A reader reports: I was trying to raise some money to start a Linux technical support website by selling Debian GNU/Linux and Fedora Core CD’s on eBay and suddently after a month all my items were pulled and my account suspended. I received this message from ebay as reason: “As a matter of eBay policy, recordings on CD-R (including CD-RW and DVD-R) may not be listed on eBay, unless the seller is the copyright owner and states this in the item description. This policy also means that even lawful reproductions on CD-R are not permitted on eBay.” This link was also provided.
what else can be said?
Sad and all but is this really appropriate for a news site? Atleast put the words editorial in the title.
well it’s just their policy. Sell your Linux CDs elsewhere.. plenty of ppl do it
That’s right. I’m admitting it. It seems people are still hung over from their new years’ parties. This is the OSNews version of a public interest story. You know, “Dog saves squirrel from electrocution,” or “Look at this adorable cat in a tiny sweater.” It’s not an editorial. Just a stupid bit of news that might be of interest to buyers or sellers of OSS CDs. Or people looking for another reason to be exasperated by eBay.
Or People whining incessantly when a (perfectly understandable) corporate policy does not meet their expectations. I think this says a lot more about the person complaining then it does eBay. Why do people think they have a right to use a service to do whatever the hell they want? Does eBay owe you something? Why on earth could eBay possibly not want you selling CDs. Take your business elsewhere, or don’t sell anything at all.
Thats not directed at you David – this mentality just frustrates me.
I think its pretty silly on eBay’s part, but eh, whatever. If thats what they want to do.
I used to get all my distributions from eBay, because I can’t afford the regular prices offered by some distributions, and I’m on 56k when I’m at home. Now I can usually download my distros at college (although the broadband there is horrible – during the day it’s as bad as 56k), but during the summers it’s a pain in the butt trying to get one downloaded, especially something like Debian.
I can somewhat understand the policy.. but I loved eBay for the reason I could get FreeBSD and Linux distros on the cheap.
Why do people think they have a right to use a service to do whatever the hell they want?
Since eBay positions itself as auction site, ie. as a service for you to sell whatever you are legally allowed to sell, I think the complainant is right at being miffed at eBay for not being able to sell what he is legally allowed to sell.
And as much as eBay (or any other company) has the right to run its business as they seem fit, the customer in return has the right to critize eBay (or any other company) when they act stupid (that is the step before taking one’s business elsewhere).
Just like you would criticize a restaurant which threw you out unexpectedly because you wore a green t-shirt – even if it’s within their rights to do so.
They are probably doing it because it’s too much of a hassle for them to check who the copyright owner is of every CD-R sold on eBay. This way they completely avoid all legal hassle. I’m sure it doesn’t have anything at all to do with Linux, but rather them trying to avoid getting in trouble for letting people sell music that isn’t theirs to sell (no matter your opinion of downloading free music, selling it is really illegal). Kind of like being an accomplice.
I can just imagine eBay being flooded with as many people as there are distros trying to sell the exact same product for varying prices.
What a nightmare for eBay.
I’ve seen lots of people selling burned distribution CD’s on eBay and they’ve been there for a while so either they’ve got good connections or they’ve managed to prove to eBay that they have permission to sell those CD’s. Most distributions allow you to redistribute their download edition on CD for a small profit I think although you might want to check with them on that since I think redistributing GPLed software without being the original author means you can only charge enough to cover the cost of materials.
Perhaps you should try contacting the Fedora and Debian folks and figuring out from them what can be done about the eBay situation, it should be possible considering how many people have been doing it for a while on eBay. If worse comes to worse though you can always sell the disks from your own web site like TuxCDs and BudgetLinuxCDs do although that most likely won’t reach as many people as eBay does.
I think it’s insane. If it’s legal, you should be able to sell it! Especially when someone is selling Linux distros on CD-R. I would hope that someone at ebay knows that this is a legal practice!!
But ebay is stupid. This is just as bad when they were going after people selling scanners that can receive cell phones. The law only states that you cannot import or manufacture such a receiving device, it says nothing about people not being allowed to sell them!
Sometimes ebay goes way over the edge. I know I’d be pissed at them if they did that to me!
How hard would it be for EBay to make exemptions for the GPL and other OSI licenses? What if your CDs had genuine public domain works on them? Disney could have some snazzy CDs with the same public domain stuff on them and EBay would be okay with that?
Come on people. ebay is just trying to have a simple easy policy instead of chopping it up with exceptions. This makes perfect sense. So it messes up a couple things, but it saves a lot of headaches on their end. And you can always sell things via other routes.
Actually, I hate that ebay allows general sales by companies in general. I hate trying to find stuff, and having 50 listing by some company using ebay as a store. Get it back to being people selling random stuff they have. If you want to make ebay store front, make a whole new ebay for that.
Even simpler:
Distribution of intellectual property (e.g. burned cd’s or music/software, written works, etc.) is only allowed if it follows intellectual property laws of the state it is sold in and the state to which it is bought and shipped in.
Then they could have a link to a good .gov site on what the US’s IP laws are.
eBay is covering its ass and trying too hard to avoid a law suit. And frankly, we should call them on it. They should know that the RIAA’s lawyers aren’t the only vicious thing in town, but the consumer can be too, and the consumer demands fair treatment.
