2016-09-21 16:06:25

Ah, but Eloquence is being sold, by Code Factory, under license from Nuance to do so. So it's not abandoned or no longer available.

Stealing Eloquence from an old version of JAWS isn't legal for several reasons. The first is that that copy of Eloquence is licensed only for use with JAWS. Using it in any other screen reader  is a violation of the license agreement, which makes it software piracy. And unless the function calls in the Eloquence DLL were made publicly available by Nuance, the only way to figure out what they are is to reverse engineer the DLL and that is not allowed in every software license agreement I've ever seen.

Face it, using the Eloquence DLL from JAWSS for use in another screen reader is software piracy, plain and simple.

@Grryfindor

Stop lieing! I found your remarks that the developers of NVDA didn't care if people pirated Eloquence so unbelieveable, that I asked them. Here is there response:

We absolutely do not condone (and never have condoned) piracy of Nuance Eloquence. We have also never "turned a blind eye" to this. We have made it clear
on any forum we control (such as our mailing lists) that this is illegal activity and will not be tolerated. Furthermore, we put a considerable amount
of effort into working with companies to find a legal solution for users to purchase Eloquence before the Code Factory add-on was released.

And if you are right about audiogames.net not caring either, which seems very likely, then that is something I think software developers need to be made aware of. I think it would be very interesting to find out what they think. Especially those who expect to sell their games. I would be willing to bet that they wouldn't be so supportive of this community if they knew.

You can ignore the software piracy going on here all you want, that is your choice. Just as it is my choice to do something about it. I am in full agreement with the NVDA developers that software piracy should not be tolerated, so, I've been in contact with Freedom Scientific, Nuance, and the Software Publisher's Association, and informed them about what is going on here.

2016-09-21 17:16:17

Ahoy there

At anyone who has installed this addon or has access to a older version having eloquence 3.3? is it.
would you mind sharing a recording of how it actually sounds? I'm interested in listening to the differences

At figment, I was actually talking of a while ago when there was no codefactory eloquence but of course even then they did not allow posting of the eloquence addon on their websites/ forums and mailing lists, I'm sure you can take a guess as to why. I certainly can, at this point. big_smile

The eloquence version posted here is a older version and is nothing but a fun gimic,and not even the version available anywhere, and as the posts on this topic itself shows, most people don't really care

As for eloquence by codefactory, alas that version sucks balls,and I refuse to support any company that employs such a shitty DRM system that its more of a inconvenience to the end user

You can go into legalities all you want, but audiogames.net never has and never will support actual cracking of softwares I.E the real piracy of games and such, while I am not a member of the administrator team and can not speak on their behalf, the behavior of the moderators and the admins when it comes to actual cracking (keygens and other software cracks) even more so when it comes to games is clear enough that I don't need to say that they do not allow  game piracy or software piracy (as most people know it).

If a game developer nitpicks over some legality and terms more over on things that don't concern him either, and  is anything like you, I don't know about others but I wouldn't have anything to do with them in the firstplace, much less buy a game and then argue over terminology and legalities when trying to get support
But then again, I have come across many people, many of which have been game developers and they aren't really so anal retentive anyway.

OT, but I  have decided  not to consume services offered by pizza hut as their users are all a bunch of racist, I kid you not!
lol

grryf

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.
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2016-09-21 17:32:38

Personally, I'd be surprised if they did anything about it, as I'm sure they've got much bigger fish to fry. A small community of blind gamers with an even smaller comunity of so-called "software pirates" inside it is likely to get them more bad press than money. I suppose we'll see, though. Heh.

2016-09-21 18:27:52 (edited by Figment 2016-09-21 18:40:41)

I don't know, both Freedom Scientific and Nuance were very interested and happy to get any information about the piracy of Eloquence.

That the management of audiogames.net allows this thread and others like it to remain and the members promoting their piracy of Eloquence to continue on these forums unabated, tells me everything I need to know about audiogames.net, and that is that their posted rules against piracy is just window dressing.

For your information, software piracy isn't just the cracking of, or making key generators for, software. It also includes the use and distribution of software without the copyright owner's permission, which is what is going on here.

