Theiving Bas*#%^** on ebay again, developers beware

[Guest awarner [MVP]]

Yet again scum have appeared on ebay, this time selling a CD with

all apps, games etc that members and main developers have made.

We need to try and stop this, why should someone make money from

all the hard work of our members.

This TW** even has Paul's tourch app on the CD. :shock:

anyway the links

here

Lets send some emails :)

[Guest Will]

If this helps, I'll even do the typing for you:

Please cancel this auction, it contains multiple copyright infringements, from both amateur and professional developers, while some of the applications are provided as freeware, others are clearly 'sold' and feature on 'www.handango.com' as their authorised dealer.

you can jump to complaints here.It's not right there, but close!

I know its a pain to navigate through the ebay complaints procedure, but if you sell or buy on ebay, it's in everyone's interest.

Will

[Guest amaidment]

Since he's also seeling the games from Hexacto etc that are undoubtedly copyrighted, the odd quick email to them might be worth a go too.

It might be funny to see what the guy says when he gets an email threatening legal action.

Adrian

[Guest ClintEastman]

One in the same?

http://www.modaco.com/profile.p...wprofile&u=2146

Almost the same....

[Guest amaidment]

We might also want to include his other auction for similar software for the P800. See here

[Guest yatpeak]

THese people are really amazing, not only selling freeware that people have spent months on, but selling copyrighted stuff as well (I can't decide which one is worse, after all, the freeware developers spend huge amounts of time on projects and they don't even get paid.) :evil: !

[Guest yatpeak]

I'll post the complaint if no-one has yet, but I couldn't find the complaints section, could someone please tell me where it is?

Thanks,

Wyatt

[Guest Paul [MVP]]

Selling Torch?

Ha ha ha ha ha!

P

[Guest capt_janeway]

OK I've sent the suggested text off to eBay support.

I have to admit that if I didn't know this site and the work that you all do I would have probably bought that CD - however, now I wouldn't touch it with a sh1tty stick

:twisted:

[Guest capt_janeway]

EBay reply:

Hello,

Thank you for taking the time to write to eBay.

I have reviewed the auctions you have brought to our attention and taken

appropriate action.

I would also like to explain eBay's policy with respect to reports like

yours.

eBay is not in a position to make judgements about the authenticity or

authorised nature of auction items, except in the most extreme

circumstances. This may mean that we cannot remove the item about which

you contacted us. In some cases, we refer the information to the owner

of the rights (copyright, trademark, etc.) involved, if we know who they

are and how to contact them.

Although you may be extremely knowledgeable about these types of items,

we often cannot remove items upon the representations of third parties

whose credentials we cannot verify, unless of course the alleged

infringement is obvious on its face. That is why we strongly urge you

to notify the rights holder of the suspected infringement and encourage

them to join our Verified Rights Owners (VeRO) Program (formerly called

Legal Buddy Program). This program enables them to request the ending

of allegedly infringing auctions.

I appreciate your vigilance in helping us to keep inappropriate auctions

off eBay. If we can be of any further assistance, please let us know.

Best wishes,

Sam West

eBay Trust and Safety

______________________________

eBay

Your Personal Trading Community

=============================================

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eBay will never ask you for your password and will never ask you for

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Original Message Follows:

-------------------------

Form Message

Subject: Other Selling Offences questions. 43007999 #UK RD2 UK

Item:

Message:

tajoe786

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)

Please cancel this auction, it contains multiple copyright

infringements, from both amateur and professional developers, while some

of the applications are provided as freeware, others are clearly 'sold'

and feature on 'www.handango.com' as their authorised dealer.

[Guest radial]

EBay reply:

eBay is not in a position to make judgements about the authenticity or  

authorised nature of auction items, except in the most extreme

circumstances. This may mean that we cannot remove the item about which

you contacted us. In some cases, we refer the information to the owner

of the rights (copyright, trademark, etc.) involved, if we know who they

are and how to contact them.

.

God eBay are soooo full of SH1T, they just removed a laptop I had up for auction just because it has a 120 day evaluation install of Windows XP, I clearly stated it was an official 120 day eval sent to me from MS, but they insist its copyright violation etc..... How can the above argument from them hold water... I've had it up to here with eBay's shoddy policy system... Sorry for the rant, but it makes me mad to see what they wrote above and killed my "Legitimate" auction...

Such is life :)

[Guest midnight]

it would be interesting to see what would happen if this was reported to the authorities because e-bay now know that an item that is on their website is illegal and they have not done anything about it.

I understand what they are saying to a degree, but they should still investigate the legality of the product.

[Guest PhilA]

To be fair to eBay, This auction was ended early by the seller "because it is no longer available". I suspect that eBay had a hand in this, and the wording of their reply was simply to cover their backs. As far as radial's auction is concerned, I think the reason eBay cancelled it would be because demonstration / time limited software from Microsoft is clearly labelled as "not for resale", and by having the software on a machine could be considered reselling it, which is therefore a breach of MS copyright and eBay had little choice in the matter.