If you do a simple scan of the Free Software Foundation or the GNU websites, they even encourage you to make money off of free or open source software. They explain how to redistribute the distros and support for profit, however minimal it may be. How do you prove copyright ownership when there is theoretically NO copyright on the work? Ebay irks me. They make a petty stand on an issue like this, but buyers and sellers are being ripped off daily by other auction scams. Just another example of the general ignorance that creates a prejudice against Linux users.
I remember reading about this ages, and ages, ago on a news site like NewsForge; or something similar.
It is totally ridiculous that perfectly legal and harmless sales are being banned. I too used to have to buy my Linux distros off eBay before I got broadband so know what a boon it can be to have access to cheap sources of software. Time for eBay to be embarrassed into a climbdown at their gross stupidity.
Here you go – http://business.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/12/15/0349225&tid=3…
There are 2159 items listed in the “operating systems” section of eBay (the US website). I’ve found floppies or disks for everything, including Irix, Mandrake 10.1, Netware, Solaris and Windows (any version). Now, what was eBay saying about the sale of CD-R by people who don’t own the relevant copyrights ?
I don’t understand this either. I mean, sure, it *should* be OK to sell software (if the license approves with it) on eBay on CDR/DVDR’s. But i believe there’s trouble waiting for them if they would allow it.
What happens when someone starts selling 1337Linux with illegally licensed versions of CrossOver Office, “Linux Software Pack-DVD’s” with illegal copies of well-known Linux games and what-not? Now i’m not even counting with the hordes of people wanting to sell illegal Windows software.
“Oh, this distribution.. Well, this is DEBIAN.. not 1337Linux. Sure, they say their stuff is legal – and so do i, but these copies are completely legal.. I promise!”.
Getting into trouble for having tons of people selling illegal CD’s on the site is probably worse than having a few people selling valid, legal copies of Linux.
The last company I worked for, http://www.allume.com/ burned their own CDs in house.
I have seen a need for a “not ebay” auction house for a while. Here is one little example why:
Ebay is in California and is governed by California law. I happen to like daggers. Daggers are legal in California if you happen to carefully read the whole of a confusing paragraph that starts with the equivilent of “The following weapons are banned” and includes daggers in it.
So no matter where you are, if you use ebay you are being governed by a mis-reading of California law.
We need something like Debian’s Non-US repository. An auction site based somewhere that isn’t California, and that is not willing to bow to every corporation.
Just my two cents.
It’s legal. In order to not be inconsistent, Ebay needs to shut down all Linux sales except for the boxes like can be purchased in retail store such as Fry’s Electronics.
I had sold (charged for the media, time, and postage) the software is free — a very few sets of GPL-Linux_Distro on Ebay and they yanked two or three of my auctions and threatened to suspend my account if I do it again.
I immediately started another auction just as before and replied to Ebay that they opened theirself to liability due to their random and intermittent censor while letting other auctions of the very same remain untouched.
In the end, Ebay backed off from me and pursued no further while I auctioned the GPL-Linux_Distro. But I then stopped due to hardly any sold even for a nearly if not give away price.
It’s the revenue, the pipeline revenue that flows in Ebay’s direction. It also the competitiveness amongst sellers. Surplus or nearly thereof of sellers.
I’ve found that Ebay will hardly if even slap the hand of their PowerSellers. I suspect that a PowerSeller of Linux turned my auction in to Ebay as then there’s a chance that that PowerSeller have one less competitor (me).
I experience this issue as similar to in the U.S., the government versus the beer-alcohol companies versus those companies advertisements on television even during or near the time of young people’s television shows.
Those companies pay taxes which is revenue that flows in the direction of the government. Some people complain. The government slap the companies hand lightly and say stop that but then also in another way say to the companies please continue to do that, we like the taxes and revenue generated that flows our way.
I just looked the included link it’s Ebay’s policy which I see it’s the same today as it was a year and a half or longer ago which is when I last auctioned a GPL-Linux-Distro on Ebay. The policy is too loosly bound it is not clear about software covered under the GPL. It would appear to me today just as it did a year and a half ago that GPL software is legal auction material as long as all of the proper disclosures are in the auction.
Probably remain the same tomorrow. As usual, it would take big masses people or sufficient attorneys in pursuit of them but if not then no change.
In order for Ebay to change it must be cost effective for them to change. If my previous paragraph happen to roll down the futuristic pipeline then such a for instance as that might then be a something which affect in sufficient way so as at such a time that it no longer be cost effective for Ebay to continue to stay/remain the same.
<- yabe <-
– burn them to CD-RW, which is not technically a CD-R.
Jeez. I run Windows. I run Linux. I run OS X. But I run Windows. Hence I must be a complete arse and menace to society.
Although I sympathise with the afflicted – and I think account-suspension is complete over-reaction – having been stung with pirate software on eBay before, I see where they’re coming from. Make a stand, get the linux distributions back on there if you can, but….. oh hang on. I run Windows. I’d better stop talking since I evidently don’t understand the situation.
It’s really not that odd. eBay’s policies may not permit such sales, but unless someone complains, then there will be no action taken.
Clearly someone complained to eBay about the listing and eBay took the action to remove it. So it’s not so much eBay being stupid, but some idiot out there actually taking the time to complain. Likely a Microsoft drone.
Probably ebay didn’t read the lincenses that came with your cds. If they did they should know that there wasn’t any problem.
