www.retrogame.club another scam site selling retropie pre-installed

markwkidd

@arkive said in www.retrogame.club another scam site selling retropie pre-installed:

@markwkidd said in www.retrogame.club another scam site selling retropie pre-installed:

If you do still feel that this product is a violation of natural or legal rights, I'd like to hear about it and have a chance to refute. If you retract your claim, that's fine too.

I'm afraid that any reasonable discussion between us ended the moment you threatened legal action against me. I can not take you seriously anymore and participate in any further exchange on the subject.

Feel free to follow up with your threats though.

I don't think I threatened you with any legal action. In fact, I said that unlike you I'm not litigious about this issue. I did, however, advise you that there is another crime ("defamation") that you ought to be worried about. I have no standing to claim defamation against you so it's fine for us to talk. :D

In short: I am not now, or in the future, interested in legal action against you.

Please feel free to post whatever you think is relevant!

A Former User

@markwkidd said in www.retrogame.club another scam site selling retropie pre-installed:

I don't think I threatened you with any legal action. In fact, I said that unlike you I'm not litigious about this issue.

You didn't? I'm so relieved. I could say something along the lines: "just like I never threatened that guy with litigation nor asked anybody to jump on my bandwagon" and carry on with our exchange, but I'm afraid what I said earlier - that I can't take you seriously anymore - still stands, so it wouldn't work.

This therefore is my last post regarding this subject, which - I'll give you that - I was quite foolish to participate in.

markwkidd

@arkive said in www.retrogame.club another scam site selling retropie pre-installed:

@markwkidd said in www.retrogame.club another scam site selling retropie pre-installed:

I don't think I threatened you with any legal action. In fact, I said that unlike you I'm not litigious about this issue.

You didn't? I'm so relieved. I could say something along the lines: "just like I never threatened that guy with litigation nor asked anybody to jump on my bandwagon" and carry on with our exchange, but I'm afraid what I said earlier - that I can't take you seriously anymore - still stands, so it wouldn't work.

This therefore is my last post regarding this subject, which - I'll give you that - I was quite foolish to participate in.

Ok, I can understand being worried and wanting to stop writing on the record if you think there is a legal concern afoot. That is of course exactly the kind of feeling you tried to create among the targests of your posts on this issue.

That "chilling effect" is exactly what I'm arguing against for their sake and for yours. Maybe I should drop out of this thread as well -- it would not be the first time that I have felt the social need to 'peace out' of an IP-related thread here! :)

Why do I post about this? I feel like I have a stake because:

I believe in open-source licensing as one of the important development of our era, a) in terms of preserving our cultural heritage and b) in terms of the legal framework around "intellectual property" (a field of law that is only a couple of hundred years old -- in other words, pretty new)
I have extensively contributed my time to the software in question, although as with Open Source in general, my 100s of hours are dwarfed by the 1000s of hours that other s have also put in
I have invested a much smaller amount of cash, probably about $50, in bounties for other folks to create GPL RetroArch code on issues that are beyond my technical ability

On those grounds, I take it as an affront to open source and to my own contributions to this particular codebase when I see a culture that demonizes folks from earning income from GPL (and other commerce-friendly) emluator code.

I wish I had written that at the beginning. Next time I will.

A Former User

@markwkidd said in www.retrogame.club another scam site selling retropie pre-installed:

@arkive said in www.retrogame.club another scam site selling retropie pre-installed:

@markwkidd said in www.retrogame.club another scam site selling retropie pre-installed:

I don't think I threatened you with any legal action. In fact, I said that unlike you I'm not litigious about this issue.

You didn't? I'm so relieved. I could say something along the lines: "just like I never threatened that guy with litigation nor asked anybody to jump on my bandwagon" and carry on with our exchange, but I'm afraid what I said earlier - that I can't take you seriously anymore - still stands, so it wouldn't work.

This therefore is my last post regarding this subject, which - I'll give you that - I was quite foolish to participate in.

Ok, I can understand being worried and wanting to stop writing on the record if you think there is a legal concern afoot. That is of course exactly the kind of feeling you tried to create among the targests of your posts on this issue.

