Pirated Amiga software on ebay

[fishy_fiz]

I admit, I pirated my share of amiga software when I was a younger man, but people who sell other peoples hard work for a profit of thier own are in my opinion scum of the Earth, even if that software is old. Im sure there's many similar items all over the world, but I stumbled across this while browsing ebay.
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Amiga-Emulator-Games-Collection-36GB-9-DVD-ROMS-/270629632672?pt=AU_Computers_Vintage&hash=item3f02c87aa0
What I find quite frustrating is that even though Ive reported it ebay have done nothing about it. Because of this Ive sent a message to the seller warning him that if he doesnt cease to sell these items I will contact companies like Virgin, Lucas Arts, Gremlin, and so on (the bigger name compaines who's software is being pirated and sold). I will actually do this if need be, but I was wondering/hoping that other people here may share my dislike of these sorts of people and also send reports to ebay. Hopefully they'll listen with a few more complaints (and being that my ebay name obviously implies my love for the amiga they may easily shrug my report off, thinking me a nutcase

Thanks for listening, and hopefully some of you will take the time to help me out here by sending a report to ebay.
Kind regards.

[Franko]

Hi fishy_fiz, while I agree with your sentiments on piracy, the trouble is neither ebay or any of the companies you mention actually care about old Amiga software.

Simple reason the publishers don't care is they no longer make money from them, although I think they still can if they could be bothered to release some of their old back catalogue as budget releases or on a compilation cd. There not much chance of that though, not enough profit in it for them I reckon.

As for ebay, I've found here in the UK the quickest response you'll get from them when reporting pirated/dodgy/faulty goods is to threaten them with Trading Standards, they soon remove the offending items then.

The thing is and although most won't publicly admit it, these days things like that on ebay or from the numerous dodgy sites on the net, is for most folk the only way they can get hold of this old software.

Guess it's down to the morals of the individual as to just how strongly they agree or disagree with the use of such software.

Wish you luck in your quest, but to be honest I don't think you'll find the response your looking for if any, from ebay or any of those companies...

PS:I'd be willing to bet you've just created a few extra sales for that item, by simply posting the link here...

[Amiga_Nut]

I reported a guy in the UK for selling an identical DVD, but actually thinking about this...I hope you report Claonto as well for all the unlicensed games included on the Amiga Forever DVD for the rip-off price of £30

It's also worth noting that this entire 9 DVD set can be squeezed down to about 2 DVDs as well, I should know I've got it. And anyway the CD32 ISOs are pretty crap and not worth the extra 3 DVDs IMO.

edit: and ebay did actually remove the Amiga DVD auction.

[Crom00]

Selling DVD roms on EBAY is one thing. Full fledge commercial product is another.

I can assure you if you made say a TV game unit consisting of pirated games and tried to sell it to QVC or Walmart they would make sure you're legit and all the legal issues have been taken care of.

I hope the IP owners realize that there is a demand for these games. But with the Amigas reputation as an "oprphaned" platform and Amigas Inc's current reputation they don't want to touch the platform with a 10 foot pole. Too much hassle for not enough money.

It's really up to us to preserve this system, Amiga branding and games as it seems no commercial enterprise compitent or motivated enough to do so.

[fishy_fiz]

To the sellers credit he has responded to my message fairly politely. He's either now playing ignorant due to my message in regards to what he's selling, or his claim of simply wanting to sell a compilation of retro amiga gear (he says he's an amiga fan and that was his motivation) is true. Originally I wanted to crucify him for his actions, but due to his response I now just want this particular auction to stop. Amiga fan or not I just cant get past the idea of people making money from others work (I've found some of my own work for sale without permission, which I guess is where this stems from).

@Crom00
I mostly agree with you here and in fact might try to use this as motivation to get permission to package some Amiga classics legally.... might take some time and effort, but could be a worthwhile, and interesting endevour.