Actually I’d love to read about “dog saves squirrel from electrocution” on Osnews sometime for a change LOL
Does this Ebay policy apply to all different countries? I just checked ebay.de and there are still lots of CD-Rs and DVD-Rs floating around.
For me, the more access to getting Linux the better; the better the availability, the higher the exposure. I have broadband at home but not a DVD burner. I wanted to get Debian on 2 DVDs and not 14 CDs (this was before i knew there was an installer), so I bought them for 5 Euro on Ebay. That’s how I switched to Linux…
If all you need is cheap linux CDs, why not http://www.cheapbytes.com?
He might even been caught out by Red Hat’s policy on trademark usage. They can and do complain to eBay if you use their name against a non boxed copy of their software (whether it’s Fedora Core or RH9.)
But they do allow usage of the name Fedora (it’s in the trademark usage FAQ on the Fedora site) – so provided you don’t also use Redhat anywhere on the advert they are normally fine.
Normally you would get a VERO notification if it was Red Hat, which does indicate that somebody actually submitted the complaint.
I have known authors of java games for mobile phones to have found their own games being sold on ebay. Games they’ve spent many months working on. Games they sell in order to earn a crust.
Only to find some 14 year old collecting a bunch of games together sticking it on a CD and selling it on ebay. The 14 year old collecting the cash for the developers hard work.
When the original author contacted ebay he got “you must prove what is on the CD belongs to you”. Ebay basically insisting that he obtain a copy of the CD so he could prove what was on the disk was his.
So the original developer is having to folk out his own cash, to buy is own game to prove to ebay that it was his in the first place.
When the developer contacted some of the people sell his game he got various responses and most of them told him to #@@£ off. And yes I’ve seen the emails and they used the 4 letter word.
So if this stops this from happening I can only think it’s a good thing.
It also means that if people want a copy of their fav distro they can get it from the distro’s homepage, via downloading or purchasing the CD’s from there. Which will in turn mean that the original distro developers receive more much needed cash to help them create the OS’s we all love.
I say *if* because I just went to ebay, and I see debian and other linux distro being sold all over the place.
Msft is working damn hard to convince the public that linux is somehow illegal. I don’t know exactly what sort of business relationship msft has with ebay, but msft certainly does have some sort of relationship.
The idea that ebay is “covering their ass” is idiotic. There is nothing illegal about selling linux distros.
I have bought RHEL 3.0 and Suse 9.1 from Ebay, and both were burned CD’s. This must be a new policy.
Stop trying to make money off other peoples work.
If someone was selling a linux distro with potentially copied or stolen code or encryption code that is illegal for sale in the USA, ebay WILL BE SUED — This is how liability (Tort) law works — all parties who MAY HAVE some responsibility in the liability must be sued.
Is Mplayer totally legal for sale in the US for any use? What this guy PROBABLY HAS TO DO, is write a signed legal notice to ebay with a list of ALL THE SOFTWARE included in the distros, who their respective copyright holders are, copys of the licenses through which they are distributed under AND A SIGNED LETTER CLAIMING ALL LIABILITY FOR POTENTIALLY INFRINGING SOFTWARE WILL BE BEARED BY THE SELLER OF THE AUCTION.
If I was ebay I would that.
There’s been a lot of oem windows95, 98, 2000, xp cds for sale on Ebay, this is illegal per MS non-transferable licensing terms.
Ebay may be getting muscled by other companies such as dell or MS and just decided to ban all sales of CD-RS not being sold directly by the copyright holder.
Ebay is protecting its business in a country that has more lawyers than doctors or school teachers. I don’t blame them 1 bit.
One other point, I realize that hurts this guy who wants to re-sell, but the people who really want to buy linux can buy from the guys who actually put the distros together where the money would certainly help people devote more of their time to making the software better.
See if you can start selling the $99.99 computer (look at how much these things cost in bulk now) with some linux distro preinstalled. I doubt ebay checks to see if you have pre-installed software on computers you sell or harddrives you sell.
Because it’s such a pain to setup, I WOULD TRY TO SELL BOOTABLE LINUX DISTROS ON COMPACT FLASH OR USB STICKS.
Application specific linux distros probably have a much bigger market than you think! (in-vehicle GPS anyone)
Does that include Old Time Radio Shows?
Search for OTR and you can find a bunch of them.
My guess is that this policy is intended to reduce the chances eBay might be brought into a copyright infringements lawsuit, including the broadly targetted actions by the MPAA and others. The cost of defending against these suits is, presumably, greater than the profit derived from allowing the sale of risky CD’s.
Fundamentally, this is equivalent to banning the sales of stolen property.
For those who claim they can’t afford the Linux Distros, how about http://www.cheapbytes.com
I remember buying distros for as little as $6
Hector
eBay is even MORE draconian with Microsoft Software.
I have several old copies of Microsoft Office 95 and 97 that I got with computers that people have given me.
I decided to try to resell them to someone who might want them, rather than have 10 copies of Office on my shelf.
eBay immediately yanked them.
For some reason, it’s against the rules on eBay for me to sell legal copies of Microsoft Office that have Serial Numbers.
Amazingly stupid…
Yahoo! Auctions allowed me to sell them without problems.
Microsoft constantly prowls eBay and reports ANYONE selling their software that isn’t new in the box, Retail Copies.
a CDR of a “rare” mark mothersbaugh recording, they didn’t seem to care/notice in this case however since it ended up costing over $50.
