selling freeware games. Is this allowed?

cyberstar

This seller is selling classic games that can already be downloaded for free, but appently under the ebay policy you are allowed to sell stuff that's in the public domain.
In the listing it states

'Ebay Please Note, In keeping with Ebay poloicies, the underlying material is in the public domain.
These games are available free to download on public domain there is no copyright on any of these games within the dvds. The only thing you are paying for is the time and effort to produce these discs.'

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Classic-Retro-Arcade-games-2000-on-1-dvd-bargin_W0QQitemZ330041339989QQihZ014QQcategoryZ11047QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item330041339989

This seller is making money by taking free stuff from the net and copy onto dvd. But since this is public doman its seems that for some reason this is allowed!

king_of_the_penguins

This is allowed by E-Bay, see http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/recordable.html

I don't see a problem with it myself, presumebably he has made the effort to find all the games, download them, sort them and burn them to disc, lets face it a lot of people will be willing to pay £4.20 rather than do all that work themselves.

Or maybe he has just copied a compilation disc that he has purchased, not sure how that affects the whole copyright thing but I guess if the games are in the public domain probably no problem.

cyberstar

even if they are old classic games, I dont understand why they are not copyrighted.

Actually, what is public domain, how does material suddenly become public domain?

Moglex

Material is 'public domain' for two reasons.

1) It is so old it is out or copyright - impossible for any computer games other than those for the difference engine.

2) The legal owner of the copyright explicitly places it in the public domain.

Note that something does not 'become' in the public domain just because if has been freely copied for years without any action being taken. The copyright holder can take action against any infringers at any time.

Dack

Looking at the feedback reveals that he seems to be simply selling rom dumps and a copy of MAME (and/or other emulators). (One complains that Mortal Kombat doesn't work)

Those game are definately not in the public domain - seems to be a standard disclaimer on those selling pirate software.

shelly

king_of_the_penguins wrote:

I don't see a problem with it myself, presumebably he has made the effort to find all the games, download them, sort them and burn them to disc, lets face it a lot of people will be willing to pay £4.20 rather than do all that work themselves.

I agree. If people are daft enough to pay for something that is available for free then good luck to the seller.

culpepper

I've written a couple of progs in the past and put them up for free and have had emails asking if they could be put on a disc for the cost of the disc.
I think it may depend what the programmers put in their terms eg the end user licence agreement. There used to be clubs you could join to buy PD games and software and definitely shops used to sell PD discs for the Amiga and commodore 64.

Hintza

Good on him! What is wrong with that? There are many things that can be had for free that others are willing to spend money on. I used to sell welks (winkles) and mackrel in my youth a couple of hours work made me a fortune in the summer. Collected lemonade bottles on the beach and made a turn on that too. As others have said he has spent time and effort gathering this together so I hope he makes his fortune.
:beer: