Trademe and "entrepreneurial" people

**M1CRO:Me** · 23rd December 2005, 17:54

After viewing a hayabusa manual for sale on Trademe for a cheap price I thought I would bid for it.

After winning the auction, and paying the money, the CD arrived in the mail today. When I put the CD into my laptop, I find that that it contains two files. One PDF document and one executable. The executable is the installation exe for Acrobat reader (which was already installed on my laptop).

Upon closer inspection of the PDF (Service Manual) - around 80MB, I found that it looked similar to one that I downloaded off the internet a few years ago... In fact, after opening them both up and looking at them I find that they are identical.

I was a little disapointed and looked at the sellers feedback list. There are 31 such feedbacks of which he purchased 2. Therefore, he has sold around 29 manuals over the last month of so, and no-one has presented any hint that it is on-selling copyrighted material.

Dont get me wrong, I am all for the free-market regime, but I find that people making copyright material freely available for other people's use to be a slight bend of the rules, but to blatantly on-sell it for a profit, I find a little hard to swallow..

So, to back up my thoughts/opinion, I sent the seller an email asking for my money back, & post negative feedback with a warning to others that the seller on-sells copyrighted material. I also sent a seperate email to Trademe advising them of the situation;

The feedback I posted was;
**WARNING** I received the CD today in the mail and am a little disappointed that you have elected to on-sell copyrighted material that is freely available from the internet. I already have a copy of the PDF document you decided to on-sell from one of the forums on www.hayabusa.org which is probably the same place you got yours from. I have compared the two copies and they appear identical.

His response? Well, here it is;
unreasonable guy, i have given full refund as he is not happy, but gave negative feedback before he even made contact. hope to never deal with again.

Cmon people - what would you have done. Was it better to ask for a refund and keep my mouth shut, or do what I have done and let other people know of the potential "scam"?

**M1CRO:Me** · 23rd December 2005, 17:58

An emailed update from the "seller":

well im sorry you are unhappy with the item, it is as stated on the auction
and if you already had the document then there is nothing more you possibly
need to know about the bike

these were not aquired from the net as you implied, but if the document are
the same then they obvoiusly came from the same source at some time in their life

people only need to ask what it is they are buying and i will tell them, i
have nothing to hide

think its pretty indecent of you to leave bad feeback without even
contacting me about your dissapointment, you seem to be the only one who is getting on their high horse. at the end of the day it is a small price to
pay for a lot of info.

i will put the money back ito your bank as requested and thank you very much for telling tales to trade me.

hope you have a prosperous season of good will

**WINJA** · 23rd December 2005, 18:01

trademe is shit , shut that fucker down

**M1CRO:Me** · 23rd December 2005, 18:05

Originally Posted by WINJA

trademe is shit , shut that fucker down

lol, thanks for the words of wisdom mate

**WINJA** · 23rd December 2005, 18:11

Originally Posted by m1cro

lol, thanks for the words of wisdom mate

ive seen some real cons on that site , ive seen fuckers selling tools of my trade for the wrong purposes and more than retail.
i just couldnt be fucked with bidding and the conmen , id rather get a t and e or loot ring , negotiate and pick up when i want

**thehollowmen** · 23rd December 2005, 18:18

just before I left I saw a newspaper article where trademe had been given a month to clean up "their" act (and implicated as being responsable in part for the listed sellers) by the commerce commission..
did anything come of that?

**Big Chim** · 23rd December 2005, 18:24

Free information ie sharing it with a mate is good but selling on someone elses copyrighted material and making money out of it is BullShit.

Not surprised the commerce commission is concerned. All Trademe can do is stipulate the rules and monitor what is being sold cause if people are going to use the trademe forum to sell items like that they will. Nearly impossible to police as well as it stands.

**M1CRO:Me** · 23rd December 2005, 18:33

Originally Posted by Road Rash

Free information ie sharing it with a mate is good but selling on someone elses copyrighted material and making money out of it is BullShit.

