Obnoxious, Evil Chinese Pirate on eBay

[Epicenter]

ENOUGH. **LET THE TOPIC DIE**.

[portnoyd]

Can somebody give Epicenter a pity lock? Come on, be nice.

dave

[rbudrick]

It's ok dude, everyone makes mistakes. Everyone has a right to be semi-suspicious of HK dealers. I encourage you to continue to try to get interviews...only do them with real pirates, he hheh


Now,

Now when you say that this is a "bad business practice," I'd say you should go look at the cereal foods isle of your supermarket! Every day I come across stuff from little companies trying to look like official Kellogg's products. Since we're Americans, we should know better than to pull stuff like that, right? Nah.

This isn't a good analogy. These "generic" brands are usually licensed by the real companies (Kellogs, Post, General Mills) to generic product distributors. The distributors then sell the stores the cereal with their name/label on them.

The big brands make good royalties/licensing fees off of this, as I understand it.

So, since pirate games aren't licensed, that doesn't work. :-)

-Rob

[Ed Oscuro]

Now when you say that this is a "bad business practice," I'd say you should go look at the cereal foods isle of your supermarket! Every day I come across stuff from little companies trying to look like official Kellogg's products. Since we're Americans, we should know better than to pull stuff like that, right? Nah.

This isn't a good analogy. These "generic" brands are usually licensed by the real companies (Kellogs, Post, General Mills) to generic product distributors. The distributors then sell the stores the cereal with their name/label on them.

This is EXACTLY why it's a good analogy. I work at a place called Cereal City, USA, and I can easily field a dozen questions a day about the cereal business and things.

Kellogg's DOES NOT make cereal for no-name brands. It stings to find out how many people think that. Kellogg's only licenses its characters for use on items like apparel, lunchboxes, toys and the like, and even then there are strict reasons.

The little companies have apparently had great success in convincing a large number of people that their sawdust is the real thing, that they get better value, etc. This is why the work of Kellogg's trademark attorneys never ends.

The little guys in China making Famicom-compatible machines ARE NOT necessarily pirates. They are "pirates" only if they are ripping off official Nintendo designs, the name, or are using copyrighted/patented materials.

Let's consider a very obscure machine called the Pencil ][, from Hanimex. A Colecovision adapter was available for it. Does that automatically make Hanimex (a company that's still around) pirates? Nope. They COULD have been pirating Coleco's intellectual property in copyrights or trademarks, but this is not a certain deal. Yet Coleco probably should have sent a letter warning Hanimex against utilizing trademarks. It goes to show that the clone business is an uncertain (but not always illegal or shadowy) business.