"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."

He acknowledges that Creative has a case regarding intellectual property, but is furious about the company's strategy. "I'd say they are stealing [from] their own customers by disabling features based on technologies they own (so they did it on purpose) and by charging for a software that requires an improved driver that they refuse to provide."

"At least they are getting flamed all over the web and they are certainly mad about it. That is enough reward for my hard work," he wrote.

Creative climbs down over home brew Vista drivers [The Register]
(Photo: Young Frankenstein)
PREVIOUSLY: Creative Sparks Customer Revolt When It Tries To Silence Third-Party Programmer

Over the weekend, Creative's forums have exploded with posts from angry customers who have sworn to stop buying their products. There's already a boycott site up at boycottcreative.com.

A Creative Forum poster named "youAREkidding" summed up Creative's stupidity quite nicely:

Imagine what would happen if 10%, just 10% of the people who will read about this, be in a store somewhere, see someone about to buy a Creative Labs product, and say to that potential customer. "If you have Vista, Creative has non-functioning drivers for it, there was a guy who created a Modified driver, but Creative made him stop distributing it, and there are still no workable drivers for Vista." Some people might laugh at him, but the majority of computer perhiperal buyers don't know squat, and if they hear it from someone who presents themselves in a knowledgeable manner, they may actually think twice about it. Creative loses another sale.
 
So, yes, Daniel may very well have stepped on some copyright rules, and Creative had the lawful option of doing what they did. Score 100 on the law, score minus several millions for not doing the job themselves in the first place, and putting someone like Daniel in a position where he had to do what he did, just to get the customers of this company happy.

Let me just remind you that for example NVIDIA still supports GeForce generations 5, 6, 7, and 8 in their latest video drivers for XP, XP64, Vista, Linux and Mac OSX. All those old cards still get performance improvements instead of being crippled.

Newbie
Posts: 1
Registered: 03-30-2008
newegg
Message 1179 of 1,436
Viewed 2,595 times
 
To Whom it May Concern:
 
While it is not our place to condemn the decisions of Creative regarding this issue, our customers come first. That being said, it has come to our attention that many of our customers are not happy with the products Creative has released nor the support for those products. To wit, we have processed nearly 5,000 return orders within the past 48 hours. While it is not normally in our best interest to publically comment in a manufacturer's forum, the overwhelming concensus has left us little choice. As such, effective tommorow morning newegg.com will suspend sales of the sound cards in question, particularly those indicated as "Vista compatible", pending an investigation into the matter. Those of you whom recently ordered such a card will still recieve your product as indicated in any relevant conversations. While we regret this abrupt decision, it has been deemed neccessary to protect the interest of our consumers. We welcome contact from Creative as soon as is possible so that we may resolve this issue.
 
Thank you,
 
Newegg.com
http://www.newegg.com

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.

Too funny.

Pictures from an (airline strand-in) exhibition [US PIRG]
(1st Photo:US PIRG)
(2nd Photo:AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivai / September 19, 2007)

Well, no, it doesn't. But then again, neither do Creative MP3 players more. Creative has just released a firmware update for it's Zen MicroPhoto and Zen Visin:M players, which disables the box-advertised feature of recording FM radio to your hard drive.

Isn't it nice now that EULAs allow companies to revoke your rights for their own convenience at any time?

Creative Strips FM from Zen Vision [Gizmodo]

Creative is now claiming that the iPod breaches a patent on the always-inferior Zen. The patent, dated August 9, 2005 (note to the astute: a patent filed four years after the iPod revolutionized mp3 players), is "for [Creative's] invention of the user interface used by most portable digital-media players."

In other words, Creative is claiming to own menus. They are asking the ITC to halt all sales on iPod products until the case shakes out. Yeah, we're sure that's going to happen.

Creative sues Apple over patents [Market Watch]

CNet has looked at numerous mp3 players, including the iPod, the Zen Vision and Sony's new Sony Walkmans, first establishing their peak battery life when playing unprotected MP3s and then comparing them to battery life when playing nothing but DRM-protected formats like AAC or WMA. The results are extremely discouraging: for example, on the Creative Zen Vision, you lose 25% of your battery life when playing WMAs over unprotected MP3s... and that's without putting the backlight on.

Granted, there's a lot of other things that will drain your mp3 player faster: playing higher bitrate files, using the backlight, watching videos or even using more powerful headphones. That extra processing power and therefore more juice are required to decode protected files isn't terribly surprising. Still, it's another bullet point on why the industry's push towards DRM sucks for consumers.

MP3 Insider: The truth about your battery life [CNet]

• Or! Ditch the gift card and get twice the capacity in the Creative Zen Nano 1GB MP3 player at Amazon. It's $109, which isn't bad on its own, but also has a $10 MIR.

• Or even! Today's Woot, the Virgin Electronics 5GB MP3 player with FM Tuner and speakers for $125, shipped. These were pulled from the shelves nearly as soon as they arrived, but they really aren't a bad deal. We say go for it.

• CircuitCity has lots of little gadgets from NexxTech in deep discount, most of which would make passable stocking stuffers. Especially the Blue Bug Massager. [via DealNews]

• If there is one pointless purchase we have resisted so far this year, it would be the Back to Basics TEM500 Egg & Muffin 2-Slice Toaster and Egg Poacher aka The Egg McMuffin Machine. Amazon has it on sale for $40, shipped.