Yes, some a**holes will exercise their rights in a way that is not as 
helpful to the lives of others as we may wish.

Looks like Creative Labs' competitors have an opportunity to capture 
some market share.

Regards,
John

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Warp wrote:

>   But of course in the US you can sue for anything.

I have a question here for anyone having knowledge of the legal systems 
outside of the US.

Can a judge in your country be punished for allowing a frivolous suit to 
proceed?

Here in the US I have not seen any case where a judge was sanctioned for 
allowing a frivolous suit to be litigated.  There have been instances 
where the plaintiff or the plaintiff's counsel were disciplined in some 
way, but never the judge.

Regards,
John

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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. 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 hardware
> 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.

>   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.

-- 
   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."

Post a reply to this message

"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 priced
markets. If reverse engineering is explicitly prohibited, third parties can
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 their
(Creative's) drivers, that's a no-no. If he's writing his own from scratch,
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 hard
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 its
advanced features and thus wreaking havoc with your pricing structure? How
would you feel if time limits on your shareware version were being patched
out? Business is not charity and businesses are not obligated to provide
everyone with everything technically possible, to their own detriment.

Post a reply to this message

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.

> >   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

Post a reply to this message

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."

Post a reply to this message

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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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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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();
}

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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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