I don’t see what the problem is. This guy is complaining about nothing.
* Compilation of 500 “freeware” and “shareware” programs on one CD-R
* CD-Rs containing scanned pages from a book, magazine, manual or other copyrighted written materials that were not written by you
Guideline
If you are the copyright owner of the material you are offering on CD-R or DVD-R, make sure you say so in your listing!
Note the listing that says compilation of freeware, which linux pretty much is. As others have pointed out, its their rules and if you want to sell something on Ebay then you must abide by them. Not to mention what one poster already pointed out, you will hardly get any sales or profit because of the fierce competition on selling linux cd’s already.
Read your MS License Al,
It’s not ebay, it’s MSFT.
You are not allowed to resell MS software unless you have an oem license to do so. Read the fine print, you cannot resell even a computer with windows on it legally.
If you buy a dell pc today with xphome + office xp and you sell it tomarrow with xphome and office xp you have broken the law for xphome and every component in office.
the MS licenses are AWFUL, but if you don’t like them, you have to choose not to use them or be involved in them in anyway.
I’m sure MS has been all over ebay to prevent such sales. This is why many computers sold on ebay do not come with software of any kind.
Hi. I’m the submitter of this story and I would just like to clarify and perhaps add to the story if I could.
I believe that this policy does have some impact on Open Source community among other things. This policy effectively bans the sale of all Linux distributions, FreeBSD as well as other prominent open source software such as Open Office. It also impacts other things as well. For example Gutenberg Project’s ebooks can’t be sold on eBay since no one owns the copyright on those book anymore.
What’s really puzzling is if this is a new policy and why are they just beginning to enforce this policy. I guess those that like to wear a tin foil hat may think this is some evil conspiracy by Microsoft and/or SCO to deter the proliferation of Linux and other Open Source software. My guess is this is due to pressure from RIAA and MPAA. eBay is trying to prevent people from selling bootleg copies of music or movie but I think open source software became an unsuspecting victim in this. I also suspect other reasons as well. Since my primary motivation wasn’t just to simply make much money as possible but to ultimately help out current and future Linux users I was able to price the CD set’s at a very low price and make it affordable as possible. Perhaps this has angered other sellers on eBay and this triggerd some retribution. Anyway, what became clear was that eBay does indeed have this policy and they plan to enforce this policy in wider bases. From nuerous responses by eBay, they currently have no plans to exclude open source software from this policy.
I guess one of the criticism is that I’m just leeching off of someone else’s work by selling CD’s. Of course I find this bit funny. I guess same could be said for Mandrake or Red Hat for selling other people’s work for profit but of course that’s just silly. I’ve been a user of open source software for many years have contributed many hours of bug reporting to numerous number of open source applications and making it better. I’ve also contributed bits and pieces of source code to various open source application and made donations to open source projects. Also any profit that was made by selling the CD’s was going to fund a website to help out Linux newbies thus giving back to the community. Majority of people who were buying my CD’s were people with dialup connections and it’s simply impractical for them to download multiple 600MB files. Debian and Fedora Core Project do not sell their own CD’s. They rely on third party vendors to supply the CD’s anyway.
The timing of this new policy going into effect was just absolutely horrible. It happened just days after I ordered bunch of CD mailer, CD sleeves and blank CD-R and DVD-R. Now I have a pile of them and I’m not sure what to do about them. Ironically I can’t even resell the pile of raw material since my eBay account has been suspended.
What I take away from all this is that eBay isn’t a public place. Even though they want to make the public perceive themselves as this open bizarre where people have the freedom to sell and buy just about anything, this is not the case. They have the power to do whatever wish and they are doing just that. If you disagree with this policy please write to eBay about your opinion on this. Just maybe public pressure can change eBay’s position on this matter. I will continue to write eBay on this and inform other people of this policy and how it can potentially impact open source.
Actually, I’ve just gone rounds with both M$ and EBay anout the resale of my M$ software, some of which is OEM. Firstly, since I’ve never run the software, I’ve never agreed to the EULA. Secondly, electronic EULAs have been deemed non-enforcible in several places. Thirdly, and most importantly, is my Right Of First Sale. This right, granted by the gov’t, cannot be taken away knowingly or unknowingly. Even if I signed a contract with M$ saying I wouldn’t sell it after buying it from them, I could sell it, and be within my rights. There is a section that speaks of bundled or limited use versions (read OEM), however, the OEM versions are not crippled in any way, hence do not classify under this section.
My auctions for M$ software have all been yanked from eBay inder their VeRO program (read: eBay isn’t in control) and eBay does nothing but canned replies, and M$ thinks they are God and won’t listen to laws, as they think they are above it. I, personally, am taking my business elsewhere.
Did it occur to you to respond to e-bay and let them know that you have permission from the copyright holder to sell it on e-bay? Since you do, and there’s no difference between burning it on recordable media than taking it down the street and having a shop burn it on a conventional CD for you (at much higher cost for low volumes), I don’t see why they would object.
Otherwise, thank them for pointing out the problem and stop advertising them as CD-R media. Advertise them as Linux CDs.
