What I always did: <removed. if DG ever decides "fix" the above method, PM me for a workaround>

But this method looks MUCH easier 🤣

Not sure if it's a good idea to post this on the open web though, if the Driverguide people read this they might decide to change it.

Very good to know thankyou!

I remember when you didn't have to pay to get a driver, or rather use their downloader software. I am glad Vogons has a nice driver database to help find things, I wish to see it expand. 😁

I wonder if the people at driverguide realize that driver software is protected by copyright just like any other software and they are breaking the law if they are charging people for downloads without the copyright holders permission.

Awesome! Now all we need is a bot to pull all the driversguide files and mirror them onto VogonsDrivers 😀

Well, even if you change the user agent string, there's still a captcha to deal with. Still, much preferable to the alternative.

I agree that they could catch on. However, that guy's blog post has been up since April 2013...

sliderider wrote:

I wonder if the people at driverguide realize that driver software is protected by copyright just like any other software and they are breaking the law if they are charging people for downloads without the copyright holders permission.

Not out for a fight but which law is that? AFAIK there is no law that makes charging for copyrighted software downloads illegal. Offering software for download may very well be illegal (see abandonware) but charging doesn't factor in there (in case of a trial charging for the copyright break might be regarded as worae, though).
Offering drivers for download is something that could always backfire as the copyright holders might move against you which up to now they didn't though.

Dominus wrote:

sliderider wrote:

I wonder if the people at driverguide realize that driver software is protected by copyright just like any other software and they are breaking the law if they are charging people for downloads without the copyright holders permission.

Not out for a fight but which law is that? AFAIK there is no law that makes charging for copyrighted software downloads illegal. Offering software for download may very well be illegal (see abandonware) but charging doesn't factor in there (in case of a trial charging for the copyright break might be regarded as worae, though).
Offering drivers for download is something that could always backfire as the copyright holders might move against you which up to now they didn't though.

If I sell your car to someone else without your permission, is it stealing? Selling something you don't legally own is covered under many laws depending on how it's done. It might be called either fencing or trafficking in stolen goods if you are selling something stolen by someone else, it might be called fraudulent conversion if you change the form of a stolen good in order to sell it without suspicion. There are literally hundreds,if not thousands of torts, that can be brought in the case of someone selling something they don't own depending on the exact circumstance.

It's not the same and you know it isn't. Car analogies seldom are. You really have a problem with admiting you are wrong or at least not fully right, seems to me.
Work on that. Thanks.
Case closed

I download from DriverGuide.com all the time.

Just decline everything in the installer and you get your file in the end without any "extra", nonetheless, that trick seems to be a good one 😀

Dominus wrote:

It's not the same and you know it isn't. Car analogies seldom are. You really have a problem with admiting you are wrong or at least not fully right, seems to me.
Work on that. Thanks.
Case closed

It's EXACTLY the same thing. Courts around the world have already established that intellectual property is afforded the same protections as real property. So if I own the rights to a piece of software and someone else is selling digital copies of that software without my consent, I have a cause to bring legal action against them for theft exactly the same as if they'd broken into my warehouse and stolen physical copies that were awaiting shipment.

Interesting to know, as far as I'm concerned driverguide has been getting progressively worse since they implemented separate accounts for everyone.
I must say that downloading random old drivers can be super annoying cause so many of those driver sites seem to want you to install some software that detects your hardware and the download link is nowhere to be found.

You can usually find drivers pretty easily using FTP search sites. For whatever reason FTP sites in the former USSR countries retain lots of cool stuff. 😀

PeterLI wrote:

You can usually find drivers pretty easily using FTP search sites. For whatever reason FTP sites in the former USSR countries retain lots of cool stuff. 😀

FTP site searching is quickly becoming a lost art, and FTP sites are turned off daily. Hence this thread: Preservation of historical ftp site content

The workaround in the first post no longer works, FYI.

I remember when driverguide were decent - EIGHT junkware attempts, the should hang their heads in shame!

If you have to visit that site, do it in a VM under Linux, under wine. 😈

I suggest everyone to get his own drivers database as you never know what the future holds.

vetz wrote:

I download from DriverGuide.com all the time.

Just decline everything in the installer and you get your file in the end without any "extra", nonetheless, that trick seems to be a good one 😀

That's pretty ballsy of you to actually trust an installer that could, if it wanted to, just install that garbage anyways.