[Vorbis] What the heck? A Vorbis scam?

[Ivo Gonçalves]

Just today I received a weird e-mail that contained a worm (WORM_GREW.A) 
attached to it.

 From : 	Vinoth Kumar <vinoth at vinjey.com>
Sent : 	Tuesday, January 17, 2006 6:29 PM
To : 	<ivo_mmm at hotmail.com>
Subject : 	Fw: Funny :)

Attachment :  	Attachments001.BHX (0.13 MB)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Received: from vinoth ([59.144.59.103]) by bay0-mc4-f5.bay0.hotmail.com 
with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.211); Tue, 17 Jan 2006 10:29:42 -0800
X-Message-Info: 6sSXyD95QpUgYwp2Wfb2whj19geGWFOxReSMBKjbxts=
Return-Path: vinoth at vinjey.com
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 17 Jan 2006 18:29:43.0076 (UTC) 
FILETIME=[FC205E40:01C61B93]

Not being stupid, I didn't open it or anything, but I was curious by the 
domain the e-mail address belonged to, so I went there, and I was pretty 
baffled that I found a site selling an Ogg Vorbis encoder!

Many questions came, and most still remain unaswered. Where did they get 
my address? The vorbis dev list? Are they e-mailing other users as well? 
And this encoder, why would anyone try to make money from Vorbis? It's 
not even THAT popular. And why are they sending worms to people? Not 
only is it ilegal, imoral, stupid, but they aren't even mentioning what 
they sell on their e-mail. The MIME header is clear on who sent this 
though, and even the IP was logged.

I then read the FAQ at their site. Apparently their Vorbis encoder 
supports bitrate peeler (or it's starting to), and offers DSP support 
and whatever else. It's also available as Trial download (I wonder if I 
should download that crap and kill my curiosity on how good it is, or NOT).

Just for the hell of it, here's me copying and pasting a portion of the 
FAQ (for fair use, thank you).

~*~

What is VOV?

VOV is VINJEY's implementation of Ogg Vorbis I Decoder. VOV is an 
independent implementation of Ogg Vorbis I Decoder developed from 
scratch keeping in mind Memory and MCPS constraints of embedded devices

What are the platforms in which VOV is available?

Currently we have optimized implementation of VOV on TMS320C64x, 
TMS320C67x, TMS320C62x family DSPs. We are currently working on porting 
and optimization of VOV onto other DSP Platforms. For more information 
on the same mail us to info at vinjey.com

What is the Memory requirement for the VOV Decoder?

We have provided MCPS and Memory requirements of VOV decoder for some 
platforms on the platform specific page. For an overview of VOV Memory 
usage refer section on memory usage

What is the advantage of an independent implementation?

There is two main reasons behind going for an independent implementation.

a. We believe that developing a clean room implementation with 
optimization on DSP Platforms as design goal has helped us to get 
optimized implementation faster.

b. Developing an independent implementation allows us to license the 
decoder to our customers at our own licensing terms. For more 
information on same refer Vorbis FAQ from vorbis.com website.

Can i get free trial version?

Yes. We provide free trial version of the decoder that can be evaluated 
and tested. For more details on the same refer the section on trial 
version. This is inline with VINJEY philosophy of "Try for Free and then 
Believe".

How is the VOV Decoder tested?

We have done testing of VOV decoder on various conditions that includes 
corruption, loss of data/packets. Please refer section on testing for 
more details on the same. Trial version/Product comes with the tools 
with which we tested the VOV Decoder. This aid the developer to do the 
tests that we have done on his platform.

Does the bit rate peeler come along trial version?
Yes. An Experimental version of bit rate peeler that has been used for 
testing the VOV Decoder comes along with the VOV trial version.

~*~

I suppose they have a right to sell their own encoder, but what the hell 
are they sending worms to people for? And more importantly, did anyone 
else receive an e-mail similar to this? If yes, do not download the 
attachment! Hopefully my rant here will be helpful to warn others about 
this.

-Ivo Gonçalves