A Way to Thwart the Pirates?

jamesbeat

There has been a lot of talk about unscrupulous people illegally selling systems with Retropie installed.

Would it be possible to beat them at their own game?

I think the people buying these ready-made systems are most likely non-techie types who don't feel they would be able to do it for themselves.

We all know how simple it is to set up a Retropie system, but someone who is completely non-techie might not realize this because they are too intimidated to even look into it in the first place.

Many people (including me) probably don't have too high an opinion of people who won't go to the trouble of learning, but this is the reality of the situation, and these are the people who are buying illegal Retropie installations.

How about offering a service like the old public domain libraries?

They didn't used to charge for the software itself, but they would charge a nominal fee for the floppy disk, shipping and handling etc.

Would it be above board to provide a service like this?

The customer could make a small donation, and mail an SD card and include an envelope and a stamp for return shipping.
Or, a ready-made SD card could be sold for a small fee just to cover the cost of the SD card and shipping/handling.

I'm not really suggesting this as a way of making a huge profit or even providing a needed service, but as a way of taking away the market for the pirates who are currently making money from Retropie.

People selling legitimate bundles (case, controllers, psu etc) could simply provide a link to the official SD card sales page.

This doesn't help with getting roms into Retropie, but there's nothing we can do about that.

At the very least, this may make the pirates stop selling Retropie and turn to offering flash drives full of roms, but that's somebody else's problem.

cafarellidigital

@jamesbeat there would still be the issue of selling an SD card (or selling the service of providing for an SD card) with roms that the end user may not own.

herb_fargus

Even we cannot sell our image. On top of that we have enough to maintain as it is, we don't have the time to handle hardware sales too.

Fact is people will continue to be greedy dbags no matter what we do.

All we can do is redirect any users on the forum to the official image, and report and try to take down those that are stealing from the community.

Charononus

@herb_fargus said in A Way to Thwart the Pirates?:

Even we cannot sell our image. On top of that we have enough to maintain as it is, we don't have the time to handle hardware sales too.

Fact is people will continue to be greedy dbags no matter what we do.

All we can do is redirect any users on the forum to the official image, and report and try to take down those that are stealing from the community.

I'm curious on this. Obviously roms are something that can't be sold as that is completely illegal. However with the base image that is available for download here, why can't that be sold? Is it something with an open source license? Not trying to say you should sell it, just curious as to why it can not be sold by you.

mediamogul

@Charononus

Several elements have non-commercial licenses.

Eldrethor

I find it interesting how some people who aren't tech-savvy are intimidated by the idea of tinkering with a Pi, when the original goal of the Raspberry Pi was to teach kids about computing. With that in mind, I think the best solution is to reinforce the idea that the Pi isn't some advanced, high-tech piece of hardware, and that anyone can overcome any technical barriers that they may come across, as long as they're willing to learn how.

But then again, there will always be people who are willing to pay for a pre-built setup just so they don't have to do anything; to me, that's like paying someone to steal a Lego Millennium Falcon kit from a toy store and build it for you.

TMNTturtlguy

I am really confused on this whole topic and I finally feel the need to comment. Trying to sell an SD card with a retropie image loaded onto it does absolutely nothing for an end user who is not tech savvy and does not want to have to figure it out. All you are doing is giving them an sd card that they would put into the pi and it would boot, but then what? You haven't set anything up, it won't be set up for their comptrollers, there will not be anything to play, internet wont work, they might have black bars around the screen. All you are doing is charging money to put the SD card into the computer and press write on a disc image program. Why would someone looking to buy a gaming device that doesn't want to learn or spend time to make it work buy your product? They are still just going to go to some other illegal source.

Putting an image on a card and selling it does not provide the end user anything more usable than than what they should do in the first place by buying their own SD card and downloading the free image for free! This scheme sounds like selling bottled air, because you put the air in the bottle!

Sorry for my rant, but I don't understand the concept or the benefit to the community or the end users.

cafarellidigital

@TMNTturtlguy agreed, good points

hooperre

@TMNTturtlguy Not to mention they're missing all the fun... which is actually MAKING the RetroPie based system in the first place haha. Like many others on here, my time spent tinkering to time spent playing is about 103982035:1.

herb_fargus

@TMNTturtlguy there is no benefit to the community and the sellers do not care. They advertise "play all the gamezzz!! All the systems !!!" And then when the duped user asks for help when they inevitably brick their pi, if they get a response at all it's to point then to the community they are stealing from.

False advertising, laziness, and greed. Humanity is awesome....

meleu

@herb_fargus said in A Way to Thwart the Pirates?:

Humanity is awesome....

I've read that sentence (with the obvious ironic intonation) and instantly remembered Marvin, it was inevitable. :-)

marvin

This also reminded me a quote from Pope Francis (not sure who is the original author):

"A falling tree makes more noise than a growing forest."

Let's think about these things, all made by humans:

internet
bluetooth
microwave oven
refrigerator
Raspberry Pi
Arduino
Linux
free software
RetroArch
EmulationStation
RetroPie
air conditioning (most of the time it's very hot in Brazil/tropical countries)
Mexican food
list goes on...

Oh man, you have to agree: HUMANITY IS REALLY AWESOME!! :-)

Charononus

@meleu said in A Way to Thwart the Pirates?:

@herb_fargus said in A Way to Thwart the Pirates?:

Humanity is awesome....

I've read that sentence (with the obvious ironic intonation) and instantly remembered Marvin, it was inevitable. :-)

This also reminded me a quote from Pope Francis (not sure who is the original author):

"A falling tree makes more noise than a growing forest."

Let's think about these things:

internet

bluetooth

microwave oven

refrigerator

Raspberry Pi

Arduino

Linux

free software

RetroArch

EmulationStation

RetroPie

air conditioning (most of the time it's very hot in Brazil/tropical countries)

Mexican food

list goes on...

Oh man, you have to agree: HUMANITY IS REALLY AWESOME!! :-)

It's no vogon poetry though.

meleu

@Charononus

It's no vogon poetry though.

They aren't humans, then humanity can keep its awesomeness status! :-)

A Former User

Is there no way to pester ebay about this? (seeing as this is where the majority of the trade takes place).

I seem to remember they used to be uber-sensitive about such things - for example retro modded consoles were not allowed before (which I in turn loathed) and now seems its okay. Did something change?

herb_fargus

@arkive yep. They care more about their bottom line instead of the law. They will only bother if they get a strongly worded legal intent to sue.