General Forum

Re: Not very ethical,,,,

Tom — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:07:33 GMT

mobeyone:
Fair point Cozza - email to B&O me thinks??

could and should be right, but if this was the case, I think Lee and his stuff would had done it already?!

Re: Not very ethical,,,,

mobeyone — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 16:38:34 GMT

Fair point Cozza - email to B&O me thinks??

Re: Not very ethical,,,,

cozza — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 16:36:40 GMT

I thought that selling copies of copyrighted material was illegal and frowned upon by Ebay themselves? Surely if you started selling copies of software or films you would get closed down by a moderator, what is the difference in this case? Surely the service manuals are copyrighted by Bang and Olufsen?

Re: Not very ethical,,,,

joynsyde — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 16:35:46 GMT

mbee:
I agree with the fact that what this man does is not very ethical... BUT everyone says that those manuals are free at Beoworld. That's wrong, you have to pay a Beoworld membership to get them.
Now consider someone wanting a service manual in order to repair one of his B&O products (or "just in case"). He has two solutions :
1. Getting a beoworld membership : that's quite expensive for just a manual (or two...), considering that this person is not interrested by any other thing that beoworld membership gives him.
2. Buying this manual from this guy on ebay : that's a good choice for our customer : he will pay a very low amount for the manual, less than a beoworld account.

The third option is to call the nearest B&O dealers and tell them which manual you need. I can't imagine a dealer charging anything to email a manual or two to someone. They might ask you to cover the cost of printing and shipping if you don't have an email account. But if it's true that you don't have an email account, you probably won't be buying much from eBay either...

Re: Not very ethical,,,,

mbee — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 16:26:38 GMT

I agree with the fact that what this man does is not very ethical... BUT everyone says that those manuals are free at Beoworld. That's wrong, you have to pay a Beoworld membership to get them.

Now consider someone wanting a service manual in order to repair one of his B&O products (or "just in case"). He has two solutions :

1. Getting a beoworld membership : that's quite expensive for just a manual (or two...), considering that this person is not interrested by any other thing that beoworld membership gives him.

2. Buying this manual from this guy on ebay : that's a good choice for our customer : he will pay a very low amount for the manual, less than a beoworld account.

Now my solution in order to satisfy Lee :

You just have to make available every Beoworld service manual for download, at a low price, for instance 1€ by manual. People just wanting a manual will get it at Beoworld, and the "little guy from ebay" business will be killed quickly! (and Beoworld will make more money)

Re: Not very ethical,,,,

beoperson — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 15:30:18 GMT

I think we should not judge buyers who buy manuals on eBay which could be downloaded for free from B&O website.
I don't see anything wrong with this, It's their money and they are free to spend it the way they wish, it's silly of course but its their own choice.

As for beoworlders - it's a bit controversial. Surely seems unethical - this was my first though as well, but if you think about it, they paid for membership which allows downloading these documents. I assume from posts (I'm not a silver member yet) it does not say that manuals cannot be sold. So once manuals are downloaded they can use they way they want to. After all its B&O manuals...

P.S.
I have to admit I have once stolen picture of DVD1 from Lee, when I was selling it for my friend on eBay.
I did not even know it was Lee's until I came across his picture of BC9000 in similar setup.

....Lee, I apologize

I have often used description taken from beoworld.co.uk (at that time) and included in the item description when selling on eBay.
However I always mention that this information is taken from beoworld "and please refer to beoworld for more details as it's a great source of information"

Re: Not very ethical,,,,

BenSA — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 06:36:04 GMT

I suppose the sellers thought process is that Beoworld copied them from B&O so why can't he copy them from Beoworld? I can't imagine he makes much money selling them. There should be a condition stated that a person has to agree with (i.e. a box to tick) before becoming a silver or gold member that all information on this site is not to be use for personal monetary gain, cannot be downloaded and sold. Maybe that would work.

Re: Not very ethical,,,,

JoC — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 06:30:08 GMT

If you can view them onscreen, you just hit PrtScr (printscreen), save each page, tedious I know...

They may be copyright B&O, but a (clickable) watermark at the bottom of each page, just saying "provided by www.beoworld.org" may be enough for the buyer to be caught out once, then come to this site for further documents. Or password protect each document with a password of "www.beoworld.org", or accept the fact that we live in a digital age and things like this happen.

JoC

Re: Not very ethical,,,,

Dillen — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 06:20:49 GMT

Watermark each page is not a bad idea.

Is it possible to make the manuals viewable (and printable) but not download'able ?

Martin

Re: Not very ethical,,,,

Tom — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 06:14:36 GMT

As you said: the problem is that the manuals don't belong to beoworld. I think you/we have to live with this problem...

Re: Not very ethical,,,,

9 LEE — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 06:00:17 GMT

Andy is of course correct, and i think it would be wrong to ban someone on the strength of selling manuals we never really owned in the first place.

It must be morally wrong, because i felt a little cheated the first time i saw this happen - but it's not something i am going to get worked up over. I spend so much time keeping the site running well and keeping it interesting that i wouldn't have time to pursue these people anyway..

Lee

Re: Not very ethical,,,,

Iconic-AV — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 05:51:04 GMT

i really dont see how it could be stopped or if time should be wasted in such a futile way, people are resourceful and always find a way around things.

it is indeed the people buying them that are been cheated although im sure they would disagree if it was the manual they were after

maybe as an introduction to beoworld your first manual free, most people have more than 1 b+o product so would then see ONE of the benefits of joining and at the worst it may put the people selling them out of pocket a little

another suggestion may be to list them also, but for simply the cost of ebay fees and not a single penny more, no-one else would bother then

if you cant join them beat them i say (maybe i heard it wrong)

what do you think??

jay

Re: Not very ethical,,,,

Jandyt — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 05:34:39 GMT

Lee can't really do this Tom as the guy isn't doing anything illegal.
Lee and the mods have to think about the effect that banning someone would have overall.
Gosh! What if they didn't like drivel? I'd have been gone a long time ago!

Andy T.

Re: Not very ethical,,,,

Tom — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 05:04:17 GMT

9 LEE:

There is actually one person on ebay selling manuals for individual products clearly stating he or she can get pretty much any manual required. This person is a Silver Member, and has never posted (surprise surprise) - and even has the cheek to steal BeoWorld photos to add to their listings..

Lee, simple queation: If you know who is doing this, could you refuse that member when he wants to renew his membership next year?

Re: Not very ethical,,,,

Daniel Seiler — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 00:53:12 GMT

Really a bad behaviour! I wonder that such a lot of people buy these manuals.

Well, i think there will always be some people making profit of others work, and i am not sure if there is any protection against this.

But you could for example change the terms of use for beoworld members, containing a regulation that says that comercial use of beoworld files is not allowed and will result in membership loss. So in this case you had at least the possibility to throw someone out if such behavior gets known.