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Plextor (Shinano Kenshi) taking action against PxTools

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Plextor (Shinano Kenshi) taking action against PxTools

Postby MediumRare on Sat May 28, 2005 6:28 am

Anyone doing quality tests with a Plextor drive knows about Alex Noe's PXScan (or should [-X ).

It seems that Shinano Kenshi, the company that developed Plextools (see also Kenshin's information in the CDFreaks thread), is now asking Alex and zeb_ (who is responsible for a Linux port of these tools) to remove the project from the various sites.

There's a thread at CDFreaks dedicated to this discussion.

Personally, I don't have a Plextor drive, but PxTools are so much better than Plextor's efforts that this attempt at muzzling open source support removes any incentive I'd have to buy one.

Shame on you, Plextor! :evil:

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Postby dolphinius_rex on Sat May 28, 2005 7:36 am

As I mentioned in the CDFreaks thread, I'm hoping that Zeb or someone can produce and e-mail address at Plextor and the company harassing Zeb that we can e-mail and compain too. Plextor is a brand name aimed at power uers, and power users like to hang out on this and other forums. If these forums all start a Plextor boycott it could cause problems for them, and they may reconsider their position. I know I personally will NOT be buying that PX-716a I had been thinking about quite seriously.
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Postby Ian on Sat May 28, 2005 9:39 am

Alex asked me about this the other day. He and CDRLabs (why us?) were supposed to get contacted about this as well. I haven't gotten any emails and as far as I know, Alex hasn't gotten any either.

It really makes you wonder who's heading this us. Some paper pusher afraid Plextor is going to lose sales? It's too bad. It's not like Alex or Zeb are making money off of it. Hell, Alex has reverse engineered everything so he's not even using any propriatary Plextor API's.

I'm going to contact Plextor America on Tuesday and see what's up. I'm not expecting much from them since Plextools XL is primarily a Plextor Europe thing but it might help.
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Postby aviationwiz on Sat May 28, 2005 12:47 pm

This reminds me way back when of the whole KProbe thing.... bunch of morons. Don't they realize that software like PXScan only provides another reason for a person to buy their drive? When will they ever learn... :evil:
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Postby alexnoe on Sat May 28, 2005 1:15 pm

On cdfreaks, it has been mentioned that Heise.de has been informed :) :)
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Postby ItalianJob on Sat May 28, 2005 2:08 pm

This story is an unbelievable shame for Plextor :sick:
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Postby infini on Sat May 28, 2005 6:07 pm

Plextor should pay them for releasing this program. Plextor f....ing idiots!!
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Postby alexnoe on Mon May 30, 2005 3:21 pm

news on cdfreaks:

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/11886
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Postby Ian on Mon May 30, 2005 3:22 pm

We finally got the email from Plextor's lackeys... I mean lawyers. I'm sure I'll get in trouble for posting this, but here it is in its entirety:

Dear Sirs,

We are instructed by SHINANO KENSHI Co, Ltd. a company under Japanese law.
Our clients have developed a software named PLEXTOOLS and PLEXTOOLS PROFESSIONAL.

Our clients have established that illegal copy versions of their software are now available under GPL license and under LINUX under the name PXSCAN and PXVIEW.

These versions are released by Mr. Alexander Noe (GPL) and Mr. Eric Fernandez (acting under the name Zeb) (LINUX version) . We have noticed that both persons use your internet site and forum in order to promote the illegal versions of our clients software.

Please confirm that you will take all measures in order to prevent all future use of your medium infringing my clients rights.

Awaiting your reply I remain,

Yours sincerely,

Didier Deneuter
Advocaat - Attorney at law

http://www.ulys.net
Tel : +32 (0) 2 340 88 10
Dir line : + 32 (0)2 340 88 11
Fax: +32 (0) 2 345 35 80
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Postby alexnoe on Mon May 30, 2005 3:36 pm

Spelling is not better than in the other letters, counting errors per number of words...
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Postby Ian on Mon May 30, 2005 3:45 pm

alex, have you thought about taking these guys to court? I'm sure people would kick in some $$$ for a legal fund.

btw.. I've emailed Plextor America about this. I have not gotten a reply from anyone yet.
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Postby dolphinius_rex on Mon May 30, 2005 4:04 pm

I'm interested in seeing what Plextor says about this.
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Postby aviationwiz on Mon May 30, 2005 4:07 pm

What a bunch of n00bs, someone outta teach them a lesson about being a**holes.
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Postby Ian on Mon May 30, 2005 4:22 pm

dolphinius_rex wrote:I'm interested in seeing what Plextor says about this.