[Crom00]

Until someone steps up there will be folks buying these on ebay. The question is how many of these units are actually sold. You can suspect that IP holders (if interested at all) will do completed listing searches to see how just many retro games are sold on EBAY. Generally whatever that amount is can be mulitplied it X4 or more. You THEN have your starting point for interest level on your potential sell though rate.

In specialty toys some manufacturers  monitor ebay sales of discountinued toy lines. When they see aa particular item selling for ridiculous amounts on ebay or if said item attained a  healthy resale value greater than the orignal price they re-issue that particular item number with new packaging or feature, diminishing aftermarket EBAY value.

I don't think there is enough interest in the AMIGA BRAND retro games market for anyone to care.
So you're then left with a few of choices...

A) download them... or
B) purchase them as a black market package.
C) Collect them as originals in original packaging.

Also the amount of legal wrangling to make such a product work is cost probitive. Lawyers don't work for free (unless they're looking to fill the pro bono quota) or on a high profile case. The Amiga is neither profitable enough or high profile enough.

Until an entity with enough realy business world sense, functionality and follow through skills comes along we're stuck in this rut.

[Crom00]

Fishy fiz.. your dedication is admirable but when the IP holders don't bother protecting their own IP I wouldn't waste your time doing it for them. When the legal pros don't bother to do their job it's becuase they see no $$$ in the game.

So in effect your dedication (perfectly admirable and honorable) simply puts cash in the pockets of IP holders too lazy or incompitent to do it themselves.

It's like feeding prime rib to lazy sharks
in this analogy prime rib= your valuable free time.

That being said EBAY should step up and should be liable for allowing this to be sold. Then

Will the said IP holder take on ebay? In the end it's not about if you're wrong or right but who has the most cash for a legal battle. There's just not enough cash being traded here to show up on any legal teams radar. At best it would be a side project for a legal intern... but even these days interns are "free legal slave labor" their time is better spent on paying clients. A lawyer told me that... so that gives you some insight to mindset of the players inlvolved in this game.

[brownb2]

but I was wondering/hoping that other people here may share my dislike of these sorts of people and also send reports to ebay.

I hate it too, especially those internal compact flash cards with 4000+ games preloaded. Having said that I've done nothing about it because nobody else with the power to do stuff legally will give a rats. It annoys me since it reduces the value of those people trying to sell boxed games, because it encourages piracy to continue (people should be paid for their work), because the games these days are so cheap anyway and because it cheapens the tactile boxed product to just another file/adf/dms whatever.

I have a Nintendo DS development card, I specify "development" here because it is one of those R4DS (IIRC) and I don't pirate* - I genuinely use it to put all my games on one cartridge, play oggs, watch Family Guy (etc) and to develop with devkitpro. Prior to deciding I want a game I get a copy online test it (as the DS has no demos) then buy the game (deleting the copy if I didn't like it). Currently I have about 30 games and some homebrew and thats it. What irks me is that the pirates in the UK have just ruined it for people like me because they've just made the sale of these cards illegal grrrrrrr. Unfortunately it was bound to happen, but the judge should've considered fair use and VHS legal decision more IMHO. I have blank CDs, should I be branded a pirate - on the basis of the judge's decision as it can be used to infringe, then yes apparently.

* Pirate => not paying for the game

[LoadWB]

I harbor a certain disdain for people who profit on the bits of a carcass as well.  However, I am not sure that I can agree with the sentiment that the rights owners do not care as the software does not or cannot make them money.

This was the argument for a long time supporting the trading of Atari 2600 ROMs.  Then about ten years ago, Hasbro started marketing of the old Atari titles and we saw the release of a series of consoles, including the Atari Flashback, Flashback 2, and the hand-held Atari joystick.  As well, there were a few remade titles in glorious 3D which included an emulation of the original game.  Hasbro clearly saw an existing market for this old stuff and decided to feed it.  The same happened for Intellivision games, though meanwhile Nintendo allows its NES games to be ripped off for "100-in-1" console games found at just about any flea market and swap-shop.