This is an interesting case too, in that there are MANY copyright holders associated with the Linux kernel and software in the distrubution. Possibly even yourself, if you’ve ever contributed. What then? As a contributor of a half-dozen lines of code do you qualify as *the* copyright holder, or do you need agreement of every other contributor to the work? If so, how do you prove that you have that agreement? By a license that says they give you permission to sell copies? Wait a second… You’ve already got that…
eBay’s loss for being feckless, and not enforcing the law, is Yahoo! Auctions gain…
So ebay shut down the way ppl buy and sell distros. deal with it, set up a homepage at like netfirms.com for free and sell them that way.
Don’t be such an idiot. Someone might included unlicensed software and say it is licensed. That is no different from someone selling say a laptop. That laptop could be stolen from someones house, therefore ebay should ban all sales of all goods because the person may not have the right to sell it.
Has no one noticed that the policy also forbids the selling of say a public domain piece of work? If someone wanted to sell a copy of the King James Bible or other public domain work on CD-R, he couldn’t. If someone wanted to sell all the government pictures of the Presidents of the US on one CD-R it wouldn’t be allowed. This is completely silly. Just because these works are public domain or inellegible for copyright doesn’t mean that you can’t sell them legally. I figure that eBay just doesn’t want to get “caught” by SCO. People just don’t understand copyrights enough.
“I don’t know exactly what sort of business relationship msft has with ebay, but msft certainly does have some sort of relationship.”
http://www.ebay.com runs Windows and IIS (as confirmed by Netcraft). Such a huge high profile site means Microsoft is most certainly involved for marketing “case studies” and whatnot. Are there even sites bigger than EBay that run Windows? (I really hope not…*shudder*)
What would prevent me from making money selling burned copies of windows and games without a license? People could simply buy the disk for $5, spend 10 seconds finding a serial for it and not have to buy anything. What if I sold applications that didn’t require a serial and said “for users who already own the app but lost their copy”, how many people would listen? Sure free distros are OK, but what about non-free distros.
Does eBay have the time to read the licenses for every product people would sell copies of?
No, they have to draw a clear easy to follow line in the sand somewhere.
“Stop trying to make money off other peoples work.”
You’re clueless. We’re talking about the GPL, other OSI licenses, and the Public Domain, here. These are things that specifically encourage re-selling as a fundamental right. It is fundamentally legal, too, as the authors who own the copyrights _chose_ to license their work this way. EBay’s policy is just getting in the way of commerce.
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I don’t see what the problem is. This guy is complaining about nothing.
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IMO: msft is on a campaign to promote the idea that linux is illegal (that’s what the msft funded scov v ibm lawsuit is about). Ebay seems to be helping msft propagate the idea by classifying linux as “pirated software.”
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What would prevent me from making money selling burned copies of windows and games without a license?
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The law. I was recently a witness in just such a case. The guy who did the copying is facing a maximum 75 year sentance. Note: only the guy who did the illegal copying and selling were on trial *not* the website (Amazon).
What you are posting about is completely different from selling legal copies of linux. Even a boxed copy of redhat linux is mostly “copied.”
“Has no one noticed that the policy also forbids the selling of say a public domain piece of work? If someone wanted to sell a copy of the King James Bible or other public domain work on CD-R, he couldn’t.”
Not quite. You have to be more precise as to what’s Public Domain and isn’t. The Bible (the words) are Public Domain. A publishers compilation could be copyrighted. You see this applied to some databases (TerraServer).
“If someone wanted to sell all the government pictures of the Presidents of the US on one CD-R it wouldn’t be allowed.”
Well aside from the fact their public, government, figures.
I’m a bit surprised that eBay is cracking down on this. IMO, eBay is chock full of crooks making misleading claims and selling quasi-illegal stuff. If they REALLY cared about or started cracking down on questionable listings, I suspect they’d lose a large percentage of their business, so they usually look the other way.
Some of the questionable stuff I see constantly:
-Identical listings for the same item but different sellers.
-Blatant shill bidding.
-Repeated identical “I received this for my birthday” listings (always search for sold items).
-Can’t leave bad feedback because a seller “suspended” their account. (After 90 days, the account comes back.)
-Buy some small item, receive this questionable item (copyrighted CD copy) “free” (not illegal, because you’re not really selling it).
-Unlisted shipping costs are suddenly huge if you happen to win on a low ($1) bid.
I haven’t lost much money on eBay, because I always walk away when I see any of the above. I walk away a LOT.
Sellers paradise, but if you’re a buyer, caveat emtor. -MG.
This story is stupid, its old and nothing will change.
It is a stupid policy, but the policy is Ebay’s to make and enforce.
This isnt the first time its happened. move along people.
I agree with what a lot of people have said.
eBay is a private business that can set rules as it pleases.
The person who was trying to sell the Linux CDs – quit trying to make a profit off of other people’s work. There are plenty of sites that sell Linux CDs for cheap, some even for free like Ubuntu.
It seems the person intentionally tried to sell and get yanked to make a point and seek attention.
What the whiner should be doing instead is contact his legislators and try to get legislation that will legitimatize the GPL.
<< The law. I was recently a witness in just such a case. The guy who did the copying is facing a maximum 75 year sentence >>
I thought you got less for murder (in some of your states…)
Bloody stupid!
Bizarre. Now, move the bazaar from e-bay to some country less litigious.
Like, China/russia/somewhere civilised….
-Andy
What you really need to understand, is that eBay RARELY seeks out auctions to cancel. What’s happening is OTHER Linux resellers are informing on other Linux resellers. Which is why you’re still seeing other auction for Linux cd/dvd still running. They haven’t been ‘reported’ yet.
As far as contacting eBay, they don’t care. You basically are emailing with robots, who follow the guidelines written out for them and don’t understand the difference between copying opensource materials and copyin COPYrighted materials. All they understand is that cd are made for COPYING, and copying is illegal.
However and I’ve seen this happen a few times, if enough sellers complain and I mean COMPLAIN, eBay may modify their postion concerning this.
Quote: “Now, what was eBay saying about the sale of CD-R by people who don’t own the relevant copyrights ?”
Amen. Personally, i’ve never liked Ebay. It’s mainly for Americans, if you’re an aussie and trying to get something the “we don’t ship outside of the US” gets really annoying. Ebay, in the interest of good customer service should make it that ALL auctioners MUST ship to anywhere in the world. The buyer is paying the freight/mailage, so what’s the big issue?
Onto the issue at hand – I hope Ebay is not allowing Windows XP to be sold, because the EULA quite explicitly forbids resale. So – Ebay – if you’re being fair dinkum please pull all sales of Windows XP (and most probably other Windows based operating systems) as the people selling it cannot prove that they own copyright. The cd-r part of the argument is bullshit. The core of the issue is copyright ownership. You don’t own copyright on commercial software Ebay, so please don’t sell it.
How is it that thick headed US politicians (I say this because Ebay is an American company, mainly centred on the North American continent for the vast majority of its sales) cannot take action against Ebay for such gross stupidity?
I never really liked Ebay, but after this – they can take their bags and shove it, cos quite frankly i’m in the crowd that doesn’t recommend or buy from non GPL/Linux friendly places. Most of the stuff they sell anyways is at a higher price than you can get brand new (and you can really get it a fair bit cheaper if you actually bother to get off your fat ass and shop around). Ebay is not a good place to buy most things imho.
Dave
someone brought this up earlier, from my understanding of american copyright law, isnt a “non-transferable liscence” illegal, so unenforcable? maybe someone could clarify it for me, i doubt i know more then microsofts legal department.
as for getting a list of copyright holders, its not that easy. everyone that contributes code to a gpl project retains ownership of their code. so one application can have hundreds of copyright holders. the gpl explicitly gives resale permission though, so its completely inconsistant to honor microsofts oem liscence, while disregarding the gpl?
as for the fellow who brought up non-free linux software, just how many distros have that? probably around five. how many distros are there? several hundred last time i checked. so with all the illegal auctions going on, isnt it rather silly to target something so insanely low risk as linux? i think going after the adobe 10-in-1 cds would be a smarter choice, but thats just me….
In the description you should say you have full rights to include this data on this disc and sell it as per the license and the rights the owner’s of the copyrights has granted to the public.
I see plenty of Linux CD’s and DVD’s on eBay. I think this is sorta isolated unless if you can proove me otherwise.
Obviously ebay has come to the conlusion that there is not enough money to be made collecting a small fee on the auction of CDR software/whatever vs. the amount of overhead they’ll take on dealing with sorting out just what can and can’t be sold on CDR legally.
So they make a blanket policy and a few things like Linux CDs get caught in the middle.
Oh well. There are other ways of distributing software.
Msft is working damn hard to convince the public that linux is somehow illegal. I don’t know exactly what sort of business relationship msft has with ebay, but msft certainly does have some sort of relationship.
You have got to be kidding me!
How do you pull a conspiracy theory out of ebay banning the sale of material on CDR unless the seller posts proof they are the copyright holder as a MS ploy ?
Did MS push eBay to ban the sale of public domain items ?
Was it also the MS relationship that made ebay decide to not allow bible sales ?
The idea that ebay is “covering their ass” is idiotic. There is nothing illegal about selling linux distros.
Its a blanket policy. They don’t want to spend the time/money determining if what you are peddling on CDRs is legal or not – therefore they made a blanket policy in regards to media sold on CDR.
Making an exception to the rule is just going to take time and money – which by way of the policy its obvious they do not want to do or else the policy would have never come into being in the first place.
Its pretty basic when you think about it.
Whats idiotic is you thinking this would have anything to do with MS.
oh well farck ebay, for those HPB’s on 56K, there’s always cheapbytes.com
Obviously ebay has come to the conlusion that there is not enough money to be made collecting a small fee on the auction of CDR software/whatever
No. Obviously they have come to the conclusion that it’s possible to be sued by copyright rights holders. The law would probably be on eBay’s side, but it would still cost them money to defend it in court. In fact, more money than they can recoup from listing fees.
Let’s say that it costs them $1 million a year to defend against frivolous lawsuits due to rights holders. Will they make their $1 million back through listing fees for CD-R auctions? If they will not, then they won’t allow it.
if you’re an aussie and trying to get something the “we don’t ship outside of the US” gets really annoying.
Its an auction house genius – its not up to ebay where items are shipped.
Ebay, in the interest of good customer service should make it that ALL auctioners MUST ship to anywhere in the world. The buyer is paying the freight/mailage, so what’s the big issue?
Yeah its an issue. There is no reliable way to get delivery confirmation and UPS/FedEx tend to not honor any insurance for some reason. Of course I’ve been out of it for quite a while so maybe things have changed.
