting)
The amount of ppl doing recording on their home PC is likely below 1%. Those might need multichannel low-latency ASIO, but for the rest of us, onboard auio is more than good enough. It's not like the crappy AC97 of 10 years ago anymore.
Onboard sound = poor ASIO (Score:5, Informative)
I couldn't agree more. (Score:2)
Re:Good for him (Score:5, Insightful)
IOW, it is just an enthusiasts upgrade.
Re:Good for him (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good for him (Score:5, Informative)
So I doubt it's just a few angry kids.
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Backing down or CYA Manuver? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver? (Score:5, Interesting)
Either way, the Internet has yet again handily shown another large corporate entity that 'do no evil' is a pretty damned good motto.
That once letter to the local paper editor gets millions of reads these days. Despite their efforts, many businesses and their practices are transparent to the public whether they like it or not. The "blowback" from that is what some like to call 'market forces' at work
Google was rather bright to call everything beta, and only put a line through the word when everyone was happy with how it works. When you produce products and make claims of a general nature and have no clear plan with how to deal with those inevitable questions from reviewers and users... well, blowback is the natural response.
Trying to hush up the competition is
It's just a shame that the folks at Creative had to fsck it up like this when they could have created a PR positive experience of it.
Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver? (Score:5, Funny)
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In theory yes.
In practice, it's not neutral. It's as evil as the people that control it. It is an extension of those people's will.
Making a fine distinction between a machine and the invisible people controlling it as the machine goes about crushing people, is correct in theory.
But in practice, if the same people keep controlling it, you might as well associate their brand with "Evil". After all those invisible people in control are often so interested in Bran
Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver? (Score:5, Interesting)
They only care about not getting caught when they do evil. Creative was caught, and now they are back-peddling to try to avoid the consequences of their actions.
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rj
Re:Backing down or CYA Manuver? (Score:5, Funny)
Think about it...
Where would Slashdot be if Microsoft was not an evil monopolistic corporation ?
Where would Slashdot be if the RIAA were not suing grandmothers and college students ?
Where would Slashdot be if Jack Thompson was not suing video game manufacturers ?
Where would Slashdot be if Creative released Vista drivers that work ?
You see, by being evil you effectively bring life to the Internet. Without evilness no one would have anything to bitch about and everyone would be too busy watching porn and looking up peach cobbler recipes. FUCK THAT!
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I say it depends on the kind of porn.
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You never know when you might get caught, so the actual lesson is "don't be evil"
Right, because Microsoft has never been caught being evil and been able to get out of any repercussions for doing so. We all know their aggressive anti-competitive strategy has made them billions of dollars.
The real lesson is "figure out what you can get away with for how long and how much it'll make you, then do that". The only difference here is that Creative thought they could get away with a little more than they actually
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Personally, while I ceased buying CDs, I did not then begin downloading music or videos. Actually, I haven't even bothered to figure out how to play a MP3, though I'm rather certain that it would be easy.
I also stopped going to movies. (TV I gave up years ago, because the ads were too irritating.)
And yes, I still consider those who commit copyright infringement on the member companies of the RIAA or MPAA to be relatively innocent. It's not something I would do, but
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Have they ever done this? I can't think of an example, but then again, I only use their search engine and hear GMail is still in beta.
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This doesn't happen with free software (Score:4, Interesting)
Daniel_k had no right to modify Creative's software. They did not grant
him the right and he was not using an OS that granted him any rights.
People need to start purchasing products which give them the freedom to
use the product. What I'm saying is that when you buy a product you
should especially look for one feature: freedom.
http://fsf.org/ [fsf.org] For more information about software freedoms please see
the Free Software Foundation's homepage.
Re:This doesn't happen with free software (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This doesn't happen with free software (Score:5, Interesting)
Mind you, I think Creative was a complete asshat over this, but the legal basis still intrigues me.
Re:This doesn't happen with free software (Score:5, Informative)
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Even under California Copyright Law...
Re:This doesn't happen with free software (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not how copyrights work. By default, you have no right to do anything with someone else's copyrighted work. It's only through a license agreement that you have any right to even use Creative's code. If the EULA is entirely null-and-void, then there's nothing else that gives you right to use it. Note that certain portions of an EULA wouldn't necessarily hold up in court (technically, they could say that you must sacrifice your firstborn on the Temple of Sho'ka'rei, but that doesn't mean it'd hold up in court), however there has to be something that gives you the right to use it.
