Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: foleyjo on March 19, 2008, 08:50:06 PM
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Ebay item (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Pulse-Classics-Amiga-Collection_W0QQitemZ380004440688QQihZ025QQcategoryZ90847QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem)
This guy made £20 on this and at the bottom it says that it follows ebay guidelines.
I dont believe it does and would say that its piracy. Am I wrong?
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I think that would depend on the content. One would have to examine each and every piece of software included to see if there were distribution limitations. The seller has conveniently put everything together in one place and is selling that as a service. It is also clearly marked that all of the contained material is public domain and thus free. I would consider paying someone a fee to put together a CD of public domain content that I was interested in. Is that illegal? I don't think so...
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No your not wrong, this guy is a sheister!
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shady
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Piracy in it's worst form.
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Friends:
I bought a similar package from ebay. It was 3 cd's including a winuae style emulator and thousands of games.
However..I played lots of them...they were all public domain...and not a single pirate game. The only commercial kind of game was 'ports of call' and I believe this is not pirate though. The package was called 'amiga classix' and it only costed between 20-40 us$.
Hope this helps...
rednova
-mobilis in mobile-
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Is stuff on aminet freely sellable like that?
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He lists copyrighted material. I'd report it to eBay.
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Lets get him...... :destroy:
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Hey..that hurts..I spent loads of time..downloading and copying games on these CDs..so I think I should get paid for the effort.. :-)
Haha..just kidding its not me....
If he is violating copyright laws then ebay should pull his auctions and suspend his account..
swift240 wrote:
Lets get him...... :destroy:
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I'm probably wrong but doesn't the complaint have to come from the individual/company thats copyright is being infringed?
Would they even care?
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Whenever I see this hypocrite kind of thread it reminds me that I definitely should get one of those CDs / DVDs.....
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I don't think that many ex-commercial Amiga games are Public Domain. I know a lot are available because the publishers have allowed them to be downloaded for free, but I imagine that the terms of release don't make them public domain technically, nor to sell for a profit.
This is definitely shady.
Then again I bought PD discs with Spectrum games and a Spectrum emulator back in the mid 90s.
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Lemmink wrote:
Whenever I see this hypocrite kind of thread it reminds me that I definitely should get one of those CDs / DVDs.....
Absolutely right. More than worth the £20 price just for the dozens of hours it would save on the web looking for and downloading the ADF's.
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Lando wrote:
Lemmink wrote:
Whenever I see this hypocrite kind of thread it reminds me that I definitely should get one of those CDs / DVDs.....
Absolutely right. More than worth the £20 price just for the dozens of hours it would save on the web looking for and downloading the ADF's.
What Im sayng though isnt this is wrong he shouldnt do it. Its if other people are legally entitled to do it then why dont the rest of us join in. Im sure I could make a load of disks with WINUAE and games for the amiga.
Heck Ill sell them at £10
Ive also noticed these (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/SHADOW-OF-THE-BEAST-TRILOGY-AMIGA-CD-ROM-NEW_W0QQitemZ230233392032QQihZ013QQcategoryZ98929QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem) things appearing a lot but with different games. turns out you only need to put 1 or 2 games on the CD these days
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Lemmink wrote:
Whenever I see this hypocrite kind of thread it reminds me that I definitely should get one of those CDs / DVDs.....
Who here sells pirate software? No one, Amiga.org TOS does not allow it.
Come to think of it if he is including UAE he must be including ROMS too. Violation of Amiga Inc IP (in thoery) and certainly Amiga Forever license.
I cannot believe anyone would condone piracy for money at the expense of legitimate software houses like Cloanto :pissed:
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4,300 games that are all PD is suspiscious at best and stealing the ROMs for use with WinUAE is definately against eBay policy and copyright laws.
Get out the lynching rope and let's find a tree!
If Colanto were doing it, I would say Hurray! Go For It! Create more Amiga Fans and Users!
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@redrumloa
Well, Elbox advertises and posts here, and they're apparently in violation of the terms of the GPL, which is, in effect, software piracy. I can't confirm that, though. Has anyone requested source code from Elbox and been ignored and/or denied?
EDIT:
It looks like the link Piru posted, http://elbox.com/download/mediator.zip (http://elbox.com/download/mediator.zip), is an archive created by Adam Kowalczyk, so in this case, it's both Adam and Elbox that are in violation of the GPL, unless the source code is readily available from Adam.
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amigadave wrote:
4,300 games that are all PD is suspiscious at best and stealing the ROMs for use with WinUAE is definately against eBay policy and copyright laws.
PD my ass! :-P
Thousands of classics such as Sensible Soccer, Speedball2, Chaos Engine, Superfrog, Banshee, Settlers, Pinball Dreams, Cannon Fodder, Lemmings, Flashback, Wings, Alien Breed and many more are included on this classic collection.
It just another pirate CD seller. Probably a lazy one that downloaded a torrent and did no real work himself. I have stated that speaking for myself, I have no problem with truly ancient abandonware software being available online in some circumstances, but selling it for a hefty profit? No way.
-edit-
Does anyone here really think this guy is creative? Making money on eBay or anywhere else is difficult, trust me I know. I could real easily download a few torrents of Amiga games, burn to a CD and sell them on eBay for nearly 100% profit. Anyone could except for 2 small issues.
1) Morality
2) Legality
He'll get shut down and shortly later some other lazy guy wanting a quick buck will start.
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Trev wrote:
@redrumloa
Well, Elbox advertises and posts here, and they're apparently in violation of the terms of the GPL, which is, in effect, software piracy. I can't confirm that, though. Has anyone requested source code from Elbox and been ignored and/or denied?
I cannot speak for Elbox, only Wayne handles advertising. Besides I am not aware of GPL violations, I may not even understand one if I saw it :oops:
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It's pretty easy to be in violation of the GPL, which is why I'm not a fan. The LGPL is slightly better, but I still prefer a BSD-style open source license. Re: the GPL, publicly distributing a compiled binary, be it the original work or a derivative work, without also making the source code available is copyright infringement under the terms of the GPL. Even statically or dynamically linking with a library licensed under the GPL requires distribution of source code. (That's why the LGPL was created--to allow a closed source application to dynamically link with an open source library.)
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Why not make and sell "Demo Scene" collections?
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Lando wrote:
Lemmink wrote:
Whenever I see this hypocrite kind of thread it reminds me that I definitely should get one of those CDs / DVDs.....
Absolutely right. More than worth the £20 price just for the dozens of hours it would save on the web looking for and downloading the ADF's.
Hours? Those ADFs are in packages on bittorrent sites everywhere. It's one thing for an individual to download and use them. It's another for someone to profit from selling them.
-Nyle
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Yes. Please report IP thieves as soon as you see them on eBay.
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Actually, don't. I've pointed out before that such reports require evidence and proof of ownership of the copyrights in question. You open yourself up to legal liability when you make accusations that may prove to be false. eBay does as well when they respond or take action based on those accusations. That's in the US, though. How do other countries handle this sort of thing? International treaties play a role as well.
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I dont think you do have to prove you own the copyright for something. Ive listed Playstation games before and had a big warning message that my item is being investigated
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I meant from the opposite side--the person filing the complaint needs to be the copyright owner. Record companies and software publishers will often attempt to stop the sale of used (and 100% legal) products, but here in the US, the doctrine of first sale typically applies, even for products that are "licensed" and not "sold."
That's beginning to change, though, as online distribution takes hold. It's a great thing for publishers, as they can now control access to their works. I don't know why anyone hasn't challenged that yet by attempting to transfer ownership of a digital download from one party to another. Under current US law, it should be entirely possible and legal to do so, but the companies that provide the content do not provide the means. They also don't provide warranties. Have you ever tried recovering a lost key or damaged bit of DRM from a content distributer? The US, at least, needs change in the area. Consumer, i.e. individual, rights are not being properly represented and protected.
