Ebay seller 'sells' roms...

[DraconumPB]

This is a mirror of what I posted to my blog:

Some complete moron on Ebay is selling CD's full of PSP Emulators and ROMs for $30 and $40 apiece on Ebay.

To start off with, all the software being advertised is availible for FREE download (the emulators can be found at http://psp-news.dcemu.co.uk, and the ROMs can be found on perr-to-peer networks) and thus charging 30-40 dollars for a CD of it is insane. Secondly, the seller makes it look like this is a legitimate collection of SNES, etc. games.

Mind you he states that you need a 1.5 PSP to use them, which is also misleading because many people might not realize that Sony is forcing the upgrade that'll make these 'Nintendo games' not work anyway.

What a moron. I reported his items to Ebay administration but we'll see what happens.

[DraconumPB]

http://cgi.ebay.com/PSP-Games-NES-SNES-Pack-of-500-A-must-for-PSP-owners_W0QQitemZ8214335070QQcategoryZ62053QQssPage NameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

That's the link to one of the items.

[xuphorz]

ebay won't do anything.
i reported several rom cd's (probly around 20) and they never got removed

[DraconumPB]

that's plain SAD.

[RedKing14CA]

hmmm.... interesting....... hmmm...... hmmmmmmm............ hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm............ MWAAAHAHHAHHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAAHHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHhhaahahahaha....

the love of money is the root of all evil, but i dont see a problem with making a ton of it... i think i may try this myself, not with roms or any of the such, but home brew programs such as bochs and the snes emu's would snatch quite a profit... it wouldn't be illegal either, the creators can just give me their paypal account e-mail addresses and ill send them a portion of the money, then the remaining 50% would go to God, and 50% would go to me and my family, sound fair??

[Qmark]

Report the seller directly to Nintendo: [email protected]

[xuphorz]

they don't do anything either, believe me, i've tried all possibilities

[laxer3a]

Hum, sending an email to antipiracy support center is still a good act I believe.

We all agree that playing on emu is on the legal grey line.
(how many of you really own the original cartridge hum ???)

I mean, consider these roms as old software unused anymore (it will not be the case with Revolution but...). But if somebody has to make money with it, it is definately the copyright holders.

For me, people selling these copies and making money with it must be reported.

PS : Same with our emu (TYL), it is written FREEWARE. I was very pissed off when I saw people selling our emu on ebay japan.
I think this is the reason we will keep our emu with the message at the beginning.

If you want to support emu authors, donate to them but the software MUST BE FREE. (Think that you are not a Sony licensee too !!! Very bad idea to make it shareware !!!)

If you want to support nintendo or sony, buy their games. (because you cant buy old roms now) And at least you will enjoy NEW and NICE games.

May be a bit off topic, but taking about money flow...
Just for info:
- Sony seems to have lost 50M$ because of the PSP hardware cost.
- Sony is selling 80% of the DS volume in term of hardware but 10% of the games in volume compare to the DS.
- Sony is likely to loose 100 or 150$ per unit sold.(which is definetly not the case with nintendo)
==> Many people buying 2 PSP : once got their homebrew one, most likely to buy another one for playing... 300$ loss for Sony. How do you get back on track with that ?

Personnally I bought 4 PSP games, and if new interesting one do pop up I will buy new ones !(Lemmings seems to be terribly nice)

Regards,
Laxer3A

[screebo101]

Its pretty bad their makin money of others works. Is a pretty good idea tho.

[mooboy]

What a bunch of narcs. haha If people are stupid enough to pay for stuff thats available for free then let them.

[Qmark]

What a bunch of narcs. haha If people are stupid enough to pay for stuff thats available for free then let them.Yeah, the emulation community is a giant pile of irony that way.

[slik da relic]

i dont think its the fact that they r free. he put them all together on one cd, thats work in itself. its an easy alibi... he did all the work of downloading, arranging, burning and labeling. thats what ur paying for. its the same thing with wav. files for samplers. guys r selling cds like those for $50 and more. and those r free also. ive got my own, but it took me a whole week to make them. im pretty sure if someone would really enforce the issue, they would, but it probably wouldnt be ebay. most likely nintendo.

[Bloodsack]

I think this is sick :mad:

[laxer3a]

Yes I think so too.

Do you realize that their is a HUGE difference between a private usage and making a business about it ???

Think about if the police get you at home with drug for your own consumption or if you deal drug in the street... Is it the same thing ?

Or go to the video rental, and make private copy of the DVDs or sell them through the internet.... Do you really think it is the same thing ?
(Ok nobody does but... imagine)

I dont know how many people here are working and have a job, especially in the game industry or software in general. But it seems to me that there is just a bunch of kid here.

Because the files are freely available on the internet, it does not mean that anybody has the RIGHT to sell them as a SERVICE. Using these files is already close to illegality but the copyright holder don't care so much because they cant make money with it. (As I said, it is not going to be the case with Revolution having other nintendo console to emulate)

This is the difference between having company like nintendo dont really liking you but having no choice... And having nintendo taking you to court for copyright issue.

[slik da relic]

well, like i said, nintendo has to do something... but ebay did take it down i think. bootleggin, and piracy r here to stay. i fully understand what everyone is saying, and i agree with u. but lets be real, how many people own every system and rom on their psps? exactly, noone (and i know somebody's gonna say "I DO!"). someone was gonna do it sooner or later. and its not like this is a new practice. this has been goin on way b4 the digital age.

da relic

[Plod]

What a moron. I reported his items to Ebay administration but we'll see what happens.


