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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."
"Do as we say, not as we do."
Optimist's response: Maybe they were waiting for their activation code. Pessimist's response: They knowingly stole it. Realist's response: Even Microsoft has no use for MS Sound Editor.
It's ok, though, because Microsoft has indemnified everybody (except embedded Windows users), so just be happy this didn't happen in some terrible operating system without a big, strong, virile company like Micorsoft backing it...
www.eFax.com are spammers
I want to shake the hand of the guy who forgot to license it properly.
Where is the BSA when you need them? :)
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
MS is the leetest crew out there. They are just giving greetz to their friends at RAD
-GRAViTY pwns j00!
First sentence in the translated article:
...
Already times on the idea come
Really want makes me the article to read.
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.
...although, when you think about it, who knows what stolen code might be in Microsoft's software? What with it being "closed source" and all...
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
So when does it stop being 'opinion' that big companies don't give a shit about anyone else's "IP rights".
We bash MS, and get MS defenders countering with idiocy that makes it seem like it's all a battle of opinion over whether MS is a big bad company or simply misunderstood, or whether MS is a monopoly, or just highly talented, whether MS doesn't give a shit about IP rights while enforcing their own or they're just working within a business realm that they need to survive.
Sorry, It just keeps going on and on like this. MS using pirated software to develop & promote their media player. Indefensible from a company that professes to rely so much on IP, unless they're nothing but greedy hypocrites.
I'm going with the "nothing but greedy hypocrites" thanks
But moment once who or which is " Deepz0ne "? (no meaning)!
Tell me about it! I have that problem all the time, man.
Methinks machine translation is still in its infancy.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
Already times on the idea come, one with Windows XP installed WAV file with the editor to open? That makes nevertheless nobody - Microsoft will have imagined, nevertheless innumerable WAV files on the computer and those lie are to to listen to and to do not look at there.
Off-topic me all you want, but what's the point of providing a Google translation of these things. It's like posting an article and expecting no one to RTFA.
Oh, wait...
wow, it's not goatse
:(
i almost feel disappointed
So... how is it working as a sound file editor at Microsoft ?
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
That was in response to the developers of SoundForge using a warzed copy of windows.
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.
It's a big deal because Microsoft, along with the BSA, comes down quite hard on companies where even nominal amounts of illegally licensed software are used. Those companies will now have the same defense that Microsoft currently has: Sometimes mistakes happen.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
did you see the big monty python foot next to the headline there big fella?
hover over it with your pointer... go ahead, i'm waiting
see what the pop up text says?
it says "It's funny. laugh."
do you understand the fucking concept? do you really?
because i don't think you do
i assert to you that unfunny negative asocial "article appropriateness" trolls like yourself second guessing the editors can do, and are perhaps doing, more damage to slashdot than any editor with a trigger happy post button ever can
capisce asshole?
learn to laugh
no, really: learn to fucking laugh
HA HA HA
>:-/
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
We all know he's a he. Women have better things to do with their time than crack software.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
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.
Along those lines, I was thinking that maybe the sound editing was outsourced. We all know that their photography is stock stuff; witness all the MS ads picturing Apples. It is conceivable, though not necessarily true, that this work was done by an outside agency.
Geek used to be a four letter word. Now it's a six-figure one.
Yes, those damn systemverzeichnis! We all get very fuendig when dealing with them.
For listening to MP3s the Windows codec was correct, but it offered only limited Encodierungsfunktionen
Its a well known industry fact that lack of Encodierungsfunktionen causes loss of sound quality.
Then one sees first only letter salad
Mmmm ASCII salad. Goes great with chicken and a glass of red wine so I'm told.
That might only in talking moon for the Windows the Media Player responsible person
Ummm... moon wha?
The statement of Microsoft is still pending, times sees, what says Microsoft for this.
It's true! German Yoda does exist! And he's working for a PC magazine. I knew it!
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
And how many times has Microsoft's lapdog BSA audited some one, found a piece of Microsoft warez that some employee had pirated and fined the hell out of the company for it? That's what makes this newsworthy.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
Who needs the linked JPG? Just go to the directory in question: $WINDOWS\Help\Tours\WindowsMediaPlayer\Audio\Wav
...Maybe those who don't have/use Windows might need the Jpeg?
This just in:
According to Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple: "The most common format of audio files on an windows system is 'warezed'." He appears convinced Apple will lead the way in Digital Rights Management and also believes Apple will steal a march on Microsoft in making the digital home a reality because Microsoft "doesn't have the volumes". "There is no way that you can get there with Microsoft. The critical mass has to come from the iPod, or a next-generation video device"
Why is it that you believe MS should be allowed to do this, but that they are allowed to fine or have imprisoned people who violate MS's rights?
MS stole code, they've done it before, and they're doing it now. Given how Ballmer likes to pretend he's some sort of champion of individual IP-holder's rights, he shouldn't have a problem making this "error" right.
Instead, it's more likely this will take a lawsuit.
What makes this newsworthy is the same thing that makes Limbaugh's drug use news. It's not so much that he's a druge addict (although there is a group of the public who likes public scandal), but it's that he condemns other drug users to jail, but demands leniency for himself.
If MS wants a pass on this, then they should lighten up, remove XP activation bullshit, whatever. Otherwise, to hell with them.
...Or some guy just liked using his cracked copy of SF, and brought it into work to use.
Before you go running off all bitter and self-righeous, you might want to consider the difference between the coporate management and the average joe schmuck employee.
