Creative Labs, makers of sound cards for PCs, has brought forth the fury of the blogosphere on its own forums by publicly admonishing a member who had provided patches so its products would work correctly under Windows Vista.
The sound cards, which apparently work fine on Windows XP, lose some functionality on the new Vista operating system. Forum member Daniel_K made some modifications to the code used to run the sound cards, and released drivers of his own that allowed Creative Labs users to take full advantage of their sound cards on Vista.
Creative Labs wasn’t too happy with Daniel_K’s efforts, and issued the following statement to him on their product message boards:
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.
Now Daniel_K probably shouldn’t have sought donations for his work - that’s the main thing that most likely attracted attention to his efforts. But otherwise, he was only trying to ensure that other users like himself were able to get their sound cards to work properly on the sometimes-unstable Vista OS.
The real awful part about this is that by doing this in such a public place, Creative Labs opened themselves up to a firestorm of criticism.
Immediately following their VP’s blog post, the rants against Creative Labs begin - and as of this writing, continue for 57 pages - almost 600 comments - nearly all of them negative. Most posters are saying that they will either return their Creative Labs product, or that they will never purchase or recommend the purchase of a Creative Labs product again.
Way to go, Creative Labs. Instead of taking care of your customers and making sure they had the software support for your hardware that they needed, you decided to publicly quash the only good thing your customers had going for them. Now they hate you. Oh well.
Read the original forum post and comments:
[Creative Labs : Product Boards : Sound Blaster : Message to Daniel_K]
40 comments ↓
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Though, its appropriate to protect IP rights of a company’s product, an open admonition is not advisable.
Probably they should first provide a solution and then give the solution to the people and encourage them to adopt original company drivers would have been a better option than pointing it out openly.
Well at least they protected their “intellectual” property. (:
I-D-1-0-T-5
goobers, they just should have hired him. ego was the culprit.
If this annoys you to some degree you can sign the petition at:
http://www.petitiononline.com/crtvlabs/petition.html
130 signatures and counting!
Years of building a company into a tech empire and by some choice words of ignorance from one person someones hard work is no longer respected. If there is no respect, there is no business. It happens everyday in business, yet no one learns.. “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.” then they say “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.” I understand its their IP and they have right to pursue, but the way they handled it and it being in the publics eye just sank their ship.
Creative’s Vista drivers have been crippled and missing support for key features since Vista’s introduction, which was well over a year ago. Creative hasn’t released any updates since Vista’s introduction. The Awful Marketing mistakes of Creative’s product are the claims of being “Vista Ready”, when they’re not. If a user can make a driver work, why can’t Creative? Or don’t they care about users, now that they have their money?
What they should have done is offer the dude a job. Great PR and they would be on their way to a fix.
The cards not working on Vista was probably planned obsolescence. If that was the case, then they were upset that someone made the cards work and people wouldn’t have to buy Creative’s newer hardware.
In other words, if Creative wanted that hardware to work with Vista, I’m sure they could have easily patched the driver.
If Creative just couldn’t figure out what a random guy without the source code could, then that’s just sad.
[…] Original story here. […]
CA was perfectly happy letting Daniel be until he started asking for money from the people to whom he was providing drivers. “Donations”, he called them.
He got greedy, if you like. While we all like compensation for our work, he WAS violating the law, but CA was willing to let him pass until that point.
That said, I sure wish CA would get off their asses and fix their bloody drivers. Got to be something going on in the labs and boardrooms preventing them from doing so. If Daniel could do it, CA can do it.
“IP”, what a load of crap. It sounds like 3rd graders bickering over who thought of what first. If we don’t watch ourselves the argument will turn into who’s dad can beat up every other dad.
In 2 months we all will have forgotten about this, and Creative’s bottom line won’t suffer at all.
‘“Donations”, he called them.’
Donations, as they were, since no one was obligated to provide any to him. He was perfectly in the right to ask to be compensation for time spent on something that is useful to others. That’s not greedy, that’s wage labor capitalism. And he wouldn’t be having to ask for donations if Creative would have done their job, instead of putting him in the position to do it for them. What Daniel_K did allowed many people to USE the product they PAID for, and since Daniel wasn’t getting a cut of the sale price, I see no problem in his asking for donations; and donations they were.
I just want to know when all these companies will stop acting like children on the school ground going “MINE MINE MINE” and grow up and join the community in making all software functional on all machines
What is going on here is simply the fact that creative intentionally crippled the hardware to ensure its obsolescence which in my opinion is a bad business decision - BTW computer hardware manufacturers do this all the time (processors come to mind- overclocking) and Daniel_K interfered with creative sales by extending the life of products they intended to become obsolete by making drivers intended to work with newer or more expensive hardware work with the budget or old stuff. It’s that simple.