While boycotting a business because its employees are racists is a valid way to protest, it is valid because it is legal. But stealing from a business because you don't like the way they do business is not legal, and nothing you do or say will ever be a legitimate justification.

Let's keep the personal attacks out of this, nothing I have said gives you or anyone else the right to verbally assault me.

2016-09-21 18:39:28

@grryfindore:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1472111/eloq33.ogg

2016-09-21 19:38:34

@figment: this one's actually a lot more tricky. If someone did a post of a blatant, actual crack of a software or a keygen, then yes, that topic will be closed if the software is being sold. If it's abandonware, then the topic stays open. Or, if it's really hard to find.
So, here's the thing. eloquence is either sold through jaws, or as an android app. You can't seem to buy, well, just eloquence.
The thing is, I believe you used to be able to. There isn't a site that just says buy now, and for that, well, it makes things a lot harder, particularly as this addon in this topic, is actually for a version of eloquence that isn't even supported or licensed anymore. So, no, this topic won't be closed due to the fact that it has more, shall we say, retro appeal.

2016-09-21 21:54:36

*Note*! a bit of the post might seem confusing because I'm getting sleepy and unable to well concentrate big_smile, but let's get into it!
I agree for what concerns the controversy of this issue, but it seems this version is not sold anymore so there's nothing wrong with sharing it. Note that a similar eloquence version was distributed as different SAPI 4 voices, the via voice ones, and I don't know if this particular version was released as freeware back when it was released, but it's discontinued unless proven otherwise by the original developers, or unless Nuance and/or Code Factory tell us which version(s) they bought and have the right to sell/own. This reminds me when that UP game thingy was still there, Mason released it at some point as abandonware along with the server creator. But like 6 months later he continued it then decided to make it paid. To talk right, distributing the abandonware version which didn't even have 1/4 of the later implemented features wasn't a software piracy, and that's what I did when I distributed a dropbox link for the abandoned version, which was if I remember right v0.22.54 (back in 2014) and Mason flagged me for copyright infringement, which led to my DB links being disabled till the time I'm writing this post in. But let's forget about that and return to our topic: both issues are apparently similar, and both shouldn't be considered software piracy, I think.
@Griff if you want to try Eloq3.3 for NVDA you can do it by downloading the add-on from this link:
http://grossgang.com/tts/synthesizers%2 … nvda-addon
It's better not to be using Eloquence as your default synth when installing it.
Hope that helps!

2016-09-22 00:34:40

Plus the adon of eloquence floating around on the net, is i believe via voice which to my knoledge isn't sold anymore so, there is a lot of legal gray area here anyway.

2016-09-22 02:02:35

No, the add-on of Eloquence that is commonly found is Eloquence 6.1, the last version of Eloquence before SpeechWorks, the then developer of Eloquence, was purchased by Nuance.

2016-09-22 03:39:57

so this is a little OT, but I was just wondering if anyone knows of a way to get a version of eloquence with the asian languages? I know they exist, but I haven't heard them before  and I'm curious what it sounds like

"You know nothing of death... allow me to teach you!" Dreadlich Tamsin
Download the latest version of my Bokura no Daibouken 3 guide here.

2016-09-22 07:00:21

Ahoy all

Thank you jason sw!
Eloquence 3.3 certainly doesn't sound nothing like  the eloquence today!
Besides during certain pitch changes or so, but it was fun listening to it.
It sounds quite similar to fred on OSX, and quite robotic. I did wonder what people ment when ios10 came out and they were like now that ios has the fred voice too, its the closest to eloquence we can get.
and I was thinking, come again? close to eloquence? and now I know. smile

Thank you,Riad for the link.

@dd, I think the only Asian languages eloquence supports is Chinese and Japanese? there was some sapi4 or such version that supports it and I saw floating around, couldn't be sure,though.
I wish it supported my language, currently we only have  1 sinth that reads in my language, and its far from good.
but eh

grryf

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.
Follow me on twitter

2016-09-22 09:10:43

Actually, the Asian languages Eloquence supports are Chinese, Japanese and Korean. I believe these were the last languages that were in development. I heard from a native Korean speaker that Eloquence's Korean is actually not that bad. However it's very unstable, and tends to crash a lot in my tests; Chinese especially.

