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Warezed SoundForge Files In Windows Media Player
Posted by
timothy
on Fri Nov 12, 2004 07:43 PM
from the let-the-bsa-sort-it-out dept.
from the let-the-bsa-sort-it-out dept.
An anonymous reader writes "German PC-Welt magazine reports that Microsoft used an illegal copy of SoundForge 4.5 (Google translation) for editing Wave files shipped with Windows Media Player. You can check that yourself by opening any file in the [Windows location] \Help\Tours\WindowsMediaPlayer\Audio\Wav\ folder in notepad or other editors of your choice and looking at the last line. There you will find a reference to SoundForge 4.5 and also a user called 'Deepz0ne' who happens to be one of the founders of an audio software cracking group called Radium."
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Warezed SoundForge Files In Windows Media Player
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Lessons to learn (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Lessons to learn (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Lessons to learn (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lessons to learn (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Lessons to learn (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Wednesday August 03 2005, @09:23AM)
Re:Lessons to learn (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.ferion.net/ | Last Journal: Monday May 06 2002, @02:16AM)
Wouldn't a hypocrite be the best person to get advice from? I mean, I'd pay more attention to a smoker telling me not to smoke than a non-smoker.
Re:Lessons to learn (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you miss his point. Yes, pirating Windows is wrong and illegal, even if Microsoft uses pirated software. That's because "hypocricy" doesn't have legal standing. But it does have standing in the realm of public opinion. Nobody would particularly cry for MS if they claim that they're loosing money to piracy. (Not that anyone would cry for MS now, we just cry because of MS.) It's a credibility thing. There's a difference between doing something that's wrong and feeling bad about it.
Personally, I hope it makes the "powers that be" realize that piracy by private corporations for profit is more harmful than piracy for personal use at home.
Re:Lessons to learn (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Tuesday June 26, @08:41AM)
Well its certainly illegal - wrong is debatable.
That's because "hypocricy" doesn't have legal standing
It doesn't have a spelling standing either
Re:Lessons to learn (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.notfud.com/)
I beg to defer! It's Radium's software, not theirs!
Re:Lessons to learn (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://rzbx.org/)
You then went on the attack, claiming all the beautiful rights that corporations throw around in the court room. Your the one failing to realize something. It is that people are rebelling based on moral reasons as much as they are on financial ones. It is no accident that Microsoft has such large sums of money. This is NOT success we should be proud of. It means the economy is inefficient, noncompetitive, and has the ability to create various problems such as social ones. You may not understand this, but some do. I could go on. Instead I will say one last thing, consider the possibility your wrong about what others have convinced you is right. Just because it is on paper, does not make it right. We should follow the law, but understand that we need to fight laws as often as the corporations do to create more innovative ones.
Re:Lessons to learn (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://theonion.com/)
Re:It is wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.haeleth.net/)
Yes, but so does "of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession" (Lev. 25:45). Yup, you have a biblical right to enslave tourists' children. Or, in other words - not everything the Old Testament says is suitable as a handbook of modern morality.
More to the point, blanket statements like "thou shalt not steal" are only meaningful if you define "steal". Let's not have the whole "is copyright infringement theft" flamewar again, please - just please acknowledge that even among people who do consider copyright infringement to be theft, most people would at least consider the possibility that purchasing one copy of Windows and installing it on two computers is not exactly in the same (im)moral league as bank robbery.
Re:Lessons to learn (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Lessons to learn (Score:5, Insightful)
Mohandas Gandhi
The implication is that everyone has committed some offense against some other person in his or her lifetime. If the only form of justice available were retribution, then the entire population of the world would be savaged. Imagine the torments you would have to undergo if every single wrong you have ever done in your life had to be repaid in kind.
I believe another famous religious leader had something similar to say about the idea of justice as retribution:
He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. John, 8:7.
Justice as retribution is only ever advocated by hypocrites, because all of us have committed offenses against others.
The real lesson (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you tried getting management to buy the software required for a project? At times it's damn near impossible. You have a deadline and your request is moving at the speed of bureaucracy. Finally you say *fuck it* and get the damn software. This becomes a vicious circle when management asks, "Oh you didn't need us to buy this software before why do you need it now? Just do what you did before."
I'm not saying this is good or bad, this is just the way it happens. Management holds no accountability because it's their job to be a dumb ass. Being a dumb ass isn't illegal and saves the company money. They didn't pirate the software, some peon did.