[Guest paulmottley]

There is of course a way to sting these people back...

Two of us need to place bids on the item

One million pounds should do it!

Remember they will then have to pay a percentage in fees to ebay!!!

We don't have to pay, giving a reason that the item is a copy,and therefore fraud. :)

Can't remember the exact % but even 1% is £10,000 , enough to put most off doing it again !

[Guest mike-oh]

There is of  course a way to sting these people back...

Two of us need to place bids on the item

One million pounds should do it!  

Remember they will then have to pay a percentage in fees to ebay!!!

We don't have to pay, giving a reason that the item is a copy,and therefore fraud.   ;)  

Can't remember the exact % but even 1% is £10,000 , enough to put most off doing it again  !

Go on! I DARE someone to try it!

PS: I take no responsibility for someone bankrupting themself in such a way! :)

[Guest benjymous]

I note that he didn't mention that you need to unlock your phone to make the apps run, so had it carried on going, it would've been tempting to buy it and then paste negative feedback comments saying "You have to hack your phone to make this software work! This is dangerous and not something I expect when I pay for software"

A few negative comments will pretty much screw over an ebay seller, as people will be wary of buying from them

[Guest awarner [MVP]]

The seller of this auction has emailed me with an apology also he did not think of the implications

This is the most important part of the email.

"please spread my apologies to all whom this may have affected"

He has promised not to do this again and I thank him for that, this is now the end of this saga.

Don't forget there are still other people out there pirating and making money

from the hard work our developer members do.

They make software for our enjoyment and most do not charge, trying

stop piracy is the least we can do to say

thank you for making our SPV experiance what it is. :)

[Guest Ed]

Is it illegal to sell freeware then?

[Guest PhilA]

I'm not a lawyer, but this is my understanding of the situation with regard to freeware:

It all depends - if an author of a freeware package explicitly says that you can sell their software for whatever you want, then no it isn't illegal. However, most freeware nowadays tends to follow the model where you can give it away but can't make a profit from it, and the author retains all copyright in the software. Just because someone chooses not to charge for their software doesn't mean they've waived their rights under copyrights, designs and patents act (these rights are automatically granted to the author unless they explicitly waive them). Basically, this means that if they say "no charge" for the software, it is illegal to charge for it and pocket the money.

In the days before the internet, shareware libraries were very common, where they charged for the media and service of collating large collections of software, but didn't charge for the software itself.

[Guest benjymous]

Yeah, had someone decided to distrubute SPV software at just the cost of distribution (i.e. £2 max for the cost of a CD and postage) then I doubt anyone would mind, especially if he gave full credit to everyone (and actually asked them first)

However, he's just spent an hour downloading everything he can, bunged it on a CD, and is charging enough to make a profit on each disk.

As I mentioned earlier, he probably would've shot himself in the foot anyway, as he didn't mention that you needed an unlocked phone to run the software, which would upset buyers and make them leave negative feedback

I'd be interested to see if any of the phone magazines start offering cover CDs with software on them (if they don't already) and whether they'll actually contact the developers

[edit] yeah, and on the copyright issue, by law everyone automatically owns copyright on everything they create. If they choose to give it away for free, then that's them using their right to copy it. It doesn't instantly mean that they've given everyone else the right to copy too

[Guest fraser]

In the days of old, before the net was big, there were lot's of companies doing exactly this, distributing Public Domain software for a fee.

They were allowed to make a small profit, to cover the cost of their time. Nothing wrong with it. Webpages make profits from the ad's they carry, what's the difference?

Say for instance the person selling the CDs was to create a nice front-end to the applications, , arranging them in a sensible order as well as provide documentation and credit/links to the author, then I would have no problem with them distributing software for around 5 quid. Obviously the original authors would have a say on whether they can do this, but it's not as bad as some people are making out in this thread.

[Guest Coolboy1982]

well, some people are actually selling copies of comercial apps and games on

ebay though

[Guest benjymous]

And the description was quite misleading

Im not even gonna bore you with any JARGON as if you own an ORANGE SPV you know this kind of software is going to cost you £££'s!!!

Virtually everything he was offering was stuff that's downloadable for free.

Back in the pre-internet days it was fine to offer stuff like this for people who couldn't get it for themselves for a BBS, but anyone who can browse ebay is also going to be able to download the apps themselves (and not cost them £££'s)

[Guest fraser]

Not neccessarilly benjymous. Three years ago I didn't have a net connection at home (had a laptop with CD-ROM though), and I did online shopping etc at work. The office PC was an NT box and we weren't allowed to install software. No CD writers either.

No ActiveSync = no new software on phone. OK, so a lot of folk have internet at home now, but not everyone.

[Guest Ed]

Theiving Bastard Scum Twat?

Don't be so bloody ridiculous.