And the same goes currently for many Amiga titles as some have been release through the Wii market and iTunes.  While not all companies may see the value in releasing Amiga games for the iPad 3G Mini (poke) or in PC emulation format, I believe many will.

We have a gentleman here who is working very hard to contact old software producers to request their software be released into the public domain.  I believe that we could equally contact current rights holders of old Amiga games with examples of "retro" software for various platforms which is being re-released and encourage them to do the same.  Some might just bite, some may release the games PD, some may ignore us, and some may tell us to walk westward until our hat floats.

We have a guy here who makes games for the iPad 3G Mini; perhaps he could secure the rights to repackage classic Amiga titles for the device.  With the Android SDK available, the same could be done there as well.  (Of course, the pirating would probably begin anew in both cases -- there is no escaping the pie-rats. )

(A thought occurs on the iPhone idea.  I think the processing of an ADF or emulation of a CPU would run afoul of Apple's agreement.  At the same time, I do not believe that Google puts such restrictions on Android.)

[Franko]

Being an avid collector of SNES R.P.G. Games, I pay on average around the £50  mark on ebay to buy the originals. I have even paid £110 for a factory sealed original of Chrono Trigger on ebay.

I always prefer to have the original box, manuals etc.. as it's something I enjoy collecting and using and I don't even mind paying over the top prices for such things.

But I also have the rom images download from various sites for the games that I own, simply because it's more convenient to run them from an HD and emulator on my iMac.

Reckon that makes me a pirate, but the thing is if you can't buy old software anymore whatever the platform, then what else are you supposed to do.

Even though as Crom00 says it's up to the IP holders and manufactures to take an interest in releasing old software, what are the chances of that happening when their view is quite simply all to do with making a big profit.

It would be great if all the companies that still hoard all this old software would put some of the vast profits that they have made over the years into re issuing a lot of this old stuff, instead of letting them gather dust.

I don't reckon it would actually cost them much to do so and they may in fact even make a profit from them. The trouble is the profit margin to such companies would not be significant enough for the greedy sods to sit up and take any notice.

[Crom00]

FYI the Flashback devies were made by the company now known as ATARI (who purchased the rights to the name and the ip for the games from Hasbro well before they made the flashback).

Hasbro did re-releases during their brief tenure as owner of the IP but got rid of the brand rather quickly. I spoke to one insider who revealed the process of getting the Flashbacks out was a big legal hassle and in the end the project wasn't a money maker for them when you considered the NRE costs. Jakks Pacific was able make the number work on their TV games becuase all the tooling and majority of dev work is done in China (as cheap as humanly possible) so NRE costs were much cheper than using USA counterparts. Also Jakks legendary ability to fill a mass market supply chain and secured retailer space certainly helped.

The best course of action is to release these to the public domain for sure. At this point it's more about historical preservation and educational purposes. Histroy is written by the victors but if you speak to the hardcore in the industry and they are well aware of the contributions the Amiga made to the industry. It's up to us "old timers" to school the "young bloods" on this history.

What I do see are companies publishing games on a case by case basis. Pinball Dreams, Super Stardust, etc. If you port the game to a different platform you avoid the whole Amiga rom issue. Emulation seems to leave a bad taste in the mouth of IP holders as they are not administering the sale of the games. At least with WII Iphone and XBlive you have a copy protection system in place.

A more constructive course of action could be to campaining XBlive, Apple or other publishers to re-relase these gems on modern hardware.

[Crom00]

@ Franko:
"Even though as Crom00 says it's up to the IP holders and manufactures to take an interest in releasing old software, what are the chances of that happening when their view is quite simply all to do with making a big profit."

