Nvidia stopping modified drivers that help their own consumers!

[ACESHIGH]

NGOHQ were sent the letter below from Nvidia ...

http://www.ngohq.com/news/11383-nvidia-threatens-ngohq-over-forceware-distribution.html

Unauthorized Distribution Of NVIDIA Drivers on NGOHQ.com

*************************************************

To Whom it May Concern:

We understand that you are distributing or facilitating the unauthorized distribution of NVIDIA’s drivers for its GPU and/or MCP products. We are writing to remind you that these drivers constitute intellectual property (“IP”), including copyrights, of NVIDIA. As the exclusive owner of this IP, under Section 106 of the Copyright Act, NVIDIA alone has the right to authorize distribution. Since you are not authorized, we ask that you immediately stop all activities that distribute, allow or facilitate distribution of NVIDIA’s drivers on your web site. Unauthorized distribution is a serious violation of NVIDIA’s intellectual property rights and if it continues, we will take the necessary steps to prevent further unauthorized distribution.

NVIDIA drivers that are distributed through authorized channels have been tested on the supported platforms that are included in the driver INF file, and are supported by NVIDIA and its OEM partners. Modifying drivers to add products that were not intended to be supported in the driver may cause more problems for customers due to limited testing and known problems on some products.

Please confirm that all unauthorized distribution has ceased within two weeks of the date of this letter by sending an email to [email protected]

Sincerely,

Bryan "BDR" Del Rizzo
Senior PR Manager
MCP Business Group
2701 San Tomas Expressway
Santa Clara, CA 95050

And the response ..

http://www.ngohq.com/news/11386-our-official-response-nvidia.html

This is an official response to NVIDIA’s Unauthorized Distribution of NVIDIA Drivers on NGOHQ.com letter. Our servers are based in Israel. If you’re unaware, Israel is not a state in the United States. Israel is a small country in the Middle East. Therefore, the United States Copyright law and Section 106 do not apply here. This specific law applies only inside the United States borders.

Drivers for GPUs and MCPs are being offered freely by NVIDIA Corporation and millions of web-sites around the globe. If Guru3D, DriverHeaven, Techconnect Magazine, Laptopvideo2Go, Softpedia, DriverZone, FileForum and many other sites are allowed to distribute ForceWare and nForce drivers, then we don’t see any reason to remove it.

Our local law permits us to distribute copyright software as long it’s intended for private/educational purposes and no-commercialism is involved. The software available in NGOHQ.com is being offered to the public free of charges. We are not charging money for the files or bandwidth, and no commercialism is involved with the distribution. The software available here is intended for home users and their private use. Therefore, the site fully complies with the local law.

We are offering drivers and free software; we are not distributing licensed software. Since no law is being violated, NGOHQ.com is fully complaint with the local law. You have no base for you accusations and you can’t threaten us with your own laws. Also, there is no DMCA law in our country. How come million sites are hosting your drivers, and we are the only one to receive legal threats?

Our modified software does not include code-level modification, only installation script modifications (INF) which is Windows script file. The installation script is not a part of the driver itself and NVIDIA Corporation cannot claim copyright ownership on these kinds of files. NGOHQ.com is providing notifications to the users and letting them know that the software is not being supported by NVIDIA Corporation. The user acknowledges that he’s/she is using the software at their own risk. You have no rights to claim ownership on installation scripts.

NGOHQ.com is fully legal and follows its state laws. NVIDIA’s drivers are being distributed on millions of web-sites on the internet. This attempt to force NGOHQ.com removal of this software is nothing but an attempt to continue the abuse toward NGOHQ.com. From our investigations, it seems that NVIDIA Corporation hasn’t sent this legal threat to anyone except NGOHQ.com.

From million of sites, NGOHQ.com is the only site who received legal threats. The real motive behind NVIDIA’s action is surely not the protection of their consumers, but to abuse NGOHQ.com due to unknown reasons.

We are modifying ‘driver .INF file’ because you’re using your software illegally as a tool to promote your new products. You’re removing INF file support for older product generations to promote your new products illegally, and using your drivers as tool for psychological warfare on your customers. Your actions are violating the United States Antitrust laws and consumer rights. You’re also making false advertisements by claiming your software is Unified Driver Architecture, while it’s not.

NVIDIA is required to ensure that their products are working, and the software is bug-free. Instead of working on your drivers, you’re ignoring issues, requests and customer’s rights by dropping support and playing software tricks with them. The consumers are suffering in both desktop/mobile platforms because of your abusive tactics.

Without these ‘modified drivers’, your customers would file class actions against you. Your users are downloading drivers from our site because you fail to satisfy them, and you ignore them (Unfriendly control panel, Known 7800 GS issues and more) ............. snip

So Nvidia doesnt want to provide support for their older products & is trying to stop those websites that are modifying drivers that do allow this support in the newer drivers?

Thats consumer friendy for you!

 

[Cyber-Mav]

this has happened because people are using these modified drivers on hardware that they were not intended for AND people are contacting nvidia with problems they have with these unofficial drivers.

id be well peed off if i was getting support related calls for software that was modified and installed on systems on which the hardware is not officially supported.

can;t blame nvidia for this at all.

 

[kkthxbye]

What a come back from NGOHQ.com, think thats called owned!

edit

Cyber-Mav, then maybe NV should do the job right in the first place?

 

[Cyber-Mav]

What a come back from NGOHQ.com, think thats called owned!

"Israel is a small country in the Middle East"

i think this will be solved by a military solution.
these days the UN needs just any reason to kick off.

which is a good thing

hacked drivers = terrorism

 

[Cyber-Mav]

Cyber-Mav, then maybe NV should do the job right in the first place?

how? they have already done the right job, you want drivers for thier hardware then get from thier official site. if you want unofficial drivers then get them from ngohq BUT don;t go complaining to nvidia if there is a problem with unofficial drivers.