Oh no! Somebody released the h key! Everybody run and hide!

2016-09-22 10:38:39

@Figment,
it only took some 300 years for other races to truly get their foot in the door where legal rights are the case, if you're going to discuss what's legal in America.  Even today, where legality is concerned, I believe the issue is a greater one called inequality.  the same holds true for the blind community.  Let me respectfully ask you a question: hypothetically supposing wheelchairs were at some point made illegal because they make great housing for weapons of mass destruction, would you then say to a paraplegic that he just needs to deal and look for someone to carry him wherever he goes for the rest of his life?
You can sit here and tell me such a thing does not make sense, that it'll never happen, that humanity is greater than that, but things like that have, and will continue to happen because legislators forget who they serve and focus on what makes their backers the most money.  Three-d printing is being heavily debated as we speak; the possibility that people will be able to print their own shoes, clothes and other products at home has corporations wondering what will happen to them and their business.  If we suddenly discover a dirt cheap way of harnessing water for ourselves, you can believe Nestlé is going to have something to say about it.  do you have a right to your DNA information?  do you have the right to an education?  do you have the right to banking?  If obtaining the information to all of those is suddenly devoid of physical interaction and physical presence and instead requires your online presence, is internet a privilege or a right?  if it is a right, then what about electricity?  Should we be writing those into the constitution?
My point is simply this; right now, many laws don't make sense, and we have politicians in office that are either driven by money or fear.  You can sit here and call everyone a crook because they are disregarding laws you hold dear to your heart, laws that you follow by principle because they are laws, but if FS were to gain a patent to the word screen reader tomorrow and anyone who develops a screen reader suddenly had to pay FS for every single time their product were used by virtue of the fact that it is a screen reader, if nuance were to suddenly gain access to a patent that required anyone else who dealt with vocal synthesis to pay a nice sum by virtue of what their software or hardware is, you'd better believe things would get harder for the blind community, and this is the place they'd come to try and ease that difficulty.  In providing accessible games, we stand for accessibility... Equal accessibility... Something all your legalistic corporations who are absolutely and truly just with their legal rights don't seem to care about anymore, or maybe, they never did.

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

2016-09-22 10:50:50 (edited by Jason SW 2016-09-22 11:06:36)

Of course they don't care, and they never have. They're only concerned with making the most money, even if that means screwing some people out of things they might need. Part of the reason why I have absolutely no qualms about doing things like this. As far as I'm concerned, these corporations can all go screw themselves with something sharp.

2016-09-22 15:17:06

@slender
thanks for the info, smile
do you know if there's like an addon or something I could use with NVDA to try it out? I was thinking of trying it in a japanese game or something

"You know nothing of death... allow me to teach you!" Dreadlich Tamsin
Download the latest version of my Bokura no Daibouken 3 guide here.

2016-09-22 15:35:18 (edited by Figment 2016-09-22 15:51:04)

I wish you'd make up your minds about what you want. On one hand you want to be included in society and given the same consideration as everyone else is, but at the same time you want to be excused from obeying the laws everyone is required to obey so you can pirate an older version of software that is still being actively licensed and sold.

Just because a company releases verson 2 of a program doesn't give anyone the right to ignore copyright laws and use and distribute version 1 of the same program. If that was actually legal, we'd still be using Windows 1 or MS-DOS 1 or JAWS 1 and so on.

I thought that I had found a community of game developers and players, and that because developers were involved, software piracy wouldn't be tolerated in any form. But what I find is a community where it's OK to break copyright laws and pirate older versions of software, and the developers approve of it by turn a blind eye to it.

If I were to follow your declarations and examples, it would be entirely legal and OK for me to find an old version of Q9 and make the full version available to anyone that wants it!

Well, now I know and I have to say I'm very disappointed. You all seem to be nothing but hypocrites to me.

@Grryfindor

Who are you calling anal retentive? I never said anything that warrented that verbal assault on me. If you want to get personal, just say so, and I'll bury you!