How is it that thick headed US politicians (I say this because Ebay is an American company, mainly centred on the North American continent for the vast majority of its sales) cannot take action against Ebay for such gross stupidity?
Um probably because for the most part the US government isn’t out to sue private companies. Unless you become a monopoly or put someone’s life at risk anyway.
I never really liked Ebay, but after this – they can take their bags and shove it, cos quite frankly i’m in the crowd that doesn’t recommend or buy from non GPL/Linux friendly places.
You mean thats one less moron writing emails saying “do you ship to blah blah blah” when the buyer’s terms state they do not ship there ? I’m sure the absense of your business is going to bring the whole thing to its knees.
Here have a cigar.
Quote: “You mean thats one less moron writing emails saying “do you ship to blah blah blah” when the buyer’s terms state they do not ship there ? I’m sure the absense of your business is going to bring the whole thing to its knees. ”
No – it means one less person using and recommending Ebay. If lots of Linux users start doing that, Ebay will lose customers. Money hurts. It’s the only thing large corporations understand – loss of income. If it wasn’t for that they wouldn’t give a shit about customers at all.
My point is – Windows XP EULAs specfically ban resale of XP – so how are people able to sell it on Ebay? They are breaking the EULA and Ebay is letting them. Why doesn’t Microsoft sue Ebay for negligent then? mmm? Microsoft does do lots of dirty deals, and i’m pretty sure we don’t hear about most of them. If we hear about them, the US DOJ hears about them. And that’s not good for Microsoft. Well it wouldn’t be good for Microsoft if the DOJ had a backbone and wasn’t open to bribes. The system considerably favours large corporations over small individuals. Just look at the legal system. How many individuals can afford to exercise their legal rights against large corporations? mmm? So much for a fair and equal legal system, it’s anything but.
Dave
Dave
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How do you pull a conspiracy theory out of ebay banning the sale of material on CDR unless the seller posts proof they are the copyright holder as a MS ploy ?
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I don’t believe eBay bans all CDRs that are sold by sellers other than the original copyright holders.
If you’re familiar with msft, you should know that there is almost no conspiracy theory that’s too bizzare to be feasible. Lately, msft is really going to extreme lengths to slow linux adoption.
> Windows XP EULAs specfically ban resale of XP
What the hell are you talking about?
Microsoft only restricts the resale of used OEM software that was included with a computer. OEM software is sold to computer builders at a discount, but computer builders are then responsible for providing support.
OEM software can be sold, brand new, if a hardware component is also purchased.
If a person buys a retail copy of software, opens it, uses it and devices to resell it – there is NO problem. The seller has to ship the COA/License Key, manual and the CD.
I was thinking that a good income stream would be selling custom-built PCs pre-installed with Linux on eBAY. Since a hard drive is “recordable media” does that mean I cannot sell a PC with Linux pre-installed? For that matter I couldn’t even pre-install Windows or anything else either. The way I read the policy, even if it is Linux or a legally purchased copy of Windows with original media and certificates included eBay could pull my listing using this policy unless I only sold “naked PCs”. That would put them at odds with Microsoft for promoting the selling of “naked PCs” that they contend promotes piracy of their OS.
This seems like a very short-sighted, draconian policy–eBAY probably loses millions in business–their loss for being stupid. Has any reader here tried to sell new or used PCs with software pre-installed and gotten flack from eBAY? In addition to being cowards in the face of agressive copyright law, eBAY has the additional excuse with hard drives that they have been burned before when drives with sensitive data were sold through eBAY awhile ago. In any case, these are both flimsy excuses.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=52369&item=8…
Look! The seller has 2 in quotes.. I think its a beacon. Someone want to bid on these and see if they’re Fedora cd’s.. I mean, worse case you have two LOVELY (barely used) STETSON hats. I mean, that can’t be bad.
No – it means one less person using and recommending Ebay. If lots of Linux users start doing that, Ebay will lose customers. Money hurts.
Less than 5% of the computing market quits using ebay – somehow I don’t think thats going to destroy the company and I highly doubt many people bought CDR burnt copies of Linux to begin with off ebay.
My point is – Windows XP EULAs specfically ban resale of XP – so how are people able to sell it on Ebay? They are breaking the EULA and Ebay is letting them.
OEM versions can be sold as can upgrade editions. You can’t sell a used copy without a license and you surely can’t sell a copy burnt to CDR.
Well it wouldn’t be good for Microsoft if the DOJ had a backbone and wasn’t open to bribes. The system considerably favours large corporations over small individuals. Just look at the legal system. How many individuals can afford to exercise their legal rights against large corporations? mmm? So much for a fair and equal legal system, it’s anything but.
You don’t live here in the US but you are going to tell us how the legal system here works and what its all about?
right dude.
If you’re familiar with msft, you should know that there is almost no conspiracy theory that’s too bizzare to be feasible. Lately, msft is really going to extreme lengths to slow linux adoption.
Actually what I’m more familiar with is tin foil hat wearing whack jobs who would love to tie MS to any and every out in left field idea they can think of. There are more idiots out there who believe MS is the root of all evil then there are real MS campaigns to overturn the world if you ask me.
I do agree that MS is very aggressive towards linux and that they do their fair share of pushing out FUD – I don’t expect less honestly – WTF are they supposed to do ? Sit back and watch their market slide without a fight ? Yeah that will get them somewhere.