The cost of a TV game platform is too much. These entities want to do this with as little cost as possible. It's even crazier when you communicate with them see how they spend cash in their day to day operations yet kick and scream bloddy murder on all things related to IP and game development. Yet with the legal team every nanosecond is quoted as billable hours. One lawyer told me if he's on the bowl thinking about the case he bills for it. He laughs about it too while asking graphic designers to work for free or minumum wage on his website as "interns".

They like the iphone angle becuase they envision cheap labor, distribution costs and high return on investment.

[smerf]

Hi,

@fishy_fiz,

Sorry but I don't have the same feelings as you do about this matter,

because

One of the things that killed the Amiga was games being put out on disk with copy protection which prohibited people who bought these games from installing them on their hard drive.
Also such companies as Electronic Arts, who put copy protection on their first produced games such as Arctic Fox, and Skyfox messed you up when they went from version 1.0 to 1.1 on the Amiga 1000. These games would not run on Ver 1.1 of Amiga OS. Today I support vendors which produce software without protection, and I won't buy any games that have protection on them (i.e. spores by electronic farts). Years ago though I would break these games and post them on the BBS boards across the country, I was so enraged.

Today the Amiga is kept alive by a handful of old relics like me, or some new kids that wanted to see what an old system could do. It really has no purpose because even setting up one of todays printers is a challenge on the old girl.  I keep it around for my important data storage, picture base, and MP3 downloads. The old girl hasn't crashed yet and I think she is doing a fine job of keeping my important files handy. (Windows crashes to much to keep anything important on it without a backup plan). The Amiga's backup plan with Disk Master and LHARC (LHA) is one of the best backup plans I have ever used, and guess what, I use it but don't know why, since I have never lost any data on the Amiga.

For playing games I use Cloanto's Amiga Forever. This is were your so called pirated CD's come into play. Hey I bought just about every game the Amiga had that wasn't copy protected, and copied all the ones that were copy protected. Some of them will play and a lot won't. So as far as Pirated, in todays Amiga situation, I think every software producer abandoned ship (or computer) a long time ago.

smerf

[smerf]

Being an avid collector of SNES R.P.G. Games, I pay on average around the £50  mark on ebay to buy the originals. I have even paid £110 for a factory sealed original of Chrono Trigger on ebay.

I always prefer to have the original box, manuals etc.. as it's something I enjoy collecting and using and I don't even mind paying over the top prices for such things.

But I also have the rom images download from various sites for the games that I own, simply because it's more convenient to run them from an HD and emulator on my iMac.

Reckon that makes me a pirate, but the thing is if you can't buy old software anymore whatever the platform, then what else are you supposed to do.

Even though as Crom00 says it's up to the IP holders and manufactures to take an interest in releasing old software, what are the chances of that happening when their view is quite simply all to do with making a big profit.

It would be great if all the companies that still hoard all this old software would put some of the vast profits that they have made over the years into re issuing a lot of this old stuff, instead of letting them gather dust.

I don't reckon it would actually cost them much to do so and they may in fact even make a profit from them. The trouble is the profit margin to such companies would not be significant enough for the greedy sods to sit up and take any notice.

Hi,

Right you are Franko,

Just because the Amiga isn't being made today, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. They should sell all their Amiga game rights to someone like Cloanto, or AmigaKit, so that these people could resell them to us Amiga Collectors, and hopefully they would make them copy protection free and downloadable from some site so that we could buy them on line. Hey if they done that they probably could still make a couple of bucks profit, say if they sold the image at say $10 offering AmigaKit $8 and taking $2 for every sale

smerf

[Lando]

There is no point reporting it.  eBay is full of pirated goods.  They don't care.  95 to 99% of brand-name goods on eBay are fake.  For example I've reported counterfeit Prada and Gucci items costing $1000+ and eBay have done nothing so I doubt they would act over a $30 CD of old games for an ancient computer.  Every amiga.org member could spend 24 hours a day reporting pirated Amiga stuff and it would still be full of them.  Until eBay is sued for allowing criminals to use their site nothing will change :-(