PhatHack

The Hacking Hoedown => PhatBox Hacking => Topic started by: judb on July 25, 2005, 05:45:10 PM

Title: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: judb on July 25, 2005, 05:45:10 PM
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.
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: dscline on July 25, 2005, 07:21:54 PM
QuoteIf 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.
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: judb on July 25, 2005, 07:51:46 PM
Quote
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.
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: ry4n on July 25, 2005, 08:00:10 PM
or you could just let any bidders know, and maybe they can retract their bids
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: Genesis on July 26, 2005, 05:00:17 AM
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.
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: Firefox on July 26, 2005, 12:58:38 PM
Unless someone here makes an ebay listing with the details and a FREE pointer to this forum.... :D
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: ws on August 29, 2005, 09:19:26 AM
Looks like here's the first one - search for item no. 5803490426.
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: FiftyPence on August 29, 2005, 02:45:46 PM
Ok so i emailed the seller of the above mentioned item as follows:

QuoteThe 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 (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5803490426)

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.
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: Paul on August 29, 2005, 02:49:42 PM
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
 
 
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: FiftyPence on August 29, 2005, 02:53:15 PM
Top work there Paul (http://www.tyresmoke.net/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/169144-ok.gif)
Title: Check out the genius we're dealing with...
Post by: Paul on August 29, 2005, 07:41:40 PM
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.
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: Paul on August 29, 2005, 08:01:27 PM
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.
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: ws on August 29, 2005, 11:16:16 PM
I see this person has ended the auction early and relisted as a private listing so the identity of bidders cannot be seen.
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: astreau on August 30, 2005, 12:23:13 AM
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 ;D
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: judb on August 30, 2005, 03:34:34 AM
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!
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: judb on August 30, 2005, 03:39:30 AM
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.
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: A543 on August 30, 2005, 03:43:38 AM
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.
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: A543 on August 30, 2005, 03:45:50 AM
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.
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: judb on August 30, 2005, 03:48:49 AM
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 ...
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: ws on August 30, 2005, 12:21:39 PM
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.
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: ws on August 30, 2005, 12:58:52 PM
Well they're clearly watching this thread closely. Now they've changed the background color of the image, effectively acknowledging that the image is stolen.
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: underground on August 30, 2005, 02:10:07 PM
Being a 'newbie' i was fascinated reading this thread...
I bought an 80Gb drive from beckytaylor1968 in May of this year. Actually managed to buy privately and saved her the bay fees and myself a few quid.
Now i just wish I'd held off as it seems now possible to do the upgrade myself.
I must say, I was pretty dubious about sending my 20Gb DMS to him, and concerned that it may simply be a scam, but was persuaded by his feedback rating.
Anyway, the drive arrived a few days later and although it took a 30 minute phone call to get it working, it did work flawlessly. Even my MP3's had been copied over to the new DMS.
This being so, has this upgrade been done differently to the method being advertised here? From what I have read so far, this method was not available back in May?
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: SteveC on August 30, 2005, 02:16:43 PM
By the way, don't worry about this goober's threat regarding the e-mail you posted here.

Any communication sent to you is yours to do with as you please, unless you are recieving the communication under the terms of a binding non-disclosure agreement or other instrument that restricts it's dissemination.

What a 'ron.
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: Paul on August 30, 2005, 03:09:45 PM
Yeah, I'm not worried in the least.  The best part is that since this person keeps checking this thread and making changes, I keep logging their IP address and noting the changes.  Then I go back in my log history and show that they have been browsing the forum (and I have logs of exactly which threads) and downloading the hack.  All I have to do now is buy a drive upgrade kit from them, show that the method of this forum is being used (rather than changing the serial number) and viola!

Be careful who you sell to, BeckyTaylor. :)  Though, at this point, it probably doesn't matter - I have all the evidence of violation of the User Agreement of this site anyway.

-----------------------------------------------------------
Oh, and I started my morning with another cheerful BeckyTaylor e-mail:

Question from beckytaylor1968  
I see at last some of your more intelligent subscribers have finally put you straight!
Did you seriously think you were the first to crack the PN?
You are obviously a lot more more stupid than you try to make out.
Good luck with your lawyers...
Your breach of the DPA98 is going to cost you dearly.
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: judb on August 31, 2005, 05:23:38 AM
I am sorry, there is no such thing as expectation of privacy with email.  Anyone that expects the contents of an email that is unencrypted to be kept private is not a very savvy computer user.

Paul: I hope you can figure out a way to do something about people who are using our method but I had heard of ebay user posting modded drives using the fujitsu method that Terry Kennedy used prior to us making the hack work properly.

If people are sending their phatbox in to this person then they could be using our method, but I highly doubt thats what they are doing from the sounds of things.

Person who is emailing Paul: shut up, you cant do anything about public posting of emails to other parties.. the internet is not a secure envrionment and I'd be willing to bet your emails did not have an expressly written notice of confidentiality (sp?) to inform the recipient(s) / interceptor(s) of said email of your right to privacy.  You have no leg to stand on.  sorry.  :P  You know it, I know it, we all know it.  keep sending those emails if you want to keep us laughing! :)
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: ws on August 31, 2005, 07:33:32 AM
Auction has disappeared.
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: judb on October 20, 2005, 05:59:32 AM
http://cgi.ebay.com/KENWOOD-MUSIC-KEG-PHATBOX-MEMORY-UPGRADE-CHEAP_W0QQitemZ5818461214QQcategoryZ50557QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
this was pointed out to me today.. Ha.. love that guys auction, obviously hes quite technical!
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: Paul on October 20, 2005, 03:49:44 PM
Ebay and the seller have been sent my standard cease & desist letter, which so far, e-bay has been obeying.

This gets old though.  It's funny how people will search e-bay for "dms hard drive" but not google. :P
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: todd1010 on October 20, 2005, 04:48:02 PM
Just a thought but, since its a "risky" process. Why can't someone offer such a service as this? I am by no means supporting that, so I thougt I'd ask.
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: judb on October 20, 2005, 05:15:47 PM
We could perhaps.. if it was in some non profit format, and it was legal.  That would be an interesting way of paying for bandwidth and hosting and what not.. I mean, make it a formal service, buy some google ad words.. hmmm..

The main thing is seeing if doing that would run afoul of phatnoise's legal position.

Anyone know an IP lawyer?
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: Paul on October 20, 2005, 11:18:53 PM
It's illegal.
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: judb on October 21, 2005, 02:55:01 AM
QuoteIt's illegal.


party pooper! ;)
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: hankoll on October 21, 2005, 04:11:51 PM
is it legal for me to offer to upgrade someone's phatbox/keg for free?

ie. they bring their car, phatbox, dms over to my house
i perform the upgrade as they wait
they leave - no money changes hands

I know some people who would love to do this but are completely computer illiterate.  
Title: Re: Keep your eye on ebay
Post by: judb on October 21, 2005, 08:29:10 PM
Quoteis it legal for me to offer to upgrade someone's phatbox/keg for free?

ie. they bring their car, phatbox, dms over to my house
i perform the upgrade as they wait
they leave - no money changes hands

I know some people who would love to do this but are completely computer illiterate.  


I wouldn't say, post on the internet about it, but thats not really what I would call illegal.  but im not a lawyer either.