A reader reports: I was trying to raise some money to start a Linux technical support website by selling Debian GNU/Linux and Fedora Core CD’s on eBay and suddently after a month all my items were pulled and my account suspended. I received this message from ebay as reason: “As a matter of eBay policy, recordings on CD-R (including CD-RW and DVD-R) may not be listed on eBay, unless the seller is the copyright owner and states this in the item description. This policy also means that even lawful reproductions on CD-R are not permitted on eBay.” This link was also provided.
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A real shame that Ebay won’t let parasites like this guy sell cd’s of stuff they don’t own isn’t it?
A real crying shame. NOT.
Obviously ebay has come to the conlusion that there is not enough money to be made collecting a small fee on the auction of CDR software/whatever vs. the amount of overhead they’ll take on dealing with sorting out just what can and can’t be sold on CDR legally.
So they make a blanket policy and a few things like Linux CDs get caught in the middle.
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You have to understand what was most likely the *REAL* cause of this.
You mostly had idiots like this guy who’s now whinning about Ebay’s policy about CDR’s running around selling CD’s containing the MAME emulator and arcade ROMS on Ebay. Of course this is going to piss off the MAME developers, the actual owners of the copyrighted arcade ROMS who sorta looked the other way before these clowns started selling these cd’s on Ebay, and Ebay itself.
There are a lot of posts along the lines of “how dare he sell someone elses work” and what not which are utterly off-base.
Specifically, the original poster was selling CD-Rs of the Debian Linux and Fedora Core 3 Linux distributions. These are licensed under GNU Public License, which explicitly permits ANYONE to resell and redistribute them.
Burning CD-Rs of them and selling copies is not only legal, but encouraged. The poster was explicitly granted the right to do so by the authors and shouldn’t be chided for exercising his legal rights or honoring the wishes of the original authors.
http://www.linuxemporium.co.uk/ – The Linux Emporium are happy to sell you a copy of the latest open source/free software on CD or DVD…
it is the pirate mentality to take advantage of any oppertunity, and things like ethics or forsight rarely factor into the equation. downloading roms of games you played back in the 80s is legally wrong, but ethically its pretty sound. selling compilation cds with roms up to and including stuff thats in the arcades now? wrong in every sense of the word. but hey, most of these guys are <18, so they havnt quite gotten to the point of seeing how the consiquences of their actions effect others.
Greets,
As the developer of one of the packages I believe this individual was selling — BeatrIX Linux — we had a good laugh because he was selling a four-month-old version of our product, not the up-to-date installable version, but simply a live-CD that was our first release in August 2004.
Ebay, like any company, is free to set its policies. Just like this individual was free to sell an out-of-date Open Source product.
Cheers,
oskarku
Actually, I know of only one such distro, and that’s RedHat’s RHEL (OR RHAS, whatever they’re calling their expensive “one-year-only” thing).
Why would eBay want to burden itself with finding out which distros may or may not be distributed, and in which form, when not even arden OSS advocates are knowledgeable enough?
eBay is covering its ass and trying too hard to avoid a law suit. And frankly, we should call them on it. They should know that the RIAA’s lawyers aren’t the only vicious thing in town, but the consumer can be too, and the consumer demands fair treatment.
Oh, get real, Chris. People selling software on CD-Rs is a huge potential liability for eBay. They can be held liable, regardless of what you guys want to think. And, at the end of the day when you’re running a business (and that’s what eBay is — a business), you don’t expose your company to such liability for no reason. The low-budget profit margin simply doesn’t justify that kind of risk.
Interesting
I know one of the people that is selling Redhat, Mandrake and Fedura on Ebay. They, being Ebay wrote him and said he could no longer sell these items on Ebay.
But; and this is a heavey but. All three of these companys told this person it was all right it sell their product on ebay provided he aquire a license from them, which he did.
Now, for around $5.50 for the package of three CD’s plus shipping. What do they (Ebay) want from people offering a version of Linux on Eaby. Think of the time to purchase these CD’s vs the time to download them on an unreliable DIALUP service. Days and the expense of tying up the phone!!
So, where does intelligence start???
INAL
The GPL (Gnu Public License) Copyright agreement is designed, among other things, to specifically legitimize such commercial offerings. And, if you study the intent of the license agreement, it tells us that the media vendor who is selling the GPL’d content is also (in joint and several) an owner of the copyright, as long as the vendor adheres to the terms and conditions of the GPL licensing agreement.
So it is simple. Put the media containing GPL’d content up for sale on ebay, and clearly state that you maintain and hold a partial interest in the copyrighted material. Which is true. Check out
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
you will see that, as soon as you receive the GPL’d content, you immediately become a franchisee, as long as you adhere to the terms and conditions of the license agreement, you have been granted right to pass the same GPL’d content onto others, who will then immediately inherit the same franchise under the same terms and conditions. That’s the “Public” part of the GNU Public License. This becomes a moot point, since adopting this position aligns with both the letter and spirit of the GPL. hehehe.
INAL
The only 2 things that are incumbent on a redistributor are:
(1) remove all of the shadowman logos
(2) provide, at cost, source code.
check out the RHEL-3 license
http://www.redhat.com/licenses/rhel_us_3.html?country=United+States…
Yeah, sure, I’ll get the source for you at cost. What’s your PO number? hehehe i gotta eat too.