Workshop Practice Series on eBay: Copyright Infringement?

Hello, just spotted the following listing on eBay: 281245267319 27 days to go with nine still available...

It is for a CD version of the popular 'Workshop Practice Series' about thirty titles for just £5.99 + p&p.

Whilst I am all for a bargain, I suspect that these are for sale without the Publisher's or relevant Author's permission and does not seem fair. Regards, Donald.

There's a couple of Harold Hall's books in the bundle, so it is close to home.

Report it to eBay, they won't do anything about it, but at least you could feel you tried!

Steve

I've reported it. Maybe if there is a sea swell of complaints they will pull it

John

I too have reported it...

On a slightly brighter note, but completely off-topic; but just HAD to share: I won a nearly new Unimat 3 lathe with ALL the original accessories for £22.21 (twenty-two pounds) on eBay just before Christmas!!!!

It was listed by someone who does house clearances. I gave him the chance to back out of the sale, but he was happy and so am I!!

Unfortunately, I had a bit of bad news a few days later when I got the results of my heart scan and looks like I need surgery, so my horizontally-opposed diesel aero engine project will be on hold for quite some time.

Happy New Year to All

Also listing 191016512293

Hi Ian, Congrats on the great lathe deal, and good luck on the surgery. Both my parents had bypass surgery a number of years ago with amazing results, and were back on their feet quickly. Hope it is the same for you. JD

Also reported from this end of the planet .

Unfortunately this is all too common and the main reason that Lex from Swarfrat enterprises has stopped making DVDs .

I'm going to try and contact the publisher to let them know also .

Ian

I don't think there's any way to stop this. The same set has been out there as a Torrent file for some time. Perhaps Ebay can be persuaded to take it off but Torrent files are hosted all over the world.

Russell

£5.99 seems a bit of a rip off since a CD costs less than 50p. If the publisher had more than a vestige of common sense they would have issued the older publications themselves at a competative price reflecting the cost of production of a CD. As with music it is the greed of the publisher in overcharging that drives the pirate market and deprives the aurthor of the revenue from bulk sales of good value products.

Isn't this what designers and engineers have always had to put up with when their products are ripped off, as there is no real protection there?

Martin.

> As with music it is the greed of the publisher in overcharging that drives the pirate market and deprives the aurthor of the revenue from bulk sales of good value products.

I beg to disagree. The WPS books are still a going concern, as seen by their continued reprinting by successive publishers, each of whom will have paid for the copyright. It costs a lot more to print a book than a magazine, and then you may have to hold the stock for years. Each WPS book costs about the same as 2 1/2 magazines. I don't think that's an unreasonable price to pay - and unlike music there isn't a big market for live model engineering performances, t-shirts and posters to prop up the revenue lost to the pirates.

Neil

£6.95 each (£4.63 each if you buy 3) seems like a decent enough price to me. I don't see it as overcharging.

I take it you are talking about the actual books themselves? I have picked up many of them from Amazon for less than 99p plus £2.50 postage (well the sellers have to make money somehow, I know the post is only 90p)

As for the "CD version" this torrent has been available for a while looking at it's history so the guy selling them on 'bay is just taking advantage of people's ignorance.

However - I would also point out that the Torrent file or this CD/DVD are pdf scans. I would bet that either the font is unreadable, the pictures unrecognisable or both. Not something I would really want to struggle through.
On this occasion I will stick to my books and decline this 'bayers kind invitation to waste my money on something that isn't his nor has he paid for it.

I agree. These are peppercorn prices compared with the excessive prices long charged for music and film CDs/DVDs by their producers. It's ludicrous to compare these handbook prices with the price gouging that went on in those industries.

I remember about a year ago I saw a posting on a Yahoo special interest group giving the web address of an American Web archive. On investigating rhe siteI found that over300 PdFsof full MEW magazines had been uploaded effectively covering the publication's whole history. I reported this to the ME/MEW publishers and their Lawyers must have bestirred themselves eventually to get this material taken down. What disgusted me most about this episode was the glee with which some group members greeted the posting — there was a chorus of congratulations along the lines ' great resource OP'.

the sad fact is that it's not wicked exploitative capitalist publishers that will undermine this hobby but rather the scummy freeloaders, the kind of people who no doubt view shoplifting as a ''victimless' crime.

Joe

Joe.

Interesting you think some on here are "scummy freeloaders".

Have you never read a book you didn't pay for?

Martin.

Thanks for the kind words Jeff & others regarding heart surgery. I have told the publishers 'Special Interest Books' so maybe their 'clout' will get the item removed. He sold ten copies yesterday, and has listed another ten today, so he is making quite a tidy sum...

Prompted by the heads up, I ordered a copy yesterday.

Steve

It would seem there is a market for these books in a digital format that is not satisfied by the publisher. I find the digital option for music, reading and viewing to be most useful. I buy my music on CD but rip it to mp3 so I can store it on my NAS drive and stream it to my SONOS speakers to listen in my house and put my current playlist on a USB stick to listen on the car stereo and a copy on a USB hard drive to listen at work and as a digital backup. My kindle has a substantial collection of books (both ones I have purchased and classics from Gutenberg) that I can pop in my bag and take on holiday so I can choose what to read at any time. Book and magazine publishers are only just getting their act together to provide this sort of flexibilty to the consumer. The titles mentioned are not available digitally at the moment which has clearly left a market for illegal copies. Publishers have the problem of copyright control once things are digitised but this does have solutions as MEW & ME have demonstrated with online and pocketmags. Just I can digitise a CD in a few minutes an office photocopier will scan a book to a PDF file in a few minutes if the book is dismantled, it wrecks the book but the pirates will soon get their money back.

Mike

I bought the item yesterday, and got this message today:-

Thanks for your interest in this item.
191016512293 - Workshop Practice Series + methods of work DVD PDF FORMAT

We had to remove this listing, and the item is no longer available. We do our best to make sure listings that may not comply with our policies don't appear on eBay. Because millions of items are listed every day, occasionally a noncompliant item could appear on our site.

The most common reasons we remove listings are:
-- The item isn't allowed on eBay or can only be listed under certain conditions.
-- The listing or item may have violated the intellectual property rights of others.

What to do now:

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