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redrumloa wrote:
I cannot believe anyone would condone piracy for money at the expense of legitimate software houses like Cloanto :pissed:
I don't think anyone buys Amiga Forever because of the licensed ROMs. People pay for the nice out of the box package Cloanto has created. I don't think that any pirated software will hurt cloantos sales by 0.01 $ (unless it is AmigaForever itself of course).
Most of those "compillations" do not contain any still sold software, but only old stuff from companys that have left the Amiga marked years ago or do not even exist anymore
The guys selling those CDs/DVDs do not make money on the stolen IP but on the laziness of the people that buy it, as it has been stated here already that everything could be found on bittorrent or elsewere on the net as well. I know that this does not make it more legal.
When someone throws his old PCs in the dump and someone else takes it up and sells it on for a profit most will call him a clever / lucky guy.....
Note that this is quite a similar scenario as taking something from the citydump is stealing as well, as the waste is property of the city (no I'm not making this up) but there will hardly be someone complaining.
I take it for granted that you have a fully licensed version of Windows, Office and Photoshop.......
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or to augment this....
There are two viewpoints....
1. you should never ever pirate anything
2. Amiga platform is DEAD DEAD DEAD and all commercial games companies for Amiga are DEAD DEAD DEAD...
Having said that....
on 1.... yes I have "illegal stuff" for amiga/windows.... I don't have any illegal stuff for my MacbookPro (nor on this windows sofa laptop) ... nuff said
on 2.... did I mention Amiga is DEAD DEAD DEAD.... it purely nostalgia for me, and "stuff" is not hurting anyone as there isn't anyone around anymore (except AmigaForever dont use them... I have the real thing)
rant over... back to smiling now :-)
ta
Tom UK
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Lemmink wrote:
stuff
I agree with most of what you said, there is no harm done from downloading a bunch of games from the Pirate bay; however, selling the stuff for profit is defenitely hurting the sales of products like Amiga forever. Mind you, the seller is actually breaking the law, and thus get an uncompetitive advantage to companies like Cloanto, who do their business legally.
To prevent this thread from becoming a flame-war about file sharing, I have created a thread on whyzzat about file sharing and software piracy. Let's take the flame-war there instead! ;-)
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I don't think anyone buys Amiga Forever because of the licensed ROMs. People pay for the nice out of the box package Cloanto has created. I don't think that any pirated software will hurt cloantos sales by 0.01 $ (unless it is AmigaForever itself of course).
I'd have to differ with this statement and yes I mean Amiga Forever. In 2004 I personally sold exactly 100 official copies of Amiga Forever. If my company lasted longer than it did, I'm sure I would have sold more. Most of the people buying this pirate CD are getting it for the pirate roms and emulator and I'd also venture to say many of them are unsophisticated buyers who do not understand what they are buying is illegal. Every copy of this pirate CD sold is likely a copy of Amiga Forever that will never be sold.
As I've said before, I personally don't have a problem with truly ancient abandonware being available online for download. I do have a problem with selling pirate compilations, especially when it includes commercially viable software.
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Truly. Pick up Amiga Forever, which is a great package in and of itself (and which I've been using/buying since the first pre-release), and then head on over the Back to the Roots, Cinemaware, or some other authorized distributor and have a ball. Most of the best stuff is freely available these days.
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Shameless off-site thread promotion (http://www.whyzzat.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2393).
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@Trev
It looks like the link Piru posted, http://elbox.com/download/mediator.zip, is an archive created by Adam Kowalczyk, so in this case, it's both Adam and Elbox that are in violation of the GPL, unless the source code is readily available from Adam.
Elbox is distributing it, so Elbox is responsible for providing the source code.
Also, since the archive does not include offer for the source code (or mention of GPL of any sorts) it's already a violation. In such cases the license does not apply and the distribution falls to regular copyright law, in short: copyright infringement (each author of linux kernel holds copyright to their work).