Keep your eye on ebay

[judb]

Hey folks, lets keep our eye on ebay sales of phatboxes and kegs for the next few weeks or months to make sure some greedy DORK doesn't start trying to profit from our work by selling premodded boxes with larger drives.

I don't think that would be fair to anyone, the buyer or the people on the board that worked so hard to figure out how to do this.

If you see an item like that then make sure to post on it about how you can do it for free your self.  I dont want to see prices on these boxes go UP because of this.

[dscline]

If you see an item like that then make sure to post on it about how you can do it for free your self.  I dont want to see prices on these boxes go UP because of this.

Can you do that?  I once sent a seller a question about an item up for bid, and never got a response.  The question also never appeared on the page for the item.  After that, I just assumed that the seller had the ability to control what questions were shown on the auction.

[judb]

Can you do that?  I once sent a seller a question about an item up for bid, and never got a response.  The question also never appeared on the page for the item.  After that, I just assumed that the seller had the ability to control what questions were shown on the auction.

Good question, I dont know for sure.. but there has to be a way.

[ry4n]

or you could just let any bidders know, and maybe they can retract their bids

[Genesis]

That's dangerous to your eBAY account.

I have tried to warn people of scams before, and eBAY warned me that if I did it again, they'd cancel MY account.

The seller can refuse to answer questions he doesn't want to show up publically..... or answer them privately (and tell the system not to post the question on the listing.)

There is no GOOD way to stop this, unfortunately... I wish there was.

[Firefox]

Unless someone here makes an ebay listing with the details and a FREE pointer to this forum....

[ws]

Looks like here's the first one - search for item no. 5803490426.

[FiftyPence]

Ok so i emailed the seller of the above mentioned item as follows:

The information you are offering for sale can quite easily be found on the internet at no charge.

I cant believe you are offering this information for a fee after a number of people slaved over this for months or even years.  They are offering the information as shareware and you are attempting to sell it on.

I recommend you immediately delist this item.

Here is a direct link to the item so other users of this forum can request the seller to delist the item.
click for the ebay scammer

I also emailed the only bidder on the item so far and advised him that the information can be found FOC here and that he neednt pay £39.99 for it.

[Paul]

Thanks for the effort fifty - but there's no need:

Item: PHATNOISE KEG DMS UPGRADE KITS 100,80,60,40 GB. (5803490426)
This message was sent while the listing was active.
pupator is a potential buyer.



Be warned, if your auction is not pulled immediately, a cease and desist letter from my lawyer will be sent to e-bay. You are selling information that was discovered and freely given to the public by http://forum.phathack.com. This forum requires that you agree to the terms of use before reading the information, and you - or whoever gave you this information - are legally bound to the terms of use which prohibit commercial use of this information.

Paul ******
Owner - phathack.com
paulsmail@gmail.com

[FiftyPence]

Top work there Paul

[Paul]

I always enjoy when stupid people hurl insults:

From ebay user: beckytaylor1968

Firstly, i suggest you get your head out of your arse pal.
If you are making any reference to phathack, you will no doubt be aware that a) i was selling upgrades long before you claim to have created a hack. 2) linux is open source 3) anyone who owns a phatnoise is perfectly entitled to use FREE OPEN source linux code to amend / flash their software. 4) i would love to get a letter from your lawyer, i suggest however, you will need very deep pockets and certainly a lot more intelligence than you have shown thus far.
5) you and your rather stupid cohort have both been reported to Ebay under auction interference rules. 6) Why on earth do you belive that you hold the rights to any information regarding such modification? Again, this is public domain information and free open source software. I'm afraid you have no monopoly on intellect.
Finally, i have applied to ebay under their VeRO programme and will in future hold any and all rights to such sales via Ebay.

My favorite part is the end: after she tells me that this is public domain information that anyone has the rights to (including to sell) she tells me that she's registering the information with ebay as her personal intellectual property, so that only she could sell it.

Legal test #1 is going to be a walk in the park.

[Paul]

Check out the follow up e-mail I received within 10 minutes of my last post!

 Question from beckytaylor1968  
You really are a dumb prick.
Having posted a confidential email to your website, you have now also fallen foul of the Data Protection Act 1998.
I suspect your lawyers will point that out to you and advise of the potential implications and costs of such.
Meanwhile, your website posting has been cached and will be used appropriately.  

"Confidential e-mail" - heh, that's priceless.

[ws]

I see this person has ended the auction early and relisted as a private listing so the identity of bidders cannot be seen.

[astreau]

I wonder what an "upgrade kit" consists of. Not a drive, not a case....just a CD and a piece of A4!! And all delivered for a very reasonable £5.95!!
CHEEKY COW

[judb]

perhaps we should have spent some time doing some encryption of our own on the boot cd / floppy ramdisk to keep idiots like that person from being able to use the disc.. heh.

I think what people don't understand is by TRYING TO PROFIT FROM UPGRADING THE DMS YOU ARE GOING TO BE INFRINGING ON PHATNOISE (now Harmon / Kardon owned, who have lots of money and lawyers) PROPERTY RIGHTS AND POTENTIAL PROFITS OF DMS SALES!!!!  

Listen up you bunch of money hungry morons, if you DO try to profit using the DMS hack method or any other one, you will attract attention to not only this site from the phatnoise / harmonkardon lawyers but to yourselves.  What you are doing is NOT legal.  by allowing end users of already purchased phatnoise hardware to do a drive mod like we did does NOT violate any laws or copyrights.  

if it did you can bet your ass that phatnoise would have come after us hard and fast because during a merger / aquisition this kind of stuff is not tolerated..

Think people, think!

[judb]

Further thinking on the matter, my position is we should report these people who post these auctions to ebay and to phatnoise for legal action and stay out of it otherwise.

Let PN sue those greedy incapable fools.

[A543]

This person did indeed sell these kits before PhatHack cracked the box.  See this thread.
http://forum.phathack.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=dmshack;action=display;num=1117715472;start=0#0
When he placed this auction, I emailed him for more information. In his return email he stated that he was a regular contributor to the original Phatnoise forums.  He's in the UK. The name he used in the email was Darren.  His email had a "shifty" quality to it.

[A543]

Oh, and he inferred that he was altering the serial numbers on Fujitsu drives. So he was using Terry Kennedys method, and probably still is, I didn't look at his latest auction.

[judb]

in which case, yeah he / she is free to continue to do that..

Selling the drive alone wouldn't work if they didn't crack the box for someone first.

But the email response to paul was pretty funny instead of just saying, im modifing the serial number, bugger off ...

[ws]

That DMS image in the auction is clearly copied from http://www.phatnoise.com/products/accessories/dms.php. If it's been used without permission from Phatnoise it's infringing their copyright and violates Ebay's rules.