Re:The real lesson (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://erik.hollensbe.org/blog/)
It's easy to blame it on the managers, but the developers don't help by inflating the problem, promoting the piracy of software where an actual demo would have been more fruitful.
Dev: "Hey, I signed up for a demo of this. I put your email address in the form."
Manager: "Ok."
(2 weeks later)
Dev: "I need this whiz-bang feature that the demo doesn't support. I won't be able to continue until I get it working."
Manager: "Write up a PO and put it on my desk."
Often times, that'll get you software by the end of the week. It's worked for me many times... Where as the alternative (which I have done), normally gets the response, "we already have it, why do we need to buy it?".
Re:The real lesson (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.gfunk007.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday May 27 2006, @04:33AM)
To which the answer is simple. "It's your computer boss, you're responsible for what's on it."
Re:The real lesson (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, you put it in e-mail? All POs must be in writing and put in the blue inbox bin.
Oh, you put it in the blue bin? We are putting all POs in the red inbox bin.
Oh, you put it in the red bin? All that goes in the shredder. All POs must be faxed.
Oh, I'm out of paper? Why didn't you send it by e-mail?
What the hell are you doing sending registered mail to my home address? You can't expect me to work during my off hours.
Re:The real lesson (Score:5, Funny)
(http://operagost.com/ | Last Journal: Monday May 01 2006, @12:08PM)
Re:The real lesson (Score:5, Funny)
(http://operagost.com/ | Last Journal: Monday May 01 2006, @12:08PM)
Re:The real lesson (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Wednesday January 31 2007, @02:25AM)
I thought this was crazy until you revealed that this was a defense contractor. They have good reasons (government paranoia) to forbid unauthorized hardware and software installs. I used to work at a company whose only customer was Lockheed Martin and which was in fact formed by Lockheed Martin. (They form little companies for themselves like this so they can pay crappy wages with no benefits for doing work that doesn't require a classification. The concept of a company with a single customer comes quite naturally to these people.) When I did work in the actual Lockheed Martin facility I had an escort badge. Every time I needed to take a piss, they walked me down the hall and waited outside the bathroom.
I'm surprised you didn't get fired for plugging in a weird keyboard. They canned me for opening a telnet session one day and sending an email home saying I'd be late.
Re:The real lesson (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.nodomain.org/)
The situation: Deadline for $500,000 contract in two days. Really hard to find memory leak in the code (only happens when there's >5 simultaneous users so you can't single step it). 3 developers had spend the last week trying to find it.
We'd put in a request for Developer Studio the previous month - the request had to be a 10 page report on why we needed it (heck, it's only $1000!).
I went to the manager. Stated that there was no way we could beat the deadline without some software to help us (it would be hard even with DS, but impossible without it). His response... "There's no money for it. Can't you pirate it?"
Penalties for missing the contract deadline by over a week amounted to over $10,000.
I'm glad I left that place...
Re:The real lesson (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://davecheatham.com/)
Why don't you pirate it, Mr. Manager Man?
Don't put up with violating the law, or even violating company policy, to get around stupid-ass restrictions that are keeping you from doing your job. Stand firm and complain continually about the policy failure. If your company has a process to make suggestions or complain about policies, use it exactly how you're supposed to. When asked why you don't hit deadlines, pull out documentation of how this policy hindered you and you couldn't get it changed.
We, the workers, need to stop putting up with this crap. Either they give us the tools to do our job (Or let us go get them.), or we're just going to stand there and point out they've hired us to do a job and not given us the tools. Don't go and get the tools in violation of company policy.
A friend of mine got in a similiar sitution recently. It seems, he's on the IT staff of a company, and they'd adding computers. Well, for some completely idiotic reason, the electricians wire the network. So he put in a work order for eight drops in this room, and, three weeks later, when they came in, only two of the drops actually worked. So he's talking about what he's going to do, is is he going to get a hub and have reduced bandwidth to this important machines, or maybe stick some of them in another room until another work order goes this, or maybe, against the rules, take off the faceplates of the jacks and try to fix the wiring, or what, and I just stare at him.
Then I say: The electricians didn't do their job. They probably don't know how to do it correctly, so it's not their fault, it's the fault of whoever put in such a stupid-ass rule, but still...the work order is not complete. Don't try to figure out a way around the rules. Go and tell them you're only able to do 1/4th your job, because only 1/4th of the work you need done (And was okayed to be done!) was actually done. If they want this to not happen again, they could actually let people who know how to wire a network cable run it, or at least put the ends on.
