I guess sometimes, we need people to remind us how fortunate they are when people help you when you can’t fix your problems. Well, for this case, there is really a need for the gentle reminder.
Creative Labs, the pioneer of sound cards, with products such as Sound Blaster, Nomad, Zen and X-Fi, had just “stabbed” themselves by not appreciating the the goodness of a fan of the company, working without earning a single cent from the multi-million company.
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.
Quoted from Creative Labs Forum.
As you can see from the extract, Daniel_K was the one behind all the drivers make Creative X-Fi works, especially on Windows Vista. When Creative themselves can’t even provide a decent driver for their products, something must be really wrong. If you Google it, you will find numerous findings!
How hot is this issue? Well, looking at the Digg, over 2000 diggs are recorded in matter of days. The thread mentioned above got over 150 pages and over 1500 posts, a lot of first time posters if you look through it. Everywhere is discussing on this topic. Creative has become notorious overnight! Congrats!
My own Creative experience
I do own a X-Fi, Audigy 2 ZS, Aurvana earphone and Zen Stone Plus now. However, the Zen Stone Plus is faulty, it can’t even receive FM signal in my house when a clock radio, which costs significantly lesser, can receive those signals. I was told by the Customer Service that the whole batch of Zen Stone Plus faced similar problems and have to wait for the next batch, and they can’t guarantee that the next batch will not face this problem. How bad was it? I also owned the first generation MP3 player, Nomad, and it was disappointing too. The docking station practically can’t detect the player after a few months, then.
On the other hand, I hope that my expensive earphone and sound card do not fail me like the previous mentions.
Aftermath
Just recently, Creative has just sold their HQ to rise funds for their poor earnings. Now, with this massive boycott of Creative products, the upcoming quarters earnings are going to fall like nobody business.
Creative has definitely went the wrong way at a wrong time. Period.
What worse is, Daniel_K has responded that he will be quitting the scene. That is such a massive loss to the online community. But you have done well. *pats on Daniel_K’s back*