Mind you, that all means nothing in the court of public opinion. While Creative might have had the legal right, their actions made them look like senseless bullies. It would have been far more productive to give the guy a job and release his changes officially.
Re:This doesn't happen with free software (Score:5, Informative)
Now, he doesn't have a right to distribute the software, but he probably has a right to distribute changes to it. If i tell my friends to read a book, and come up with a different ending, I'm allowed to tell them about it. I wouldn't be allowed to sell the book with one chapter replaced or anything.
What he should have done is release a program that changes a few bytes in the original file, not release a modified file. But your notion that you need a seperate license to use something you bought is obsurd, and I can modify the software all I like in the privacy of my home.
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Re:This doesn't happen with free software (Score:4, Interesting)
From here
http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&thread.id=116332 [creative.com]
2) I firmly believe that Daniel K has caught the flack because of the Dolby Digital feature As far as I am aware Auzentech paid a lot of money for an exclusive licence with Dolby to have their cards support this. Now, Creative would get into trouble if they allow a means for this to be "cracked" to run on non-Auzentech cards.
3) Accepting money (even in the form of donations) for someone elses copyrighted material is a big NO NO.
Now Daniel_K comes along and enables the code on Creative cards. Dolby finds out and complains to Auzentech since they probably signed a contract that only allows them to use the technology on their cards. Auzentech complains to Creative who've signed a contract to enforce this in the driver. And things look bad for Creative, since they allowed him to post the crack on their forum.
So it's not the Vista driver he's in trouble for, it's unlocking Dolby on Creative cards.
That said, the traditional way to handle this is to negotiate in private not on some internet forum, offer the guy a job and so on. And release the missing Vista drivers.
Re:This doesn't happen with free software (Score:4, Informative)
This is, of course, complete nonsense and exactly what the media companies want to to think. The mere act of an entity "publishing" i.e. making something available to the public, gives "the public" certain rights to that material. These rights are embodied by "fair use."
If you want more rights than fair use provides, then you need an agreement.
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That's not how copyrights work. By default, you have no right to do anything with someone else's copyrighted work. It's only through a license agreement that you have any right to even use Creative's code.
[/quote]
Minor changes are required:
"By default, you have no right to RESELL OR REPRESENT AS YOUR OWN someone else's copyrighted work." You can for instance, always make a parody work of something as well as make in-house fixes and edits and so on. And, as pointed out elsewhere, the EULA is null an
Re:This doesn't happen with free software (Score:5, Insightful)
Care to explain how constitution, or a constitutional law of Daniel_k's states prohibits him from distributing patches to Creative's drivers, provided that he neither distributes patched drivers directly nor do the patches contain Creative's copyrighted code in excess of fair use amount needed for interoperability.
Now, it's possible that Daniel did not release his work properly, but he sure has "powers" to modify Creative's code.
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Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with the definition of derivative work [wikipedia.org] before you respond any further.
You mean this part?
Applying the patch modifies the drivers, which I'm pretty sure is preparing a derivative work. Only Creative is allowed to do this, unless there's an applicable exception.
Re:This doesn't happen with free software (Score:4, Informative)
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I partially agree with you. (Score:3, Insightful)
Too late for Creative (Score:2)
Does anyone know of any other company that doesn't use Creative hardware or chipsets in their sound cards where I can plug my guitar in and have access to pitch-shifting, chorus, flange, auto-wah, like the old SBLive! 5.1 had in their EAX control panel?
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It's called an effects chain. The SB probably does it all in software anyway, so you might as well use a recording app and a real, recording-quality audio interface and have access to much more powerful, much higher quality effects and much better sound in
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Digidesign, M-Audio, Mark of the Unicorn, Tascam, etc. There's a huge range depending on your specific needs. Look them up on your own.
Not really (Score:3, Informative)
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A possibility to consider- use software to do your effects. The key to realtime software effects is low latency. To achieve this, look for soundcards that have ASIO-capable drivers, and look for software that can take advantage of ASIO as well. With the right configuration, you can get your latency down to 5-10ms (maybe lower these days), which is essentially imperceptible.
On the software end, iirc FruityLoops can handle ASIO, and it can host a huge variety of
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I gave up on Creative a couple years ago. I've had tons of trouble with their drivers and eventually just decided it wasn't worth the trouble.
