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Getting Creative With Crippleware | 31 comments (31 topical) | Post A Comment
The Ultimate Problem[ Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#6)
by kamnet on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 10:01:45 AM PDT

The big deal from Creative's end was that Mr. Kawakami went on Creative's message boards and started to ask for donations for this hack. I'm pretty certain that if he had not asked for the donations, Creative wouldn't have minded -- after all, if Mr. Kawakami couldn't post it on Creative's website, he could have posted it on any of other websites and it still be out of Creative's hands to stop. But when you ask for exchange of money, then you are absolutely stepping all over Creative's rights on whether or not to charge for certain features on certain products. So I cannot disagree with Creative in that matter.

As for the hack itself, well the cat is out of the bag now, and either Creative card owners will put pressure on Creative to certify this hack as an official release, or individuals will leave Creative and go to other competitors. I myself just recently decided to bypass picking up a Creative card, instead opting to purchase a Razer Barracuda AC-1 digital soundcard. This incident didn't particularly sway me against Creative, but this combined with continued issues with buggy drivers and previous reports of mediocre support, that made the Razer card a more appealing product.

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So what's wrong with asking for $$$?[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#7)
by Anonymous User on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 10:30:04 AM PDT

Yes, I know about copyrights, EULAs, and other such B$. But seriously, if the guy's using the money to buy additional hardware for testing his hacked software, then why would you have a problem with that?

Remember that his request was for donations, austensibly so he could continue his work and improve on his product. It's your choice as to whether or not you want to pay it.

To add, while it's against the severly-flawed DMCA, I still would have no objections to this guy offering his improved drivers for sale only. After all, if Compaq didn't reverse-engineer the IBM PC to create the original DeskPro, then there would have been no PC clone market--and we'd probably be paying $2000 for a 486-based PS/2 running OS/2! There's nothing wrong with building a better mousetrap--and selling it.

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No, you don't know about "copyrights..."[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#8)
by kbiel on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 12:46:36 PM PDT

First of all, the law does not address your intentions when you solicit money with other peoples' IP.  It doesn't matter what you intend to do, if you are asking for money in return for distributing someone else's copyrighted material, you are violating the law.  Creative is well within their rights to stop Mr. Kawakami from redistributing their copyrighted material.

The Compaq situation was different.  Compaq reversed engineered the BIOS to discover how it interacted with the other hardware and then produced their own BIOS that mimicked IBM's.  That is why they won their case.  Had they just copied the code out of IBM's BIOS, they would have lost.

There is a very simple solution to this problem.  All Mr. Kawakami needs to do is distribute a patch file (preferably with an installer).  At this point, he would be distributing his own creative works which would not violate Creative's copyrights.  Then Mr. Kawakami could distribute it legally and even ask to be paid for it.

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What copyright?[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#9)
by Anonymous User on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 12:56:39 PM PDT

Bad analogy. The IBM PC was a totally open specification.

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IBM PC was a totally open specification[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#11)
by kbiel on Fri Apr 11, 2008 at 03:27:56 PM PDT

Um, the BIOS wasn't.  That part was non-published, intellectual property of IBM.  Compaq could have just copied the code out of the BIOS, but that would have violated copyright law.  Instead, they blackbox tested it (reverse engineered) and then wrote their own BIOS code to mimic it.

But you are right on one point, it was a bad analogy.

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Try again![ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#17)
by sconeu on Sun Apr 13, 2008 at 10:10:44 AM PDT

BZZZZZZT!!!! And thank you for playing.

IBM published the entire contents of the BIOS in the Technical Manual.

They did the same for the XT and the AT.

--
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the United States of America.
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IBM's published Bios[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#20)
by byelen on Mon Apr 14, 2008 at 07:20:27 AM PDT

IBM published their pc/xt/at bios in order to make it MORE difficult for reverse engineering. By having the code published, a company reverse engineering the bios would have to prove that their engineers NEVER saw the published code. Compaq had two teams of engineers reversing the bios. Team one (working with the hardware) created a set of specs for the bios calls and actions. Team two took these specs and wrote a "new" bios. Neither team had contact with one another.

