Shop selling retropie

markyh444

Just had another look at the Facebook page and I think @BuZz got their website suspended. But they've moved to a shopify site now.

markyh444

@buzz Looks like they've got the original site back now... 😪

BuZz

@markyh444 hosted on their home broadband now. Nothing that can be done - could keep reporting them, but there are so many people doing this. Just have to not worry about them.

PetroRie

@BuZz said in Shop selling retropie:

@markyh444 Nothing that can be done

We could DDoS them (evil laughter) mwhuahuahuaaaaaaa. Nah just kidding. Couldn't we report them to some kind of anti piracy organisation?

mediamogul

@PetroRie said in Shop selling retropie:

Couldn't we report them to some kind of anti piracy organisation?

I nominate this guy. He might not be the most effective, but he's definitely the rootines tootiness option out there.

PetroRie

@mediamogul Hahaha, LOL those boots and the hat on the index page made me laugh so hard for some reason. Is this service for real? The site looks, I don't know *** giggling *** I thought this guy was a troll.

mediamogul

@PetroRie said in Shop selling retropie:

Is this service for real?

There's a history with this guy. Early on, large companies and celebrities, such as Disney and Prince, hired him to protect their intellectual property and he was actual very successful for a time. However, when he tried to take on the Pirate Bay guys, they openly disregarded his authority and publicly mocked him for well over a year by posting the hilarious e-mail correspondence on their website. To my understanding, this led to his larger clients abandoning him after witnessing first hand his inability to make good on his protection claims. Some say you can still hear his spurs jangle every time a CD is ripped to a hard drive.

PetroRie

@mediamogul said in Shop selling retropie:

Some say you can still hear his spurs jangle every time a CD is ripped to a hard drive.

Haha sounds like a fire camp horror story.

mediamogul

@PetroRie

Laugh if you want, but the site I got this information from had the details removed shortly thereafter under mysterious circumstances. All that was left was an animated GIF of a bloody hook attached to bottom of the page.

PetroRie

@mediamogul said in Shop selling retropie:

All that was left was an animated GIF of a bloody hook attached to bottom of the page.

Its not I'm laughing in a way to mock you or make fun of you, but how you wrote it that was funny. I'm a webdesigner and I always say if you run a professional service your website needs to look professional. It's like a business card.

But fighting piracy online is kinda a waste of time in my opinion. It's not possible to stop it, unless you control every single thing on the internet. To be honest with you bro, I'm fine with piracy as long someone doesn't make any profit of it.

For an example, the majority here on this board (including me) LOVE mame games. Do we have an another way to play them? Nope. So getting the games illegally online is the only way to play them.

Its funny how the gaming industry blames everything on piracy while their greed destroyed everything. Even back in the C64 and the AMIGA days you had piracy. Remember those days when you purchased a game, couple months later they released an expansion pack with so many maps, modding tools etc? What happened to that? DLC's! That is what destroyed the gaming industry.

mediamogul

@PetroRie said in Shop selling retropie:

Its not I'm laughing in a way to mock you or make fun of you, but how you wrote it that was funny.

I'm just glad you weren't laughing at my haircut. I can't really pull off bangs, but the stylist was very persuasive.

fighting piracy online is kinda a waste of time in my opinion.

It's a waste of time in the sense that it's a battle that that can absolutely never be won. However, it's never a completely pointless endeavor to protect a form property, even if it's only done out of a matter of principal. I just find it endlessly hilarious that a guy can slap a sheriff's hat and a pair of boots on his website and make tens of thousands of dollars by writing a take down notice that most companies would relegate to an automated process. Also, in my head, I like to believe that he phonetically spells out his demands with a thick southern Texas accent and signs off with a hardy "YeeHaaw!".

PetroRie

@mediamogul Well, he could use some new mottos "let's make the internet great again!", "we're going to build a protective wall around the internet and pirates are gonna pay for it", "the pirates are f***ng our economy over and over", "your internet subscription IS FIRED", "The pirates are coming and they are taking over our jobs!", "Piracy has screwed our economy", "DRAIN THE INTERNET!" lol.

They spend so much money on these anti piracy campaigns while they get nothing out from it. We has some local politicians who did the same, lawsuits, changing laws. They sued my ISP a couple times because they did not want to hand out customer info. Couple months later they changed everything how it was. The laws they changed reverted back etc. Spending my tax money on such stupid "issues".

mediamogul

@PetroRie said in Shop selling retropie:

The laws they changed reverted back etc. Spending my tax money on such stupid "issues".

I hear you. Several years ago, my state issued license plates depicting the wrong species as our state bird. They then decided to make it up to us by issuing high quality stickers with the correct bird to everyone by mail that could be placed over their mistake at the further expense of taxpayer dollars. I can only think that the lesson from all this is that sometimes good comedy aint cheap.

bjd223

@PetroRie

1000% funded means they got 10x the amount of their initial goal. For instance if they have a goal for the project set at 1,000 USD, and people fund it to 10,000 USD they are 1000% funded, compared to their original goal amount. 5,000 USD would be 500% of their original goal.

Early Birds, not bids. Early Bird specials are when the first, so many people get a special deal. So for example the first 50 people get it $10 cheaper than every one else. This is a common marketing practice with online campaigns like this.

Anyway I do agree with the sentiment which is that marketplaces should do a better job to remove these kind of pre-loaded systems. In fact Kodi is going through the same thing with people pre-loading it on devices with plugins (for stealing movies/TV) and selling them.

Maybe the 2 groups can team up and hire a lawyer to try and get these taken down, or at least removed from Google results so they are harder to find.

PetroRie

@bjd223 Oh yeah I see it now, birds not bids lol epic fail moment. It's true what you said I've seen boxes for sell with pre loaded Kodi plugins etc. I've seen it it local stores too.

How long would a lawsuit like that take? And who would you even target, there are just so many individuals selling preloaded systems with illegal contents.

bjd223

@PetroRie I'm not sure what the best approach is. I think the issue is that since the software is free, coming up with legal fees is an issue.

If they can get someone to send out copyright notices they could at least get the big storefronts removed in search engines, and stop them from advertising. Which will hopefully impact their sales enough to discourage them from doing it.

PetroRie

Haha and this is what I saw in my FB feed:

retrostation
ATTENTION: ONLY 24H Left - Get your Early Bird Now!
==> Raised over $500,000
==> As Seen In: NintendoLife, Gizmodo, VentureBeat, Kotaku and more.

Kinda funny because its just an orange pi with retropie installed and a custom made in china case. All they have to do is buy the cases and pis in bulk and clone the SD cards. I wonder what they'll do with the rest of the money.

jez888

I saw this post a little while ago and now I have a pi with RetroPie on it, I also see a warning pop up mentioning it as well.
Do you not find it odd you might complain about a copyright issue, whilst enjoying copyrighted games yourself?
Can RetroPie really be upset about people making money off their backs, whilst asking for money themselves for their program designed to enable people to rip off game developers?

herb_fargus

@jez888 we do not sell retropie. Nor do we ship with copyrighted games. We don't condone piracy. What users do with their software in their countries is their own prerogative. It's completely different.

As far as video game developers go. Name me one developer who is still taking in royalties from the game they developed 20+ years ago that is still being sold on the market today.

mediamogul

@herb_fargus said in Shop selling retropie:

Name me one developer who is still taking in royalties from the game they developed 20+ years ago that is still being sold on the market today.

You make an excellent point, but

actually does come to mind. I've always been impressed with both Digital Leisure and the Daphne team for finding an amicable way to coexist without the need for a law suit. As a result, his games can be played legally right here in RetroPie, so long as you've also purchased an official copy.