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Warezed SoundForge Files In Windows Media Player

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."

12 of 1,001 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Correction to original article by east+coast · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually, the tool required to see the code would be a hex editor, not a regular text editor like Notepad.

    Odd, the tool "required" on my laptop was notepad. It did the job just fine.

    --
    Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
  2. Re:Good test for GPL? by VistaBoy · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sound Forge 4.5 isn't GPL software. Basically, someone in Microsoft used a pirated version of some sound-editing software to make a sound file for Windows XP, and the evidence of the piracy is in the metadata of the WAV file. It just proves that they pirated some proprietary software to make a sound file, not that they ripped off GNU source code and put it in Windows.

  3. Re:winwarez.jpg by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Who needs the linked JPG? Just go to the directory in question: $WINDOWS\Help\Tours\WindowsMediaPlayer\Audio\Wav , pick a WAV file, right click, choose Open With, and Pick Notepad. Scroll down to the last line and you can see the evidence for yourself.

    --
    SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
  4. Re:Lessons to learn by VistaBoy · · Score: 5, Informative

    Technically, under the law, they ARE a singular entity. That's the entire idea behind a corporation: the company is a seperate entity, and if any part of the entity breaks the law, the entity as a whole can be sued for it. It allows for individuals to evade financial consequences if their company is held responsible for something.

    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.

  5. Re:A few angles... by terraformer · · Score: 3, Informative

    I am NOT an MS apologist but they were saying that the wav files shipped with windows media player were created and/or edited at some point with a warezed copy of sound forge. Not that warezed compiled code was shipped with windows...

    ie; (no pun intended) this is like them compiling windows with a warezed version of Borland's compiler, not like distributing Borland's compiler.

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  6. Re:Nice going TImothy by John+Miles · · Score: 4, Informative
    Doesn't sound likely. Certainly not true of SF 7.0b, which is what I have:
    000639B0: FC FF FC FF FE FF FB FF F9 FF FE FF FD FF FB FF
    000639C0: 63 75 65 20 1C 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 cue   
    000639D0: 00 00 00 00 64 61 74 61 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 data
    000639E0: 00 00 00 00 4C 49 53 54 30 00 00 00 61 64 74 6C LIST0 adtl
    000639F0: 6C 74 78 74 14 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 F0 8D 01 00 ltxt  ð

    00063A00:&nb sp; 72 67 6E 20 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 6C 61 62 6C rgn labl
    00063A10: 07 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 30 31 00 00 4C 49 53 54  01 LIST
    00063A20: 4A 00 00 00 49 4E 46 4F 49 53 46 54 15 00 00 00 J INFOISFT
    00063A30: 53 6F 6E 79 20 53 6F 75 6E 64 20 46 6F 72 67 65 Sony Sound Forge
    00063A40: 20 37 2E 30 00 00 49 45 4E 47 0B 00 00 00 4A 6F 7.0 IENG Jo
    00063A50: 68 6E 20 4D 69 6C 65 73 00 01 49 43 52 44 0B 00 hn Miles ICRD

    00063A60: 00 00 32 30 30 34 2D 31 31 2D 31 32 00 02 2004-11-12 
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  7. Re:Supreme Best Translation Number 1! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Here is a (hand-written) translation that's easier on the eyes. Be nice to my server.

  8. Re:That's true but don't pretend it was intentiona by Saint+Stephen · · Score: 4, Informative

    Nobody has to use a Warezed version of Visual Studio. Between the .NET SDK, and the Visual C++ 7.1 Toolkit, and the PlatformSDK, you can download all the tools you need to build (including the optimizing C compiler) for free.

    Even if you have a legal copy of Visual Studio you should be doing your automated build process with the free tools anyway.

  9. Re:What other apps store my username in their file by nmoog · · Score: 3, Informative

    I used to use SoundForge4.5 Radium release (having since bought SF5 and 6) and I checked out some old files that I sampled in to 4.5.

    In wmpaud5.wav on WinXp the last bytes are: LISTR INFOICRD 2000-04-06 IENG Deepz0ne ISFT Sound Forge 4.5;Sound Forge 4.0

    In my samples from 4.5 I had: LIST0 INFOICRD 2000-01-09 ISFT Sound Forge 4.5

    And on 5.0 and 6, there appears no plain text meta info.

  10. Re:What other apps store my username in their file by Skuld-Chan · · Score: 3, Informative

    I used to support adobe apps for a living - I know for a fact Acrobat, Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign and Framemaker containg information similar to this (usually only the user profile name though).

  11. Re:Yeah right by aacool · · Score: 4, Informative
    Umm, wmpaud1.wav in my computer in the location specified shows the following at the end of the file:
    LISTB INFOICRD 2000-04-06 IENG Deepz0ne ISFT Sound Forge 4.5
    This is embarassing, to say the least, for Microsoft.
  12. Infringement of patent, not "stolen code" by rufusdufus · · Score: 5, Informative

    Oh fer christ sakes quit being so melodramatic; the case was about a hashing patent [that stac bought]. Essentially Stac claimed to own any algorithm that looks up matches in LZ compression in O(1) time and won on that basis. The code was not the same or even similiar, in fact, totally different algorithms, only similarity was run-time efficiency.