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No doubt...[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#21)
by sconeu on Mon Apr 14, 2008 at 07:36:44 AM PDT

But kbiel claimed that the BIOS was unpublished.

--
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the United States of America.
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Publishing the BIOS[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#23)
by ObviousTroll on Tue Apr 15, 2008 at 05:54:04 AM PDT

and giving third parties the right to copy it are two different things. Actually, IBM deliberately published the BIOS to make it harder for companies to legally clone it - they could claim the other company read the publication and used that knowledge to write their own. See, those of us who are old enough to remember 1982 remember this story.

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I have a problem with it, I'm not even the owner![ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#14)
by kamnet on Sat Apr 12, 2008 at 04:24:42 AM PDT

The problem I have with the idea of "donation" in this case is that this guy DID NO ORIGINAL WORK of his own to merit donation, sales or any exchange of money. He simply took Creative's drivers and re-enabled what was disabled.

Had he properly reverse engineered the drivers and released his own, original, clean code, then there would be nothing Creative could do, He then could charge as much money as he wanted to, and no BS for "donations" for better hardware. And let me think about that for a moment -- why does he need better hardware when he already clearly had more than adequate hardware to do the job for THIS project. It  didn't take better hardware to resolve the issues with this driver, it took somebody competent enough and smart enough to dissect the driver and look into the code. That's not a hardware issue.

That said, he could have been in the right by releasing the corrected Creative code and declaring that he can do so under the First Amendment, making it a free speech issue of Creative tried to shut him down on that. I have my doubts if Creative would have tried to have done that, though.  

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sigh[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#15)
by Anonymous User on Sat Apr 12, 2008 at 08:07:14 AM PDT

I must have missed the part where Creative is a state actor, as well as the part in #8 where derivatives of a copyrighted work are allowed without the copyright owner's approval. Good old legal ignorance rides again.

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What he should have done......[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#16)
by Anonymous User on Sat Apr 12, 2008 at 04:31:44 PM PDT

If he wanted to sell something, it should have been a program that took the original Creative XP drivers, the original Creative Vista drivers, and applied modifications to the files to create a set of drivers that were actually fully functional.

And that, possibly, could be legally flat-out sold. I am not a lawyer, but it seems at least possible.

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Same laws, ignorant judges[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#24)
by kamnet on Fri Apr 18, 2008 at 11:17:21 PM PDT

Well, there's the law, and then there is the interpretation of the law. Judges, for the most part, are not tech-savvy people. A tech-savvy lawyer can throw up enough BS to convince a judge of nearly anything.

Nontheless, I think Creative made the right argument here: when this ugy started to ask for money for a product that he did not create himself, he infringed on Creative's right to earn (or not earn) profits from their products, and he infringed on Creative's right to release (or not release) certain features for certain products on certain OSes.

Yeah it's ugly, and yes it shows that Creative is not really thinking of their customers, but guess what? THAT IS THEIR RIGHT. If this guy wants to be better than Creative, then he has all the right in the world himself to go start-up as a competitor and use Creative's shortfalls to gain customer confidence. The fair market WILL make the right decision in the long run.

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WTF?![ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#25)
by Anonymous User on Sun Apr 20, 2008 at 11:56:34 AM PDT

"Creative's right to earn (or not earn) profits from their products"

There is no "right to earn profits". There is certainly no entitlement to a cut of all revenue generated downstream. If I drive my car to work, is Ford entitled to a cut of my salary? If I sell the car used, or sell a used book or whatever else, is the company that originally produced it entitled to a cut? No.

"Creative's right to release (or not release) certain features for certain products on certain OSes"

That exists but was never infringed. What you seem to be thinking is that Creative actually has a right to stop others from releasing the features too, which they obviously do not (or at least should not) have.

"The fair market WILL make the right decision in the long run."

I don't see how this last remark is even relevant. Perhaps if there were a fair market, without any state-enforced monopolies, involved here then it would be, but that does not seem to be the case.

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