DVD slideshow GUI Rip-off on Ebay

[tin2tin]

It is somewhat disheartening to give something away for free only to realise that greedy people take advantage of that. I wonder if anything can be done. What do you guys say?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Photo-Image-DVD-AVI-MP4-Video-Slideshow-Slide-Create-Creator-S...item2c61ab078f

http://www.ebay.com/itm/DVD-SLIDESHOW-MAKER-SOFTWARE-PHOTOS-PICTURES-IMAGES-to-VIDEO-D...item336ddc7e21

http://www.ebay.com/itm/DVD-SlideShow-Publisher-DVD-Authoring-Great-For-Events-Wedding...item4ab9a25160

http://www.ebay.com/itm/PHOTOGRAPH-SLIDE-SHOW-AUTHORING-CREATE-DVD-SOFTWARE-/160842153...item2572f07c58

[Baldrick]

We are authorized distributors of the product listed above, fully compliant with GNU license agreement, covering product listed. Portions of the product are copyrighted property of SoftAddict, including, but not limited to disk design, autorun design. Resale agreement available upon request. Template design, layout; thumbnails are property of SoftAddict, and may not be used without written permission. Please contact us if you have any questions. Thank you.

AUthorized distributors ?

[sanlyn]

How can a seller claim to be an "authorized distributor" of GNU-licensed software? Is that possible? The copyright owner can't report this? This can't be reported to eBay?

[Bjs]

While ebay ignores concerns over such issues, did anyone notice the screenshots void of official product name in the top left corner.

Until then, keep sending concerns to Pierre Omidyar's inbox.

[jman98]

This is not unique. Other freeware packages have been known to be sold although not necessarily through Ebay.

Strictly speaking the GNU license does not forbid selling. While individual authors may have such policies, there is nothing in GNU itself to prevent this. Now the sellers may be violating the license by not providing the source code as GNU licensing requires this, but you can sell GNU licensed products if you want.

[sanlyn]

I didn't know all those details about reselling GNU. The sellers should continue this practice and many other should follow. Eventually that would create a situation where developers would stop posting freeware/shareware, and those funky sellers would have no place to go. That won't happen, of course. Apparently the sellers have developed some sort of add-on interface or whatnot, but there ought to be a way to prevent outright theft. Hollywood has managed to fix things so that even at paying rates, no one can keep a copy of anything. What a crappy deal.