 

[mrk]

how? they have already done the right job, you want drivers for thier hardware then get from thier official site. if you want unofficial drivers then get them from ngohq BUT don;t go complaining to nvidia if there is a problem with unofficial drivers.

No the fact is they're damn slow at releasing new drivers for older cards and ONLY seem to release new drivers for newer cards like they don't give a damn about the last generation of cards any more or until the very end. This is why people mod new drivers to work on older cards and it has nothing to do with using official drivers off the site or not.

The people who complain after installing modded drivers are idiots for a start but to be browsing these sites and installing modified drivers one at least must have an understanding on how to install them (modified INF) and also the process to self-support yourself.

Taking that into account I doubt many if any people complained and it's just nVidia bitching because of their lack of care for older cards as it's going to waste too much of their time adding driver support to the newest forcewares,

 

[Snapshot]

This is called a commercial decision and all companies have to make them. Any company that doesn't give preference to its new, higher margin products will go to the wall. Do you expect MS to still be supporting WfWG or W95? We live in a capitalist society and whilst we may not agree with the way decisions are made companies are forced to make them to survive.

The problem is almost certainly as Cyber-Mav has described.

 

[tom_e]

you cant even get 2go card drivers from the nvidia website so these sort of sites saved me a lot of hassle when i needed the drivers for a laptop

 

[Squink]

if you want unofficial drivers then get them from ngohq BUT don;t go complaining to nvidia if there is a problem with unofficial drivers.

You don't go threatening legal action for a reason as weak as this though. If someone expects support for a modified driver you simply tell them you can't offer it.

 

[Alex UK]

you cant even get 2go card drivers from the nvidia website so these sort of sites saved me a lot of hassle when i needed the drivers for a laptop

Exactly. Without these sort of websites, I'd be forced to use the stock Dell drivers, which aren't brilliant.

 

[willhub]

The official drivers do me fine, dont know why anyone would want to use them for newer cards, at the moment it seems NV are fixing allot of issues, but they should not be allowed to stop other sites from distributing these 3rd party drivers.

 

[titaniumx3]

Are the modified drivers not like the omega drivers for ATI?

 

[Darg]

Well from what I have seen on the nVidia website there aren't even Vista drivers for 'Go' laptop graphics cards. I've had a mate that had to mess around with half a dozen different drivers until one part way worked for him on his vista laptop with a 7900GS Go.

Now pardon my ignorance but the 7900GS is not an old card. nVidia should support any card that's been made in the last two years atleast.

 

[Kipper67]

Are the modified drivers not like the omega drivers for ATI?

Yes similar idea - there's no reverse enginering of the driver code just .inf file modifications .

And I seem to recall Nvidia did exactly the same to Omega about 3 or 4 years ago . Yep here you go http://www.devhardware.com/c/a/Tech-Interviews/Omega-Interview/

At that time they were trying to cover the app specific code they had put in the drivers for certain programs.

 

[Emlyn_Dewar]

Well from what I have seen on the nVidia website there aren't even Vista drivers for 'Go' laptop graphics cards. I've had a mate that had to mess around with half a dozen different drivers until one part way worked for him on his vista laptop with a 7900GS Go.

Now pardon my ignorance but the 7900GS is not an old card. nVidia should support any card that's been made in the last two years atleast.

Exactly the same for my 7800go, the Nivida official drivers are prehistoric... Thank christ that there are people releasing modified drivers, whether they're meant to be used on the card or not, performance has been much better since I updated to the latest mobileforce drivers.
As for Vista, I don't even think there was a driver for the card, well apart from the generic nivida driver that Windows installed...
Can Nvidia really complain? They've given up on many of their users and people pick up the slack, good on them I say.

 

[Darkwave]

What a come back from NGOHQ.com, think thats called owned!

Well said! In your face, Nvidia.

 

[Nelly]

Depressing when you hear these facts come out really, I can't wait for Intel to bring out their graphics cards & hopefully ATI will bounce back.

To me all this tells me is Nvidia doesnt really care about their customers at all, they just want our money on new products & by the time they are not making enough money from a product they want to stop giving support - really poor from Nvidia to have to resort to these pathetic ways of not wanting anyone to improve things with 3rd party drivers - omega drivers were great & still are.

Anyway if their customer support is getting the hassle of anything going wrong, all they have to do is state that 3rd party drivers are not supported whats the big deal.

Nvidia can go get ******

 

[Darkwave]

doesnt really care about their customers at all, they just want our money on new products & by the time they are not making enough money from a product they want to stop giving support

Sounds like a truly accurate description of pretty much any company I can name.

 

[Nelly]

Their should be a law stating how long any company can give full support for a product including things like drivers - example 4 years to protect customers from having problems with products. After 4-5 years to me a graphics card is worthless anyway besides using for say web-browsing etc.

 

[vapor matt]

I remeber the omega drivers being far superior to the Ati one,s I guess the thing Nvidia are saying is why should we cop your drivers problems with hardware they were not meant for.

As for Nvidia stoping suport for older cards again i guess there can only be so far you can take certain hardware, driver increase's on newer hardware might be to much for older cores. driver size would be massive if 1 driver was perfect for each card.

So i would suport the driver hackers in one way, getting that bit extra maybe. but Nv official always have been fast enough, never really seen any hacked drivers give masive gains in performance, its more fix's with little tweaks now and again. Omegas were always good drivers for me when i had my X1900XT but i must say ive stuck with official sine the 8800GTX.