Because figuring out ways around the rules is not your job. If the rules are not correct, yes, you need to point that out, and maybe even suggest new rules. If management does not listen to you, it is not your job to do your work in violation of said rules. If they make you sweep with a shovel instead of a broom, by God, sweep with a shovel. Don't sneak a broom out when they aren't looking.
Of course, companies could actually start trusting workers again, and I'm sure some do. But if they did, you'd know, because you wouldn't have stupid procedures you need to work around in the first place!
Re:Lessons to learn (Score:5, Informative)
For instance, let's say I start a company, and that company's product ends up causing a lot of accidental deaths. Instead of the individuals that compose the company being sued, the company itself is sued, and money can't be taken from the individuals...just the company. It lowers the risk of starting a business by making sure that only the business itself can be financially destroyed, not the individuals behind it.
However, on the same token, every employee of Microsoft is a representative of Microsoft as a corporation. "Some dude who worked at Microsoft" who used a cracked copy of Sound Forge is a representative of the company, and by breaking the law, the entity of Microsoft as a corporation is responsible for breaking the law.
That's true but don't pretend it was intentional (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is people seem to be blaming Microsoft as though they willfuly ripped off Sonic Foundry (now Sony) to save some money. Please, Sound Forge is like $250, it's nothing to them. More likely, whoever was responsible for it, maybe not even an MS employee (they may have contracted this out) just liked SF and used it instead of whatever app they had licensed.
Still their responsibility to pay for it, but don't pretend it was them being evil. They don't monitor the every move of their employees.
Interesting counter question: How many OSS Windows apps are compiled using a warezed version of Visual Studio?
Re:That's true but don't pretend it was intentiona (Score:5, Informative)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday March 10 2004, @11:39PM)
Even if you have a legal copy of Visual Studio you should be doing your automated build process with the free tools anyway.
Re:That's true but don't pretend it was intentiona (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep, you can do that. But then you'll spend so much trying find a usable set of runtime libraries in that mishmash, and then figuring out whether you're actually licensed to redistribute them, you'll end up wishing you hadn't. (Each of the SDKs is cleverly packaged with different incompatible and irregular subsets of the Windows runtime libraries, just to make it so hard to figure out that you'll run out and buy their non-free development tools out of frustration.)
Plus, if you use any outside code at all, it will almost invariably assume that you have the MS IDE environment to build it. You're then faced with rewriting the build process for that code from scratch.
Re:That's true but don't pretend it was intentiona (Score:4, Interesting)
All the OSS Windows projects I've worked on (like the one I'm hacking right now) have gone to significant lengths to be compatible with MINGW32.
This is actually quite handy, because it means I can cross-compile from Linux. (Yup, I'm writing Windows code, but compiling it with a Linux compiler and testing it with WINE... ain't OSS great?!)
Re:That's true but don't pretend it was intentiona (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes; but the BSA, which is dominated by Microsoft, has no sympathy for that argument when a company is "audited" and found to be in violation of its licenses, when it's quite plausible that he company merely is poor at record keeping and most likely has actually paid for the licences; or left unused copies of software installed on machines when swapping hardware around, and so on. They still get the whole cavity search, perp walk and massive fine (or compulsory purchase to avoid such) treatment.
Re:BSA Audit? Plus, the redistribution of the outp (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.brynmosher.com/ | Last Journal: Monday August 27, @10:15PM)
Re:Lessons to learn (Score:5, Insightful)
Just imagine a small company where some guy runs a illegal copy of Windows XP. Sure they would be sued or threatened with it to pay the license fee plus something. Same procedure should be applied to MS.
Re:Lessons to learn (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Lessons to learn (Score:4, Funny)
That's only if the other players land on your hotel often enough...
Infringement of patent, not "stolen code" (Score:5, Informative)
A few angles... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A few angles... (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Sunday January 22 2006, @06:55AM)
The question it rasises is how much other stuff is in windows that has IP violations? The answer is: Nobody knows. Probably not even MS know, and a nobody else is in a position to analyse it. By the time it gets found and publicised, its been in the operating system for a long time.
Michael
Re:A few angles... (Score:5, Insightful)
And the answer it provides is that the idea that closed soure software somehow becomes magically free of stolen or infringing code is fallacious.
At best it provides the bliss of ignorance, but an ignorance difficult or impossible to correct.
KFG