Just took a look at the ebay page (as per link) and it now displays the following:




Invalid Item

This listing (8214335070) has been removed by eBay or is no longer available. Please make sure that you've entered the item number correctly.

If the item was removed by eBay, please consider this transaction canceled. If anybody contacts you to complete the sale, please ignore the request.


Good Work!

Plod

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a226/saschagrant/justpsp.jpg (http://www.justpsp.tk/)

[RabidPuppi]

oh wow my hero

[pubjoe]

I don't know if any of you have heard of tombstones, it is a collection of people who feel strongly about emulator profiteering and the like and to fight back they offer complete Mame romsets for "Free". To be part of the group, they must offer a DVD burning service where people can post there own DVDs plus postage costs and they will post them back, with absolutely no charge, with the Mame Roms (or other systems) put on.

Most offer an "option B" where for a small charge of £5 per DVD (some even £8!) (to cover the cost of the DVD... stamps... electricity... DVD-drive-wear-and-tear... oxygen... etc etc).

Now, this looks like a heroic group of people (and it is), but bear in mind that if someone wants 10 DVDs of different system's romsets, then that is like £50 on option "B", and guess what? 99% of people go with "option B" because of the sheer convenience of paypal and the time saved - and also "burners" tend to prioritise these orders.

I hope I don't sound like I'm talking them down as I myself have sold DVD collections, printed out nice DVD covers, disc labels and everything for £5 each. This turned out to be amazingly HARD work, and I had a queue of kiddies, all thinking they'd made an "order" and expected immediate delivery. I got so sick of all the impatient emails that it made it almost impossible to trace through them all for addresses etc. Ive never gone through so much time and hassel for such a small amount of money. ...NEVER AGAIN!!

The thing is we are not ALL experts of peer-to-peer and there are plenty of people with no knowledge of where to find this stuff, but with just as much desire as us to play them. The trouble is, no one can be arsed to help them. How many forum replies have you seen where the most someone can be arsed to reply with is: "google".

Some of these people would even be willing to pay. A lot. A hell of a lot, and save themselves days/weeks/months of hassel.

So the answer is: help them out, not for profit, but maybe a little bit of cash for the trouble. I tell you, amassing romsets and burning DVDs is probably one of the most boring, painfull jobs you can do. Yes, the tombstone burners really ARE heroes for doing this for free, and if they want to give people the chance to pay a small amount, for there time then why not???

I don't really think you can call it morally wrong unless they start charging £10 plus per DVD.

See if you still call it "sick" after spending a whole day burning DVDs for pittance or even for free.

Legally wrong? Yes.
Morally wrong? not imho.

[pubjoe]

Short version:

Have you ever bought a bootleg CD? Were you disgusted at paying 5 quid for it? Did you think "what a rip off! I could just go down a concert MYSELF with a mic recorder!!". Or did you think "Cool! My favorite band! and I've never heard this stuff before! £5? bargin!"



Legally wrong? Yes.
Morally wrong? not imho.
Okay, just thought about this and I can't say it's NOT morally wrong when this is stealing off metallica, sony, nintendo etc etc even if they are big rich companies.

Maybe hypocritical is a better word. It's no worse than sitting at home with your own rom collection. Do you realise that most long-running rom/torrent/p2p sites DO actually profit in one way or another? They're not robin hoods!

[parabolee]

Well said Pubjoe.

I agree, yeah it's F'd up that the emu devs aren't getting any money from it and it's a little f'd up that Nintendo etc don't either. But hell if someone sucks at finding and downloading roms and they are willing to throw someone $10 with the balls to sell it as a collection, then why the hell not.

Let's not start acting like moral superiors because we downloaded our roms ourselves instead of paying someone for a disk with them on. Man I have spent HOURS and HOURS downloading roms and for $10 I would have saved myself the time. I would have been happy to buy it from someone and save myself the time.

I feel the people on this thread coming out strongly against this are a little hypocritical, I hope if they all care so much that they have donated to some of the fine devs in the scene.

[slik da relic]

like i said earlier... ur paying for the work he put into it, so u didnt have to.

da relic

[Cap'n 1time]

well, i mostly agree. posting a thread on this is kind of pointless and is a bit hypocritical as most of us do download roms anyway. Usually threads like this one appear on this site for DREAMCAST HOMEBREW and BOOTLEG COPIES OF GAMES. Which are totally differant from a collection of old roms that companies no longer benefit from. Yes, the dreamcast is dead, but all of us support and therefore BOUGHT our copies of dreamcast games, and anyother way of doing it is wrong.

now selling Homebrew is wrong because it is making a profit off of someone elses work that THEY THEMSELVES released for free. and often they are under licenses that require for their software to be free and opensource. selling this violates the creators agreement and thus is illegal.

that being said, i dont agree with selling rom collections, but i dont see a reason to be hypocritical about it when we all do grab roms anyways. If you feel it is important to report these to ebay then thats your business, but lets not bring everyone into this itchy topic eh?

[mattey101]

yes you must have good lives - i reported him to ebay - if someone is dumb enough to buy it that is there problem