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Darren New <dne### [at] san rrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > Copyright applies to actual software source code. It does not apply to
> > algorithms nor functionality. If you create a program which behaves in the
> > same way as another program you are not infringing copyright, as long as
> > your code is original.
> I think it's a little different in the USA. You're infringing on the
> copyright if you copied the code.
I fail to see how what you are saying is different from what I said.
I said that code is protected by copyright, behavior isn't. You said that
code is protected by copyright.
> > But of course in the US you can sue for anything. Just threatening to
> > sue is enough for most people. It's a rather effective means to scare
> > people.
> I was wondering - what do other countries do about this? I couldn't come
> up with any good way of solving such a problem in the legal system. It
> would have to be cultural, that you don't sue simply to intimidate someone.
I suppose in countries where monetary sanctions are smaller also suing
to intimidate is rarer, but it still exists. I know of cases here in
Finland where people have been scared into complying because of lawsuit
threats, and the cases were more or less dubious.
--
- Warp
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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>> Copyright applies to actual software source code. It does not apply to
>>> algorithms nor functionality. If you create a program which behaves in the
>>> same way as another program you are not infringing copyright, as long as
>>> your code is original.
>
>> I think it's a little different in the USA. You're infringing on the
>> copyright if you copied the code.
>
> I fail to see how what you are saying is different from what I said.
>
> I said that code is protected by copyright, behavior isn't. You said that
> code is protected by copyright.
I was implying that he wasn't creating the drivers from scratch. He was
modifying the existing drivers.
> I suppose in countries where monetary sanctions are smaller also suing
> to intimidate is rarer, but it still exists. I know of cases here in
> Finland where people have been scared into complying because of lawsuit
> threats, and the cases were more or less dubious.
I think it's more the legal costs than the costs of losing. You can
spend a million bucks on lawyers to win a $100K lawsuit, sadly.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
"That's pretty. Where's that?"
"It's the Age of Channelwood."
"We should go there on vacation some time."
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> I think it's more the legal costs than the costs of losing. You can
> spend a million bucks on lawyers to win a $100K lawsuit, sadly.
At least here if you have insurance (which pays for the consulting fees)
and you win, you don't pay a dime. (Your opponent pays your lawyer's fees.)
OTOH if you lose you pay everything (your own lawyer fees as well as
your opponent's lawyer fees, plus of course the possible sanctions). It's
a risk not too many people are ready to take.
--
- Warp
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In article <47f11462$1@news.povray.org>, dne### [at] sanrrcom says...
> Warp wrote:
> > Copyright applies to actual software source code. It does not apply t
o
> > algorithms nor functionality. If you create a program which behaves in
the
> > same way as another program you are not infringing copyright, as long a
s
> > your code is original.
>
> I think it's a little different in the USA. You're infringing on the
> copyright if you copied the code. It doesn't even matter if it does
> something completely different. If you learn that Creative's driver for
> some reason will run your printer too, it's still copyright infringement
> to give it out for the purposes of running the printer.
>
> > Claiming that making a program which interfaces with a piece of hardw
are
> > is IP theft is absolutely ludicrous.
>
> If it's 98% Creative's code, with 2% changes, then it's a derivative
> work. I don't know the whole story, but this doesn't sound like he
> created a driver from scratch. (Indeed, the way I read it almost made
> it sound like he was making Creative's drivers work on non-Creative
> cards.) But from comments, it sounds like he took Creative's drivers
> for cards that *do* work on Vista, and back-ported the changes to cards
> that don't work on Vista.
>
Its the last one basically. They opted to disable eax, Dolby 5.1, and
many other "features" of cards that ran properly on XP, when installed
on Vista, then put out minor incremental changes to the Vista ones that
kind of sort of fixed minor things. Basically, you go out and buy an X-
Fi card and it lists a whole mess of shit its supposed to do ***and***
claims Vista support, then you install it and what you have isn't any
better than if you had installed an old SB-AWE32... The drivers
themselves contain "all" of the code needed to allow Vista to work, but,
they are set to test for Vista, or otherwise disable function when
running under it. Now we have it, more or less, from the horses mouth.
They *intentionally* disabled those features, so that people would be
forced to *upgrade* to some half assed, but more expensive, card,
designed to run specifically under Vista, which added basically "no" new
features, and "no" major improvements in the hardware. The only apparent
difference would have been a few minor tweaks, and the fact that the
drivers would ***only*** work with Vista.
