Creative Labs have taken a step to prevent a member of their help forums from fixing their Vista drivers so that their X-FI cards can be used as intended in Windows Vista,something that Creative have so far failed to do.
They have also stopped him from releasing drivers for older sound cards that re-enable features that Creative have deliberately blocked in their drivers.
Copy of post from the Creative forums.
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'ShaughnessyVP Corporate CommunicationsCreative Labs Inc.Now whilst this may seem reasonable and Intellectual Property not withstanding all this guy was doing was fixing a problem that Creative cannot or more to the truth,will not.
I for one will never buy another Creative product and I urge you to do the same.
Creative may have been wiped these drivers off the forums because they
don't want us to have them, but simply searching will produce a few
download links:
Dolby Digital Live for Creative X-Fi
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=796S73C8
Creative Alchemy for Audigy Cards 1.00.8 Universal
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=JXYJA885
Download them and spread them far and wide.
You can keep track of the forum fallout
here