If he were to write the code without the use of any Creative code they would have no case. They have the right to control their ideas and code created from those ideas. He’s reaaly lucky they just didn’t sue him for damages like the RIAA does.
this is exactly why i am switching to linux operating systems on all 6 of my computers. microsoft and the people who make software and hardware for windows p/c deliberately create stuff to stop us from using perfectly good older equipment. so they think we have to buy their newer stuff. i got news for them all they are doing is sending more of us fedup users to the opensource market. i for 1 promote linux and open source every chance i get. i would like nothing better than to see the windows systems and their cohorts lose their hammerlock on the home p/c market. i am at the moment refurbishing pentium 2 and newer computers with linux and donating them to underprivileged children because that’s the generation which will end up showing bill gates and his cronnies the door.
“In 2 months we all will have forgotten about this, and Creative’s bottom line won’t suffer at all.”
Not quite. There will be those who stop for good.
As well, this isn’t the first big issue Creative has had; they’ve been advertising their products as being good for Vista, but are most definitely not.
Many of their MP3 players are going down the drain (breaking often).
Their customer support is hideous.
I’ve not user a Sony product since their RootKit fiasco, and I have no intentions of doing so again.
The same with Creative — they’ve lost my trust in them over the years, and for me, this truly is the last straw: I’ll not be buying from them again.
Creative is not the only source for sound cards, MP3 players, etc.
Interesting that the VP is nowhere to be found when there is talk of planned obsolescence. Must be coincidence. I see other sites using copywritten materials that ask for donations and don’t see any corporate intimidator interfering.
I have had a lot of really bad experiences with Creative products. They’re always the first thing to give me a blue screen of death if I update a driver with one of theirs. And all the crap attached is even more of a pain and resource hog. Who the hell uses Creative Media Player?
I have so much Creative garbage installed on my PC that I’ve never even used. Of course, they steal your file associations from your preferred software, too.
Oh and I love reading the long legal agreements and especially the privacy agreements. They are purely pathetic.
If you don’t want all the garbage that comes with Creative products, there are plenty of really good alternatives unless you got it OEM. Then you’re out of luck.
Try uninstalling a Creative product, now that’s fun. They should have a 1200 page manual on that.
What they should have done is bought the driver from him so they could distribute it them selves. They clearly dont dig open source, therefore i will try to avoid buying from them.
“What they should have done is bought the driver from him so they could distribute it them selves. They clearly dont dig open source, therefore i will try to avoid buying from them.”
That my friend is not in their best interest they are attempting to create a situation which you need to replace the hardware with a new creative product. it’s the same thing Microsoft does to force their new OS down peoples throats.
Linux my friend, Linux
I am going to show my ignorance but I would rather know than guess - IP? Internet Protocol? How does this apply to drivers in a sound card?
J.C.,
In this case, IP is intellectual property.
@Wiigee, the drivers that Daniel was releasing were not “open source” drivers. They were modified versions of proprietary drivers. Big difference. Even though Daniel’s intentions were good and I would support him in accepting donations for his time donated, Creative have every right to stop him from messing with their Intellectual Property. It’s sad, but they have the legal advantage. The point of the article is that in enforcing their legal privilege they have alienated all of their users and customers even further.
Any publicity is good publicity, look at this blog.
As one of Edgar Allan Poe’s famous character’s once said, “Nevermore”.
The best way to “punish” a blood sucking corporation is to deny them profit. There are better products available and I for one will never knowingly purchase another creative product.
You have really shown your true colors. I always though your products were junk, now I see why … you are trash.
I little bit over-reactive on the part of creative, but not going back to a well established company because it refuses to support hardware that was $10 in its prime is just dumb. A venerable plethora of vendors have dumped support for older hardware in vista, it just doesn’t make sense to spend man hours and money on trash hardware anyways. If you can afford a $200 + install of vista, or a new computer that comes with it, you can afford to go out and get a $50 x-fi.
What do you mean the “protected their IP”? It’s not like he’s stealing movies and mp3’s! He worked on their mistake and fixed it using his own time and probably money since he had to pay for his computer to be on while he worked on it, mountain dew and Tylenol to help with the headaches of making the drivers work. What is asking for a few donations for his hard work? It’s not like he’s going to become a millionaire and even if he did good for him! Their “IP” was flawed he made their “IP” flawless. If Bill Gates can do it and make billions why can’t Dan make a couple mil? If you don’t want someone making some money because you were lazy, don’t be lazy in the first place!
As of 4-01-08 They’ve edited their first post, removing what was first said, and tried to cover it up saying it was a misunderstanding. They were very clear with what they said, now they’re trying to lie some more, on top of the original lie about not intentionally ruining the early audigy series in Vista (which these drivers made by Daniel_K fixed.)