This guy comes along and goes. Gosh! There is all these older cards out,
and not even the stuff that says it works properly under Vista actually
does, or supports all its features, I wonder why? So, he put out
something that would allow the absurdly large number of people that have
cards, but can't make them work in Vista, as well as programs that don't
support the screwball software based audio tech that MS decided should
replace the card's entirely (I can't imagine Creative was real happy
being told, "Well, its nice that you made all these cards, with all
those algorithms, and other stuff, but all we need now is something to
pipe our data through. All that other stuff is now junk." Suddenly
someone had a solution to a problem Creative didn't seem "able" to fix
for some reason. Turns out, the real problem may simply be that they are
"unwilling" to fix it, since they are pushing for adoption of what ever
minor upgrades they have been pushing for Vista.
Its telling that, having beat the wasp nest with a tennis racket, they
have backpedaled on the guy being allowed to provide the support they
refuse to, and statements have been made on this thread:
http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?
board.id=Vista&thread.id=30737&view=by_date_ascending&page=15
which suggest they are also rethinking, or at least discussing if they
screwed up, and how badly, with their higher ups, if donations really
"are" some sort of violation or not. Though, at this point it hardly
matters. Their stock has taken a nose dive in the last 24 hours, people
are literally dumping their cards in toilets, then taking pictures to
post on the forum, in protest of Creative's statement that they
basically didn't and don't plan to provide support, and how they handled
the whole thing.
IP, legality, etc., is all meaningless if you piss off your user base so
badly that your so called IP becomes as worthless as confederate money.
And their own EULA suggests that the only violation here is theirs,
since they provide the drivers, for free, but someone else has to
*adapt* them, to provide the "intended use" they supposedly provided in
the first place.
--
void main () {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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In article <47f0dac3$1@news.povray.org>, voi### [at] devnull says...
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>
> > Basically, one guy figured out that Creative Labs has been lying about
> > incompatibility between some cards and Vista, that they could fix it
> > over night, if they wanted to, and that they haven't even attempted to
> > put out drivers that work right for the latest cards, all with the
> > apparent purpose of forcing people to upgrade to the next card, which
> > *will* be full Vista supported.
>
> Mmm, interesting.
>
> Of course, technically it's Creative's product and if they don't want it
> to be able to do X, they can legally do that. But given that their
> game's been rumbled, I would say that's be rather stupid to try to stick
> to this stretagy now... But hey, what do I know about running a vast
> stunningly successful multinational conglomerate?
>
Actually, its questionable if that is even true. Law, never mind what
the EULA might say, states that modification to support interoperability
**is** legal. They own EULA implies that its only illegal to use/modify
their drivers for purposes "other than intended", but their own
advertisements, packaging, etc., all imply, very clearly, that the cards
are "intended" to provide the functionality, and they don't say,
"Partial Vista compatibility.", or, "Some features not available in all
operating systems." What he did, strictly speaking, isn't necessarily
illegal, by even Creative's own definition, but they themselves could be
considered to be in violation of the same contract, not to mention false
advertising.
--
void main () {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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In article <47f11b4c@news.povray.org>, <.> says...
> "Patrick Elliott" <sel### [at] rraznet> wrote
>
> >OK. I am all for IP. I am less for some moron telling me that I, or
> >someone else, can't alter it to make it work right. Mind you, his
> >mistake may have basically been suggesting donations, but the rest of
> >just 100% total and complete BS.
>
> Almost every single hardware manufacturer (most visible are CPU/GPU
> manufacturers) as well as almost every single software manufacturer sell
> crippled versions of their goods under different SKUs. It's their wares,
> they can not only chose to not develop certain lines for all markets, but
> they can purposefully cripple equipment or software to sell to lower pric
ed
> markets. If reverse engineering is explicitly prohibited, third parties c
an
> not re-market such goods by undoing the crippling or adding more
> functionality. I don't exactly know what he is doing, if he's patching th
eir
> (Creative's) drivers, that's a no-no. If he's writing his own from scratc
h,
> without using any of their protected code (very unlikely, I'd say), then
> Creative has no leg to stand on, except that they are not of course
> obligated to provide free advertising for him on their own forums. It's h
ard
> to feel sympathy for the big guy, but how would you feel if someone was
> reverse engineering the lower priced version of your software to enable i
ts
> advanced features and thus wreaking havoc with your pricing structure? Ho
w
> would you feel if time limits on your shareware version were being patche
d
> out? Business is not charity and businesses are not obligated to provide
> everyone with everything technically possible, to their own detriment.
>
Ok, 1. Their own EULA only denies the right to modify, etc., *if* its to
use not as intended. 2. There is no statement made, in any place, which
implies that any card that he has "fixed" was only "partly" Vista
compatible, or otherwise intentionally disabled. In point of fact,
several of them **explicitly** state both that they *are* Vista
compatible, and *list* the features that they disabled, without any
disclaimer that they won't work under Vista. Worse, even the ones
supposedly 100% Vista compatible *do not* properly support all the
features that they claim on the box.