That "chilling effect" is exactly what I'm arguing against for their sake and for yours. Maybe I should drop out of this thread as well -- it would not be the first time that I have felt the social need to 'peace out' of an IP-related thread here! :)

Why do I post about this? I feel like I have a stake because:

I believe in open-source licensing as one of the important development of our era, a) in terms of preserving our cultural heritage and b) in terms of the legal framework around "intellectual property" (a field of law that is only a couple of hundred years old -- in other words, pretty new)

I have extensively contributed my time to the software in question, although as with Open Source in general, my 100s of hours are dwarfed by the 1000s of hours that other s have also put in

I have invested a much smaller amount of cash, probably about $50, in bounties for other folks to create GPL RetroArch code on issues that are beyond my technical ability

On those grounds, I take it as an affront to open source and to my own contributions to this particular codebase when I see a culture that demonizes folks from earning income from GPL (and other commerce-friendly) emluator code.

I wish I had written that at the beginning. Next time I will.

Great work guys, keep it coming

EDIT: btw all these sites selling loaded devices I see forum posts about are small fish,

Isn't anyone bothered about big boys doing it? Like "Toms Retro Shack" and "Pixle Arcade".

These seem like decent size businesses and not just some guy selling a few devices from home...

Retroxpert

Everyone on here should have known the instant this kid "Darksavior" opened the entire thread with "SCAM SITE!" followed by "but today he defended his scam and then got his cronies to point and laugh at me," that he was on a personal vendetta and that he wrote this entire thread not because this retroclub is a scam website, but rather because Darksavior was butthurt some guy trying to make a business for himself stood up for his rights to use Open Source code in his project. Boo Hoo. Grow up man you're hurting this entire community, no one respects that behavior.

@markwkidd The RetroPie community is thankful to have someone so level-headed as you representing these forums. So many of these kids make rediculous claims and hurt the distribution of RetroPie, making people want to stay far away from it and not want to use it for their businesses. As long as a company is adhering to Open Source, GNU and MIT Licensing requirements and not selling ROMS or BIOS files with their systems, they are not violating the law and are far from "scamming" people.

I think most of these kids don't understand what business is, or understand capitalism. Naturally if an open source project (by definition Open Source is commercially usable) is well-made, businesses will want to take it on. This should be viewed as a compliment. If the developers of EmulationStation and RetroPie wanted no business to be allowed to use their code, they would not have released it under Open Source and GNU Licensing.

Also for all those people whining about how "selling open source software is bad" boo hoo, I hope none of you have Android Phones which are OPEN SOURCE and being SOLD, but I don't see you writing your tear-filled novels to Google about their Open Source platform being used for profit by other companies.

BuZz

@retroxpert actually retropie was non commercial. We relicenced it as the licence was ignored anyway - but actually I regret doing so, as the selling of RetroPie (often with roms), gives our project a bad name. Many of the components are non commercial though so unless they ship with no snes emulator (and many others), they may already be in breach. They also include our non commercial artwork in their youtube video, so I assume they are in breach if that's the image they provide their customers with.

this is them too: Which is fine if they release all sources etc. But I don't see how its doable without the non commercial emulators.
https://www.upwork.com/job/Create-New-Setup-Script-for-EmulationStation-Software-Similar-RetroPie-Create-New-Software-Package_~01ccd6f67a7cd159bc/

Personal attacks are not welcome here BTW - so I suggest you edit your post before I remove you.

[edit] I assumed you were related to the site in question when I first read your post. I fixed this reply.

BuZz

@kilopie we have tried to go after them. Unfortunately we don't have the money or manpower. They ship RetroPie with copyrighted ROMs and Kodi with addons to stream copyrighted content. Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Shopify don't care either about these sellers.

Darksavior

@retroxpert Such nonsense. His "product" was nothing more than retropie. Legal or not legal, it's a scam. Your long winded response seems like you know the person or know him in some way. His friends defended him in a hostile way as well. Others have posted scams and I'm no different. In this case, the person decided to get hostile at me and get his friends to reply as well.

Also, a few android phones have proprietary software. Samsung's touchwiz OS, built from android source and heavily modified, is NOT open source.

dankcushions

in case it wasn't obvious, @Retroxpert = retrogame-club. i can see your email address, genius :)

A Former User

@buzz said in www.retrogame.club another scam site selling retropie pre-installed:

@kilopie

I know what you mean, I've tried reporting in the past, and they make the report system as difficulty as possible.
A lot of them won't even hear from you unless you are the licence holder of the copyright infringement in question.
Ends up just being a waste of time, and like you say, draws bad attention to the people who are legitimately using Retropie...