Since all I use my sound for is gaming, and I've just g
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Liars or idiots (or both) (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Liars or idiots (or both) (Score:4, Insightful)
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BTW with the exception of creative reinstating the forum links, all of this information was in the first article... about how he got mad at creative and did stuff to really piss them off, and even how he dec
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So, like the AC was saying - he'd fit in at Creative.
screw creative (Score:5, Insightful)
An apology and an announcement of a policy change from here forward would also work.
Otherwise, all I see is that they got caught and decided they'd just try other means to shut down unauthorized, uh, "unbreaking". There's also the whole deliberate breakage to begin with.
As things stand right now, my only outstanding question for resolving the Creative debacle is "Turtle Beach or m-Audio?"
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As things stand right now, my only outstanding question for resolving the Creative debacle is "Turtle Beach or m-Audio?"
I don't know about m-Audio, but Turtle Beach doesn't seem to be designing their own cards anymore, they havn't for a while. Last gen cards were all crystal based with some add-ons. The USB sound cards are pretty much a HK import with the turle beach logo stamped on it.
It's a shame actually, Turtle Beach was a pretty decent sound card company for a while, but the non-stop getting bought out and moving offices must have taken its toll on them.
Too little, too late (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not just me that won't buy your products it's every computer I build, it's every person I talk to, it's every decision my company makes that I can sway against you, it's every law I can turn against you.
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Seems like Creative is actually going to feel a h
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Miserable excuses by Creative (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen more than a few companies simply bypass vista's certification process and release their updates, with instructions on how to circumvent Vista security checks. Good for them, bad for vista.
An Excuse Breathes Its Last and Croaks (Score:4, Insightful)
Lord knows I'm no fan of Vista, but it seems to me that Creative was trying to lay their own incompetence or dishonest marketing plans off on Microsoft. They must have been pretty embarrassed when this guy came along with a set of working drivers to blow their alibi out of the water. I sincerely hope the people who made the decision to harass him are shown the door in a very public way. Proper damage control requires on less.
Let's be clear here (Score:5, Insightful)
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The actions of Creative may have been business motivated. Cripple the hardware so you have to buy new hardware. Bad idea.
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It's a problem for Creative because often they use identical hardware for multiple sound cards, with the drivers determining which features are active. For instance, they may sell the UltiSound Basic with 5.1 surround for $150, and the UltiSound Extreme with 7.1 and Dolby output for $300. If you look carefully at the cards, they're absolutely 100% hardware-identical. Even the jacks are identical and wired up the same. In other words, the UltiSound Basic is quite capable of outputting 7.1 and Dolby just like
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I did not realize they were using drivers to lock out capabilities on identical hardware. That is truly shady dealings, IMHO.
They would have to clean-room drivers for the cards if they want to be legal. Even then, it would be sketchy since they don't have specs. And the open source audio driver would never work in Vista I bet. Bad all around.
I have a SoundBlaster Pro somewhere, I bet it still works. If I can find a ISA slot on a mobo...
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Think of it like software. It costs a software company nothing extra to distribute the full Enterprise version of their product, but you pay less for the standard version. They developed a single hardware platform, but you need to pay extra for the features. They just made sure the protection was implemented in hardware.
Now their business of using updates to actually remove fe
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Drivers... (Score:2)
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No leg to stand on anyway: Tortuous Interference (Score:4, Interesting)
Since the drivers he made available were generally available anyway, he did not run afoul of copyright for making his changes available. (assuming he uses the words "for support work" and not "for the drivers") He could use "patch" just to be 100% sure.
As a consultant I can (and have done) modify third party hardware and software for the benefit of a customer who has proper ownership of the hardware and license to the software and I may change for that service and there's NOTHING the third party vendor can do about it.
The relationship Daniel has with the user of a driver with his modifications is of no business to Creative. In fact, Creative may be worried that they are interfering with Daniels business. If you are curious look up "Tortuous Interference."
Daniel *did* make money from his work. He could have a case against Creative's very public accusation.
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That being said, from a legal point of view, he should be in the clear, but big evil corp will use copyright ambiguity. It is best to use a patching strategy to avoid all risk.
All that being said, what Creative did is tortuous interference and that is grounds for a suit. He h
I didn't even though these drivers existed (Score:4, Insightful)
They ought to start by... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who gets this heavy-handed in today's internet society is far out of touch with his/her customer base, and has no reason to be employed by a company that makes computer equipment.
In other words, incompetent to the point of being actively harmful to the well-being and even survival of the company itself.