Creative has removed their asshat VP’s original post on the forum, and replaced it with this drivel:
We have read the strong feedback about Creative’s forum post regarding driver development by Daniel_k and other outside parties. Creative’s message posted on our behalf by our Company spokesperson tried to address our concern about the improper distribution of certain software which is the property of other companies. However, we did not make it as clear as we would have liked that we do support driver development by independent third parties. The huge task of developing driver updates to accommodate the many changes in the Vista operating system and the extensive testing required, including the lengthy Vista certification requirements for audio, makes it very difficult for Creative to develop updates for all past products. Outside developers have been very helpful to Creative and our customers by developing updates for many of our Sound Blaster products, and we do support and appreciate these efforts. This however does not extend to the unauthorized distribution of other companies’ property. We hope to work out a mutually agreeable method for working with Daniel_k in supporting his efforts in driver development. Going forward, we are committed to doing a better job of working more closely with third parties to support their development for our products and our customers.
[…] any links to the original top post of the thread), but many sites have copied the text of that VP, including the site Awful Marketing. Posted in Articles. Tags: drivers, […]
What was the original?
whoever posted this… bad call, I mean really… bad call
as I understand it, it’s not even really an issue about IP. it’s a licensing issue with dolby that pushed creative into this. creative licensed technologies from dolby for use with XP, but have not yet licensed those same technologies for Vista. All creative is really doing here is covering their collective asses against a lawsuit from dolby.
Creative Crunts!
Foreseing this whole incident:
- Daniel_K drivers are gonna spread like the plague thru servers and unofficial websites.
- Creative hardcore customers are going to buy other brands products such as M-Audio, Roland, etc.
- Creative image will get futher damage as renown trademark.
- Creatives frustrated attempt of hardware obsolence has failed and the consequences are inevitable.
[link= Kudos for Adam:]http://awfulmarketing.com/index.php/2008/03/30/pc-sound-card-vendor-creative-labs-creates-pr-nightmare-on-their-own-forum/#comment-728[/link]
Hmmm look at this. Bloggers quoting this incident will also have visitors who comment on these. So the number of comments must also include the referred pages.:)
lol @ these misinformed comments
this wont do diddly squat to creatives sales
they were in the right, this stupid pud should’ve kept his hacked drivers off their territory and not have asked for donations
Ok,Here it is.Creative intentionaly disabled hardware with crappy drivers.Creative also knew well in advance that vista was going openAL as opposed to hardware acceleration.
The new X-Fi cards should not have had the problems that they did. Here is my issue,If Creative wanted to entice people to buy new hardware all they have to do is IMPROVE the product with more features and performance.It’s called R&D.For instance, no one wants to use a ball mouse anymore because they just don’t perform like the new optical mice.Same thing applies to other technologies including sound cards.
Even though Daniel_K used creatives source code and creative are crying intellectual property ,SO WHAT !!. If he is able to increase performance and functionality good for him. Creative and every other computer hardware manufacturer knows full well that they are dealing with increasingly tech savy consumers and all they are doing is insulting their
buying public.Prebuilt systems ususally use onboard codecs and the people using prebuilds don’t really care about increased sound quality.They are usually happy with plain jane ac97 and such.People buying sound cards are usually enthusiasts that have a pretty good idea of what they are doing.I’ll bet my left leg that most of the people on this forum are at least capable of replacing parts in their computer,I don’t think there is anyone here that is stupid when it comes to computers.
As far as donations are concerned,It is at the end users discretion if they want to give Daniel_K some cash.They are not obligated to do so however,Creative makes the purchase of newer hardware manditory.This is consumerism at it’s finest.
THey have lost my respect and I can no longer recommend creative products to my friends and family anymore.Trust me when I say a fair number of people come to me for advice with computers.Has anyone read the financial news on creative over the past year?.They are loosing millions every quarter and they can ill afford this kind of public relations nightmare.
All I can say is well done creative !!, Bravo !!, Great job shooting yourself in the foot !!.
You have lost my trust and the trust of thousands of others and thats a hard thing to earn back.
While I applaud any person who uses their freetime to help fix some issues for a product that may not be working. So far all I have seen are comments how creative is in the wrong. I’m sorry I have to disagree. First of all hey could’ve immediately filed for legal action which they are legally entitled to. Had he NOT asked for donations they would be in the wrong. They would’ve eventually released fixes for the problems, but it would take awhile. Even the message is worded as nice as a company can. If it was your product and someone was standing to make money of it, would you not tell them to stop. People stop complaining, as I see it he’s lucky he didn’t get a lawsuit slapped. Which is quite possible in this day and age when a 11 yr old can be sued and fined thousands of dollars for illegally downloading.
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