PiZero and the criminal mind

slitchfield · #1 14-09-2008, 05:26 PM

Quite scandalous really, my sympathies go out to S60-theme-supremo PiZero in his tale of woe with Handango and with the criminal fraternity. Summary: people are re-selling his free themes for profit - you'd better read the full story over at PiZero's site. How on earth do these rip-off-merchant's minds work?

Read on in the full article.

#2 14-09-2008, 07:11 PM

Handango should be a shame of themselves, it's seems that no one have nothing good to say about them,they should be called, rip-off and ango

Tzer2 · #3 14-09-2008, 07:17 PM

This is about as bad as piracy can get, not just copying something without permission but stripping away the author's name and selling it on at a profit in the pirate's name.

Pizero relied on customers being honest, but apparently it only takes a few rotten apples to unfairly distort how the themes are distributed and who they're credited to. It seems trust isn't always repaid by trust.

onutz · #4 14-09-2008, 07:34 PM

Hi all.

Theft is bad, but not solving legal issues concerning licenses and content, is worse. I'll write these days on my subscribed forums about Handango and its practices and I'll suggest a boycott against it.
After all, that's all we can do. And, of course, donate / pay for these beautiful themes!

Tzer2 · #5 14-09-2008, 08:47 PM

Onutz, it also calls into question how committed Handango is to stopping piracy if it continues to sell products they know are pirated.

onutz · #6 14-09-2008, 08:58 PM

Maybe they don't know yet and they should investigate themselves the rights and license for those products.
But I'm sure it's a mistake to close the case and let the products for sale while investigating this issue, as far as there is a legal complaint against them. Where I work now, I'd get fired next day for such a solving things out manner...!

#7 14-09-2008, 09:03 PM

Hi Steve, thanks for this kind way of supporting me.

However, I saw that many users focus more on Handango's behaviour, but the real problem is the theft made by some people. I just want to give Handango another chance to solve the issue. They are a big marketplace, and they have probably much work every day. So, I'd ask the users, before accusing the company, to wait, because i've been told that someone is working to solve the issue. I hope tomorrow the problem will be fixed.

For the Future, I'm thinking of some way to implement a signature on the sis file. I've been told a way by my friend P@sco to implement a pop-up at software installation, but I remember it was very complicated to do. Another solution would be a DRM implementation, like Psiloc do (but I don't know how this could work with free themes).

Thank again for the support you are giving me guys!

PiZero

Micky! · #8 15-09-2008, 07:13 AM

@PiZero - I have posted about this over on N95users.com too.

Shame on Handango

GrahO23 · #9 15-09-2008, 07:50 AM

Hi PiZero,

Sorry to hear that I had similar problem with Light Sabre. I actually put on the main screen of the application that (in my case) it's free and should not be re-sold. Some cretin was actually and still is selling it on Ebay for £2.

Look in the Symbian / Series 60 SDK in the .pkg format you can easily add a pop up readme during sis file installation add something like the following where text\textfile.txt\ is in you're sis file:

(from the SDK add to you're .pkg file)

"
;Some text files to display in dialogs during the installation. These files are not installed.

;'TC' continues with the installation after displaying the dialog.
;'TA' presents the user with an option to abort the installation.
"text\textfilec.txt"-"", FT, TC
"text\textfilea.txt"-"", FT, TA

"

Hope this helps

Graham