I guess the hardest thing for me to believe, is that potentially 29 people bought downloaded manuals off this guy (on plain CD's) and not one of them posted anything about the product... (i.e. Where it actually came from.. You dont need a PHD in nuclear physics to know)

Ok, so I don’t "absolutely" know that all of em were pirated, but I think it would be reasonable to assume that most were. Suffice to say, I find it to be quite "weird"? Are we now a society of people that are more interested in a "deal" than our scruples?

**Big Chim** · 23rd December 2005, 18:34

Originally Posted by M1CRO

Ok, so I don’t "absolutely" know that all of em were pirated, but I think it would be reasonable to assume that most were. Suffice to say, I find it to be quite "weird"? Are we now a society of people that are more interested in a "deal" than our scruples?

I second that motion

**Deviant Esq** · 23rd December 2005, 18:47

Buying something like that - the buyer should be aware that the seller could perfectly reasonably have copied the file hundreds of times. Takes them no effort, no time, and costs them nothing to do. Totally illegal and ripping someone off bigtime at the same time, but there you go.

Having said that, TradeMe is full of similar little money making schemes. At the end of the day quite a few people are willing to make a quick buck without being entirely honest about it. I work at Noel Leeming. Without going into what my job's like, I know RRP prices of cellphones, and they're a prime example of TradeMe ripjobs. Panasonic VS2 mobile phone - we were selling these BRAND NEW from a retail store with a good reputation for $199.99. I've seen these very same phones go on TradeMe for over $300. Stupid, isn't it? But they get away with it. And by buying from a seller over trademe gives the buyer no recourse - not even the 12 month manufacturers warranty.

There are some things people just shouldn't buy off TradeMe.

My $0.02

**marty** · 23rd December 2005, 18:49

maybe you should send something to suzuki?

**HenryDorsetCase** · 23rd December 2005, 18:54

Im not sure I see your point: were you disappointed because you thought you were getting a CD of a factory service manual, and got an owners manual or something?

I do see the point about copyright protection, but surely that is the copyright owners concern, not that of an innocent third party?

I bought a reproduction of a factory service manual for my bike off tardme, and the ad says something like "tardme has determined there is no breach of copyright here" or some such crap.

I didnt give a toss, the manual for my bike (CB400F) was unobtainable any other way... I tried!

**digsaw** · 23rd December 2005, 19:00

Ebay,trademe and others,are not the only places that will slip yar the micky.
There are places that deal with valid complaints.

and other places too.

**RantyDave** · 23rd December 2005, 19:08

Y'know, I think he has a point. Why did you bid for a Hyabusa service manual on CD when you already had one?

Sure he's selling copyrighted materials, but I'm not convinced Suzuki would give a shit (raising the value of second hand bikes must be good for them), and at fifteen bucks a pop I can't see anybody bothering to enforce it.

Look on the plus side: Finding the manual, downloading it, burning it to CD (did it come with a printed cover?), advertising it on trademe, shipping it, collecting the cash. Fucked if that's worth $15 of my time, dude's got to be doing this on damn nearly minimum wage - would make more asking if I wanted fries with that.

**M1CRO:Me** · 23rd December 2005, 19:08

Originally Posted by HenryDorsetCase

Im not sure I see your point: were you disappointed because you thought you were getting a CD of a factory service manual, and got an owners manual or something?

The manual I got was the same as the manual I had downloaded off the internet a few years ago. I thought I was going to get an updated (or at least semi-legit) version..
Edit: With the version I have, you cannot highlight the text as the whole "page" has been scanned - Having the ability to do this would have been alot nicer so I could reformat it and have it available with me depending on what I was doing - tightening chain etc

I guess, from another perspective, my point is this;
If you order something (and pay for it) and find that what you get is a copy of something and the seller did not pay for the original goods - would you warn other people about it or stay quiet. In other words, if you ordered a book and a whole bunch of photo-copy pages arrived.. How would you feel?

Do you allow people that do this to continue on with what they are doin?