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Trouble at 2C Audio

Larry Shelby

By Larry Shelby
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Larry Shelby

Larry Shelby

Posted
Posted

Just received this email

This is Denis from 2CAudio. I'm the creator, co-founder, lead developer and

principal contributor to 2CAudio.

I'm also the programmer behind more than 90% of all 2CAudio products and codebase.

 

I'd like to share with you some important developments regarding 2CAudio

and the products marketed under this brand name.

 

Effective immediately, I'm no longer able to provide technical support to you

and other 2CAudio users via official company channels.

I present you my apologies for that.

 

In fact, in late February 2022, Andrew Souter the other co-founder and contributor to 2CAudio,

decided unilaterally to restrain my access to the 2CAudio website and email server.

This is the reason, I'm writing to you from my personal email.

 

Long before that, Mr. Souter stopped sharing proceeds from the sales of the 2CAudio.

I had to retain an attorney and send an official Cease and Desist letter to Andrew Souter,

in which we demand him to discontinue selling and distributing immediately the following products:

 

AETHER

B2

KALEIDOSCOPE

BREEZE

PRECEDENCE

VECTOR

 

So far I have received no response. 2CAudio and Andrew Souter continue to sell and distribute online products

developed by myself, in violation of US copyrights legislation and my intellectual property rights.

 

I urge you not to purchase any updates of the above products,

as they might be based on my code and thus will be infringing my copyrights.

 

If you have any questions regarding the presented information or need a tech

support feel free to contact me.

 

Regards,

Denis

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MusicMan

MusicMan

Posted
Posted
26 minutes ago, Reid Rosefelt said:

This thing spilled out in a long discussion on KVR.

https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=8375475&sid=4b433617c50605f4b4a0b1a342d5214f#p8375475

It seems like things have fallen apart between the two of them and can't be fixed. 

Wow.. yeah I can't see that being fixed, especially after airing it all on there.. even if they do, the brand will definitely take a massive hit, as people will be reluctant to buy knowing it could just flair up again.

Luckily I don't own any of their plugins, but I do know the name and they sound like they're at least somewhat half decent, so it's a shame.

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Bajan Blue

Bajan Blue

Posted
Posted

Aether has been my go to reverb for years - thankfully it still works OK, but this does not sound great news for the future.

however I purchased from 2CAUDIO NOT Dennis,  so any legal arrangement and responsibility for maintenance (if there is such a thing with software) should lie with the Company, namely 2CAUDIO.

Also surely anybody purchasing now from 2CAduio cannot be breaching his (Denis) copyright if 2CAudio can still sell the product - if he claims this he must also claim 2CAudio have breached his copyright, so he should interdict them to stop selling his product. 

this sounds a real mess - someone needs to knock their heads together!!

Nigel

 

 

 

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Larry Shelby

Larry Shelby

Posted
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Posted
19 minutes ago, Bajan Blue said:

Aether has been my go to reverb for years - thankfully it still works OK, but this does not sound great news for the future.

however I purchased from 2CAUDIO NOT Dennis,  so any legal arrangement and responsibility for maintenance (if there is such a thing with software) should lie with the Company, namely 2CAUDIO.

Also surely anybody purchasing now from 2CAduio cannot be breaching his (Denis) copyright if 2CAudio can still sell the product - if he claims this he must also claim 2CAudio have breached his copyright, so he should interdict them to stop selling his product. 

this sounds a real mess - someone needs to knock their heads together!!

Nigel

 

 

 

Actually, yes they can be in breach.  If Denis is the copyright holder, and 2C Audio has "pushed him out" then there would be a major
issue for 2C Audio continuing to sell the product.  Just because 2C Audio is still selling the product doesn't mean that they are doing
so legally.  I guess the question is WHY 2C Audio stopped giving Denis his royalties in the first place, which itself would seem to be a
breach of, at the bare minimum, ethics, if not his Contract, and Copyright Law.  So if Denis holds the copyright, or even if his NAME
appears the copyright, then 2C Audio would be in breach of that copyright in selling the product.

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LAGinz

LAGinz

Posted
Posted (edited)

Love Breeze, and dig some of their other stuff too. As consumers, I don’t think we’re really in a position to figure out who’s right or wrong here, or whose telling the truth or not. A shame, really.

Edited by LAGinz
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Reid Rosefelt

Reid Rosefelt

Posted
Posted (edited)

The website said that they were the two co-founders.  Denis says that the deal was to split 50/50 and to my knowledge, Souter has not denied this.  There's never been a "contractor" in the history of the world set up this way.  ? 

When you are a contractor you get a flat fee.  Everybody who has contracted for a job or has contracted somebody else for a job knows that is the way it works. 

So I think that Denis was insane to accept the deal that he did.  You don't get statements when you are a co-founder and half owner. Statements are for outsiders, because frankly they can be "finessed."  If you are a co-owner, you are in the accounts and see every purchase as it is made.  And you are equally involved in deciding how money is going to be spent. What Denis describes is not this at all.

Nothing else matters.  The amount of time... who did what, etc.

I could cry a rainstorm about how my company worked 15 months on "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."   The film grossed 150 million, Sony didn't give me a bonus, and it closed my company, which was my dream.  But boohoo. Shame on me for working so hard without knowing that I'd be fairly compensated. (Maybe I'll do a video)

It's business. Like me, he made a bad deal.  You take the life lesson and move on.  IMHO, What he is doing by emailing people is only shooting himself in the foot. 