This isn't MS being hypocrites, it is an employee breaking company policy and bringing in outside sofware.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Microsoft and the BSA presumes violations before any proof is found, why should I presume any differently?
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Just for kicks, do a content search on all *.wav files on your drive, searching for the string 'deepz0ne'.
You may run across more hits. That doesn't necessarily mean that the author of the software they came with used a cracked copy of SoundForge.
For example, the Digital Eel game "Dr. Blob's Organism" demo has the deepz0ne string in "powerdn.wav", but doesn't have it in any of the others. That makes me think they probably just grabbed a sound effect off of a (presumably) royalty-free sound effects library (CD/DVD/online), and that particular sound effect happened to be authored or modified in a warez version of SoundForge.
Similarly the mediaplayer sounds... whose are they, really ? Were they authored/modified by an MS Employee ? If not - where does MS's responsibility come in ? Do -you- check every asset you acquire in good faith belief to see if they may have been touched by a cracked piece of software ?
Seriously... how is a company, _ANY_ company, doing something like this remotely funny?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
With all the BILLION$ of dollars M$ has they can't even pony up the money for Sound Forge?
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.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
The guy who started Sonic Foundry and was the original writer of the SoundForge program got his start at Microsoft. A lot of his work for MS wound up in the multimedia code for Windows 3.11 and Windows95.
Fine way to thank him, MS. I hope Sony takes MS to the cleaners over this.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
That senator who said physical damage should occur to anyone's computer that had illegal software/music/movies on it? And does anyone remember when they found some JavaScript on his site that was used without permission?
Good times.
A couple days ago was one of the college tourneys on Jeopardy. The winner was a Comp Eng/Comp Sci major from Carnegie Mellon. His final Jeopardy wager? $1337
ummm, Where do I find it is SUSE?
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
Does this mean that every file I've created with my (legal) copy of Sound Forge, registered to me, gets distributed with my name embedded in it? What other programs do this? I already know that MS Office docs do -- but I never suspected Sound Forge of something like this.
Software authors/distributors should be required to disclose exactly what personal information is distributed in files which are created with that product. As much as I like to stick it to M$, Sonic Foundry, now Sony, is the one I'm concerned about here.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
Not that your point about metadata isn't valid, but this isn't a typical metadata problem. The WAV format doesn't directly provide for strings indicating the program that created the audio. There is a "text" chunk in which you can put such information, but WAV files don't have to have such a chunk and they don't have any standard interpretation. Information about the file is usually placed before the audio data too. This stuff could be a text chunk placed at the end, but I suspect that it is actually included in the audio data chunk - a few odd sample values at the end will be undetectable to the ear. I can't tell for sure though without examining the WAV file, which I don't have since I don't have MS Windows. Maybe somebody could post a link to one of the files and we could find out.
On a hunch I converted my entire MP3 collection into waves and ran a search for 'deepz0ne'.
And guess what, all the Mettallica tracks were made with a pirated copy of Sound Forge. Bastards!
Murphy(c)
Yes, Microsoft is liable and will have to pay Sony (if their employee was the one responsible). However having an employee do something they shouldn't is VERY different from willful infringement.
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?
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.
There is no difference. Repeat after the BSA. THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE. Your joe schmuck employees == your corporate managment == your entire company.
When it's Microsoft's precious "IP" in question, there are no excuses. This is not speculation, this is not opinion, this is a trail of tears weaving back and forth across the country with literally thousands and thousands of people and business, big and small, who lost a few of their holograms, that can vouch.
When Microsoft has its pet army of jackbooted thugs (the BSA) "auditing" the daylights out of you (or your elementary school, or your police station, or your old folks home) they don't buy this excuse. It doesn't matter if you bought those 5 computers used and the seller didn't give you the stickers. It doesn't matter if some 2 week contractor who didn't even speak English warezed Office _and_ stole a box of white out, it's still your business' problem, guilty until proven innocent, "Civil and Criminal Penalties," $500,000 for each count, etc etc... You're still staring down the barrel of a devastating lawsuit or a "relicensing" on extremely favorable terms...
So yes, duh, absoloutely PLEASE run off and for the record we are not nearly bitter or self-righteous enough.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was quoted as saying, "Well, we consider this a valid liscencse enforcement practice, so I guess we have to put up with it. We're just glad noone ran 'strings' on our TCP/IP stack for 'Regents of the University of California.'"
You see it's like this: (this is purely fictional)
Let's say the RIAA, led by Hilary Rosen, sued 13 year-old kids for thousands for copy infringement.
Then later on, we found out that Ms. Rosen's son had hundreds of BetaMax copies of video rentals in her home.
It is not outrageous, because her son infringed on copyrights. It is outrageous that Ms. Rosen holds some unknown kid to some higher standard than her own son. It would show that the copyright is not what she cared about, only suing 13 year-olds for thousands.
Microsoft pirates software -- this is news?
.21) -- it removed the stolen code.
Roughly ten years ago, Microsoft was found, in a court of law, to have knowingly stolen code from Stac Electronic's popular "Stacker" whole-disk compression utility, and used it in their DoubleSpace utility. That's the reason for Microsoft MS-DOS 6.21 (I think it was
Stac won the lawsuit, but it was too late -- the damage had already been done, and Stac went out of business. The 800-pound gorilla won again.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
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 4.0In 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.
Interesting counter question: How many OSS Windows apps are compiled using a warezed version of Visual Studio?
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?!)
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.
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).
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
"SHIT! Now we have to go and buy SonicFoundry!"
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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.
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.
Does "thou shalt not steal" ring any bell :) ?
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.