Craig.Carlen[Online].com

Not five minutes ago a friend of mine located me via Google Talk. Seems he was having difficulty with a computer he built and wondered if I had any ideas. Specifically his Creative Audigy2 soundcard wasn’t working in Windows Vista. Thinking I better blame Vista right off, I started searching for updated drivers from Creative. What I discovered was rather amazing. It seems Creative’s products - almost all their products - won’t work very well if at all with Windows Vista. But it seems owners of Creative soundcards have a savior of sorts - his name is Daniel_K and he’s a contributor in the user forums on Creative’s site. At least he was. It seems he discovered Creative had crippled the Windows Vista drivers from almost their entire product line (as you can see from this screen shot). So he decided to hack the Creative drivers to make them work properly in Windows Vista - as well as add additional functionality that was inherent within the Creative cards but was never implemented by Creative.

It seems that Creative didn’t care at first, but then Daniel_K did the unthinkable - he asked for non-obligatory donations to help cover the costs of his efforts. Of course this didn’t sit well with Creative - after all, hacking their drivers is one thing, making money on their debacle is quite another. So the VP Corporate Communications at Creative Labs Inc. Phil O’Shaughnessy sent Daniel_K a cease-and-desist order:

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.

To say the least, this didn’t sit well with the masses who have been helped by Daniel_K as can been seen by the many responses (1300+ responses thus far) on the Creative user forums to the above letter. (And yes, that’s Phil O’Shaughnessy’s actual e-mail address linked in that letter - feel free to tell him what you think about their corporate tactics.)

Okay…I can see Creative’s side - to a point but a very small point. Daniel_K was asking for donations and thus he was making money on Creative’s intellectual property. But when a consumer purchases a product - and in the realm of computer hardware and software that purchase generally includes a EULA - the consumer has every right to expect good faith reciprocated from the company they are purchasing from. In this case, Creative Labs. Obviously, good faith doesn’t always happen because according to Daniel_K Creative had purposely crippled drivers thus making certain Creative soundcards would not work with Windows Vista. Now if that’s true, what causes a company to pull something like that is beyond me. I don’t agree with Daniel_K making a profit off others property, but for Creative to purposely cripple their product’s software drivers to not work properly in Windows Vista? That’s bad technology - Very bad. And considering the fervor over this topic on the Creative user forums as well as other tech forums 1 2 3 and news sites 1 2 3 4, this could be hurt Creative in ways they were not expecting. And it seems they’re already hurting as it is, sales are down to the point they sold their corporate headquarters in Singapore.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 30th, 2008 at 10:00 pm and is filed under Computers, Technogreed. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.