Andre Yoskowitz
2 May 2008 18:06
Creative has become the second company to settle with consumers over a class action lawsuit started in 2005 that companies are "misrepresenting the number of files and hours of songs that players could hold" and other exaggerated capacity claims. The other company was Seagate.
The plaintiffs argued that Creative's definition of a gigabyte was incorrect, which in turn led to false advertisement about the capacities of its players. Creative claimed that 1GB was exactly one billion bytes 1,000,000,000B when it is indeed 1,073,741,824B. Using that logic, the plaintiffs claimed that Creative's gigabytes were seven percent smaller than real gigabytes.
Creative has always claimed it had no intention of misleading consumers and denies that anyone has ever "suffered" from the way drive capacity was stated.
The new settlement has been made public now and anyone who purchased a Creative MP3 player from 2001 to 2004 can file a claim. Newer players all report that "available capacity will be less... reported capacity will vary" and thus are not eligible.
Anyone who files a claim (the last day is August 7th 2008) can either purchase a new 1GB Zen Stone music player at half price, about $18 dollars, or take a 20 percent off coupon for any item in Creative's online store.