eBay piracy
10 Feb 2006I’m vaguely hunting for a laptop. Well, okay, a little more than vaguely–but as they’re reputedly one of the more-commonly-fraudulent items listed on eBay, use of that service as a purchasing vehicle is less than certain.
Software piracy also features… but, of course, there seems to be little that can be done to actually report this (if eBay have a “Report violation” link, it’s adequately hidden from me). Observe this question from earlier today on an iBook with OS 10.4.4 and Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign, and MS Office for Mac included:
Me: Does this come with original CDs + licenses for OS 10.4, MS Office for Mac and Adobe software?
Seller: No.
(Yeah, that was fulltext of the question + answer!)
And on another listing (I didn’t ask the question on this one!) advertised as including iLife 06, MS Office 2004 and Adobe CS2:
Q: Are you selling the software disks too?
A: No. I’ve installed the software, and all the apps work, but I’m only going to be sending the laptop and its power cable. Thanks.
Sigh.
(p.s. though it may appear this way from this post, I’m not convinced I want a Mac laptop anymore. In fact, I’d probably prefer a PC because they’re lighter + cheaper than their Apple counterparts)