3. They didn't even bother trying to stop this guy, until he implied
that some people could donate to him, and then they claimed that this
constituted **asking** for payment for their IP, which... is just
totally absurd, since he wasn't demanding payments from people to
download anything, any more than Creative does when you download their
broken versions. This is just about as stupid as if someone provided
downloads of the latest versions, but asked for donations to maintain
the website. Its real questionable whether intentionally breaking your
own technology is strictly ethical or legal, when the only reason to do
so is to force someone to buy a new one. Try that with anything like a
car. Oh, sorry, but the 2007x isn't intended to drive on Main st., now
that they upgraded the streets with a new type of painted line, I am
afraid it won't go faster than 3 MPH or let you listen to the radio
while on that street. However, for an additional $20,000 you can buy the
2008q, which is 100% compatible... Yeah, right. That would go over good
in court.
This isn't a case of them disabling features on a lower priced model.
This is them disabling nearly every feature on the card you paid the
highest price they sell them for to get, *if* you happen to be running
the new version of someone else's software, and doing so, despite the
fact that their is "no" legitimate reason to do so, including
incompatibility, other than making people buy the new, even more
expensive, card. They apparently either think that, yes, they did screw
up by pissing off thousands of customers that bought the bill of goods
on their box, only to find out that only the modded version of the
software from a third party made it work as advertised, or, someone in
legal pointed out that they *could* be sued over how they handled the
method of preventing those features working, and how they advertised the
product, possibly both. Otherwise, they wouldn't have caved so fast, but
would have tried to make some defense of their position.
--
void main () {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> I think it's more the legal costs than the costs of losing. You can
>> spend a million bucks on lawyers to win a $100K lawsuit, sadly.
>
> At least here if you have insurance (which pays for the consulting fees)
> and you win, you don't pay a dime. (Your opponent pays your lawyer's fees.)
>
> OTOH if you lose you pay everything (your own lawyer fees as well as
> your opponent's lawyer fees, plus of course the possible sanctions). It's
> a risk not too many people are ready to take.
OK. Sounds like other countries really haven't solved this any better
than the US has. Except other countrys' corporate citizens aren't quite
as assholish as the US's. ;-)
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
"That's pretty. Where's that?"
"It's the Age of Channelwood."
"We should go there on vacation some time."
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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> which suggest they are also rethinking, or at least discussing if they
> screwed up, and how badly, with their higher ups, if donations really
> "are" some sort of violation or not.
Technically, in the US, it doesn't matter what you gain from violating
copyright. Giving it away free is just as stoppable as giving it away
for money.
> IP, legality, etc., is all meaningless if you piss off your user base so
> badly that your so called IP becomes as worthless as confederate money.
Yep.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
"That's pretty. Where's that?"
"It's the Age of Channelwood."
"We should go there on vacation some time."
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> Its real questionable whether intentionally breaking your
> own technology is strictly ethical or legal, when the only reason to do
> so is to force someone to buy a new one. Try that with anything like a
> car.
Exactly that thing is already done in cars. The BMW 118d, 120d and 123d are
all exactly the same car - you get exactly the same lump of metal and
plastic. There is a huge difference in price though. Why? Because there
is some line of code in the software that tells the engine how much torque
to produce, which is different for each model. If you just bought a 118d,
you can't go around complaining that it's not fair how your car is
artificially crippled blah blah blah. If the car manufacture did not act
like this you wouldn't have been able to afford the 118d in the first place!
> Oh, sorry, but the 2007x isn't intended to drive on Main st., now
> that they upgraded the streets with a new type of painted line, I am
> afraid it won't go faster than 3 MPH or let you listen to the radio
> while on that street. However, for an additional $20,000 you can buy the
> 2008q, which is 100% compatible... Yeah, right. That would go over good
> in court.
What law exactly would it be breaking? SO long as they make it clear when
you buy the car what its limitations are I don't see the problem. Of course
nobody would accept this sort of deal which is why they don't offer it.
In fact when I hire a car here in this city I can choose a cheaper option to
only drive it within this area, or the more expensive option to be allowed
to drive over the whole country, or the top price to be allowed to take it
abroad. It's my choice, and it gives me a cheaper option if I want to take
it.
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> OK. Sounds like other countries really haven't solved this any better
> than the US has. Except other countrys' corporate citizens aren't quite
> as assholish as the US's. ;-)
In a way it's slightly better here. If you lose you usually pay a
rational amount of money in the form of fines or punitive damages.
Basically you pay the amount of damage you caused, plus maybe a bit
more. You'll never see a multi-million lawsuit here (unless the damages
were indeed worth multiple millions).
--
- Warp
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