WOW have ye seen this!

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/04/daniel_k-who-fi.html

Aye, the donation thing was wrong and he admits that.

This is not something out of the ordinary in the high end computer component industry. There are plenty of custom BIOS and drivers written every day for many of the items we find in a typical gaming system. Custom drivers for add-in cards are extremely common, and many companies actually encourage this practice as it is free value added for their customers. Asking for donations after the driver is written is actually pretty common as well, and I imagine this move by Creative Labs came as a bit of a shock to the author of those drivers.

It is however, Creative Lab's right to alienate themselves from what little customer base remains to them. For a company that had to remove themselves from the NASDAQ last year because their stock value was so far in the toilet, you would think they would be more interested in maintaining better customer relations, but they are indeed free to shoot themselves in the foot with a LAW (pun fully intended) if that is their desire.

Personally, I think if a company acts in a way that is borderline fraudulent, it's up to the consumer to take to the frontlines in the defense of their rights. There are proper courses of action to follow, and agencies dedicated to protecting the consumer just waiting to help. In addition to boycott, the cosumer may avail themselves of the services of the BBB and their State's Attorney General.

Interesting but kinda sucks. I'ts always been tough for hardware manufactures to implement software, just not there thing. But comments  that in effect say we can screw it up because it's ours so what, would be hard to believe if I didn't read it.