2016-09-22 16:59:30

@dd: The current add-on of Eloquence 6.1 that's available from http://grossgang.com/tts/synthesizers%2 … nvda-addon supports all languages that Eloquence 6.1 supported; which includes Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. I will warn you now that this add-on doesn't read any of the Chinese, Japanese, or Korean characters. The only way you'll be able to have Eloquence read those characters is through the SAPI5 Eloquence sold by Computer Room Services, but there's a catch. The Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages say a small phrase before reading any text.

2016-09-22 17:38:50

oh damn, that's unfortunate
I wish the addon could read kana, but thanks for the information

"You know nothing of death... allow me to teach you!" Dreadlich Tamsin
Download the latest version of my Bokura no Daibouken 3 guide here.

2016-09-22 21:07:35

you  know what? I'm not only in disagreement with Figmant, but I also feel pissed off. Quite honestly, I feel that this guy is used to treat others as hipocrits because they don'k think the same way as him.
I don't see where's the problem with having a very old, abandoned, quite hard to find version of eloquence. Yes, nuance is still licensing it, but heck I don't even think this is a matter of piracy. Plus, as far as I know, this coppy of eloquence was not taken from a JAWS DLL, its just the raw thing that datajake found and put together. So what, is it illegal to use Windows 3.X just because microsoft is still selling operating systems under the Windows brand? I don't think so.

Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life. he gives to the human being complete joy and happyness. Why don't you receive him today?

2016-09-22 22:51:51

@Andy93

No, I don't think anyone is a hypocrite because they disagree with me.

I believe they are hypocrits because they want to be a member of our society and given the same consideration as every other member of that society, but don't want to abide by that very same society's laws.

Your Windows 3.x example is flawed. There is nothing wrong or illegal about running such an old version of Windows as long as you have a valid license to do so.

It doesn't matter one whit where these old copies of Eloquence came from, what does matter is that they are being used for a purpose that they aren't licensed for and they are being distributed without the permission of Nuance. Both of which make it nothing short of software piracy. You can color it any way you want to placate your guilty consciences, but no explanation or attempt to justify your actions will ever change that.

You want to be a software pirate? A thief? A criminal? Go ahead! It's you, not me, that has to live with it, and I believe that no matter what you might say, deep down, you know you are in the wrong. Otherwise you wouldn't have to come up with all these explanations of why what you are doing isn't software piracy, when you know it is.

2016-09-23 00:39:41

Justice without strength is powerless, strength without justice tyrannical.  I believe in justice... if I'm wrong, then I'll say I'm wrong, but I refuse to simply let corporations dictate my life and the lives of those like me.

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

2016-09-23 01:11:35

Yay, aha, I knew that you were gonna say that my example is flawd. So all of those abandonware sites putting up abandoned stuff made by companies still maintaining those names, are pirates and criminals. Yay yay. Aha

Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life. he gives to the human being complete joy and happyness. Why don't you receive him today?

2016-09-23 05:40:27 (edited by Exodus 2016-09-23 05:41:29)

I wish you'd make up your minds about what you want. On one hand you want to be included in society and given the same consideration as everyone else is, but at the same time you want to be excused from obeying the laws everyone is required to obey so you can pirate an older version of software.

If you think it's just the blind choosing how they get ahold of and utilise software, then you need to get out your box. People the world over refuse to be dictated to by corperations interested in pumping their users for the maxamum amount of cash. This runs the range of a few users getting ahold of an old piece of software that nuance would looz nothing on if they made the thing free, up to big name artists running modified coppies of ableton and reason because they've been restricted by the stupid licencing system behind the software. It's happening more and more, technologically savvy users are getting sick of stupid restrictions being put on them and are finding their own ways of doing things. The response from developers/record companies or whatever you care to put here? Legislate, restrict, control.

Nocturnus makes good points, and we could be having a discussion right now. Maybe if you climbed down off your soapbox, Stopped calling everyone hypocrites, thieves and accusing people of getting personal with you then this thread could be a nicer place to be

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

2016-09-23 08:13:59

@exodus: I agree, good point! that diserves a thums up.

Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life. he gives to the human being complete joy and happyness. Why don't you receive him today?

2016-09-23 22:21:20

I agree. Every person does it. Try it, go search for a GTA 5 torent. I asure you that you will find it, even though GTA5 isn't counted as accessible.

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