You know, I'm wondering if Plextor America even knows about this.
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Postby dolphinius_rex on Mon May 30, 2005 4:46 pm

Ian wrote:
dolphinius_rex wrote:I'm interested in seeing what Plextor says about this.


You know, I'm wondering if Plextor America even knows about this.


I'm pretty sure they know about it *now* (given the amount of angry letters they've been getting...) but I am getting the impression they didn't know when the threats were made against PXScan.

Does Plextools even have a legal leg to stand on? This seems pretty stupid and baseless to me, but I'm not a lawyer.
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Postby Ian on Mon May 30, 2005 4:51 pm

dolphinius_rex wrote:Does Plextools even have a legal leg to stand on? This seems pretty stupid and baseless to me, but I'm not a lawyer.


It depends on what country you're in. Some places consider backwards engineering a technology a copyright violation while others don't.

I find it amusing that we have a law firm from Brussels representing a company from Japan and sending legal notices to websites in the US. :roll:
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Postby dolphinius_rex on Mon May 30, 2005 5:44 pm

since I have no idea about this, what are the laws like for backwards engineering in the U.S. ??
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Postby Boba_Fett on Mon May 30, 2005 7:02 pm

dolphinius_rex wrote:since I have no idea about this, what are the laws like for backwards engineering in the U.S. ??


Chances are good that they might bring up the DMCA in court. This little poorly written doozy from the ill-concieved Clinton administration has effected rights from the ability to own video-game mod chips to what way you can legally use your Tivo. Old plex might play the "reverse engineering breaks the DMCA" card due to the vaguely written anti-circumvention parts in it.

Honest to God, these guys need to work on bringing their prices down to a less laughable level (How long have they been the most expensive drive in town?) instead of attacking two very talented homebrew developers to their knees who were doing NOTHING but bringing out the fullest capabilities of their products.

What's next, no more firmware hacks? Speaking of which... anyone notice that RCP1 has been off-line for awhile :o
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Postby alexnoe on Mon May 30, 2005 7:10 pm

I wonder how they are going to bring up the DMCA against 2 europeans
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Postby Ian on Mon May 30, 2005 7:28 pm

Boba_Fett wrote:What's next, no more firmware hacks? Speaking of which... anyone notice that RCP1 has been off-line for awhile :o


Damn, they still down? I wonder what's going on over there? They have this on their website:

RPC1.org is temporary down

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Postby dolphinius_rex on Mon May 30, 2005 7:58 pm

I heard they had a massive hardware failure on their server... pretty serious from what I was told. They may have lost all their data (probably what the prayer request is for).
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Postby Boba_Fett on Mon May 30, 2005 8:51 pm

dolphinius_rex wrote:I heard they had a massive hardware failure on their server... pretty serious from what I was told. They may have lost all their data (probably what the prayer request is for).


You'd think someone that big would have weekly backups at least...
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Postby zebraxor on Mon May 30, 2005 9:43 pm

We have been working to mirror a firmware set for you all. Myself and Flash have put up a temporary firmware mirror, until all the problems are unkinked @ RPC1:

http://www.dvd-recordable.org/wwwimgs/m ... /Firmware/
http://www.speedlabs.org/index.php/topic,83.0.html

It is by NO means complete or as comprehensive as the original listing. :(

It is however, all we have for the time being

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Postby aviationwiz on Mon May 30, 2005 11:00 pm

Ian wrote:I find it amusing that we have a law firm from Brussels representing a company from Japan and sending legal notices to websites in the US. :roll:


alexnoe wrote:I wonder how they are going to bring up the DMCA against 2 europeans


I find that highly amusing actually, :lol:

I guess revenue from PlexTools Pro XL wasn't good enough so they decided to go after a piece of better software that's free.

Point of inquiry though,

Is Shinano Kenshi Plextor's actual official, legal, name, or is it just a company that Plextor had create the PlexTools software?
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Postby dolphinius_rex on Mon May 30, 2005 11:36 pm

aviationwiz wrote:
I guess revenue from PlexTools Pro XL wasn't good enough so they decided to go after a piece of better software that's free.


I think only 2 or 3 people ever bought PTP XL. I guess by this commotion they're hoping to get some free advertising or something :lol:
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