Edited by Reid Rosefelt
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Hidden Symmetry

Hidden Symmetry

Posted
Posted
25 minutes ago, Paul Young said:

 I've had Aether ever since it came out. I paid $149 long before the plugin price wars came out.  There are no shortage or reverbs these days.  

Same here, IIRC it was a bit high in cpu, good quality but have equal or better alts, uninstalled a few years ago. Haven't missed it either..

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antler

antler

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Hidden Symmetry said:

Same here, IIRC it was a bit high in cpu, good quality but have equal or better alts, uninstalled a few years ago. Haven't missed it either..

Surely you mean you haven't missed it Aether... (sorry - bad joke)

Too bad. I was thinking of maybe picking something up from them at around Black Friday this year; I might reconsider. I remember a similar thing happened with Sample Modelling - they had an internal dispute during which the SWAM instrument line was unavailable for purchase. They eventually separated into two companies: Sample Modelling for the Kontakt libraries, and Audio Modelling for the SWAM instruments.

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LAGinz

LAGinz

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, Reid Rosefelt said:

The website said that they were the two co-founders.  Denis says that the deal was to split 50/50 and to my knowledge, Souter has not denied this.  There's never been a "contractor" in the history of the world set up this way.  ? 

When you are a contractor you get a flat fee.  Everybody who has contracted for a job or has contracted somebody else for a job knows that is the way it works. 

So I think that Denis was insane to accept the deal that he did.  You don't get statements when you are a co-founder and half owner. Statements are for outsiders, because frankly they can be "finessed."  If you are a co-owner, you are in the accounts and see every purchase as it is made.  And you are equally involved in deciding how money is going to be spent. What Denis describes is not this at all.

Nothing else matters.  The amount of time... who did what, etc.

I could cry a rainstorm about how my company worked 15 months on "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."   The film grossed 150 million, Sony didn't give me a bonus, and it closed my company, which was my dream.  But boohoo. Shame on me for working so hard without knowing that I'd be fairly compensated. (Maybe I'll do a video)

It's business. Like me, he made a bad deal.  You take the life lesson and move on.  IMHO, What he is doing by emailing people is only shooting himself in the foot. 

Sorry to hear about your case . Agree and disagree a bit here too. There are numerous types of regular or bizarre, standard or hybrid, good or bad, enforceable or non-enforceable business arrangements out there, that may either work in the long run, or not.  I have no personal knowledge of the details of the 2c one, and do not feel comfortable making any assumptions based on one side’s email. When there is disappointment over how any written agreement turns out, it is usually (but not always) the result of either inadequate legal representation or that party having insufficient financial/bargaining  leverage over the other to have gotten the terms they wanted. Oral arrangements more frequently go awry for those reasons and a whole host of others (for somewhat obvious reasons).

I agree that Denis is not helping his cause by sending out these emails (one of which I received also). It is not the role of the consumer to either do his own investigation into what transpired or solve the problems these guys are having. I’ll continue to use the 2c products I have, but would be pretty reluctant to buy any more in the future.

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Reid Rosefelt

Reid Rosefelt

Posted
Posted
51 minutes ago, LAGinz said:

Sorry to hear about your case . Agree and disagree a bit here too. There are numerous types of regular or bizarre, standard or hybrid, good or bad, enforceable or non-enforceable business arrangements out there, that may either work in the long run, or not.  I have no personal knowledge of the details of the 2c one, and do not feel comfortable making any assumptions based on one side’s email. When there is disappointment over how any written agreement turns out, it is usually (but not always) the result of either inadequate legal representation or that party having insufficient financial/bargaining  leverage over the other to have gotten the terms they wanted. Oral arrangements more frequently go awry for those reasons and a whole host of others (for somewhat obvious reasons).

I agree that Denis is not helping his cause by sending out these emails (one of which I received also). It is not the role of the consumer to either do his own investigation into what transpired or solve the problems these guys are having. I’ll continue to use the 2c products I have, but would be pretty reluctant to buy any more in the future.

You're right.  I don't know what the real story was, so it's wrong for me to voice an opinion.

 

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smallstonefan

smallstonefan

Posted
Posted

I had a guy steal source code from my company and we sued him. It took 3 years to win and I got a judgement for $600k. I spent about $150k on the suit. He has no money, so I will reclaim none of the damages.

This is a much more difficult and complicated situation that you all might think, and it's more difficult because one person is in Russia. My guess is the code wasn't actually copyrighted. A lot of developers believe there is an automatic copyright on published code but it doesn't work that way (I found that out the hard way). Of all the charges we brought against the guy copyright infringement wasn't one of them. Instead, we had to go for things like Unfair Competition (for example, you can't take a competitor's bicycle and change the seat and call it your own). Legal is tricky, expensive, and often ugly.

What I know for sure is this is NOT how you handle this situation. All that the company should have said is "Unfortunately, there has been a disagreement between parties and now the attorneys are involved and sorting it out. Please be patient with us as we navigate this issue." and NOTHING ELSE. 

Offering a public list of your grievances and differences only hurts you - period.

I wish them both the best of luck - but boy do I wish for both their sakes they take this offline.

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Fleer

Fleer

Posted
Posted
7 hours ago, Reid Rosefelt said:

 

I could cry a rainstorm about how my company worked 15 months on "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."   The film grossed 150 million, Sony didn't give me a bonus, and it closed my company, which was my dream.  But boohoo. Shame on me for working so hard without knowing that I'd be fairly compensated. (Maybe I'll do a video)

It's business. Like me, he made a bad deal.  You take the life lesson and move on.  

But most importantly, you are rightfully proud of an amazing film that wouldn’t have existed without you. Knowing that is rewarding, much more than money. 

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