Info needed for reseach project please!!!

Sale Requests
1

hello, id like to stary by saying that this is purely a research project i have no intention of trying to worm my way through your copyright walls or to creat any bad feeling towards my self from any one on this forum. Midibox is amasing and it has brightend up my life more than i could have posibaly imagined and i like to thank TK and every one thats been involved along the way.

im a 23 year old sound enginearing student in the UK and i have been building the MIDIBOX SID V2 as part of my projects, its going ok and most importantly im enjoying it. recently i got in to a debate with some one about selling the MIDIBOX systems, i obvasly respect the ideas of and rights govening the system but it was one of those arguments that was never going to stop. basicaly my friends point was that how can you not have the right to sell your midibox? say if i had bought the kit from smashTV constructed it then simpley said that i needed money and sold it what is there to stop some one from doing this? what could the consinquences posibaly be? i understand that the boards are copyrighted and reproduction of these would be illegel (or would this be the case if i pened and etched them myself?) but the main point is that what is there to stop some one offering there services in a constructive manner, simply offering the service of taking components and building the MBSID then posting it of too my client? and if this is a loop hole then whats the diffrence in this service and simply selling the midibox system directly?

again please dont take this as a probe in to the legality of the midibox system and feel free to remove this post if  you so desire.

but any help would be greatly apreciated or links to other threads involving these questions,

thanks for your time,

Alex (www.myspace.com/djtrago)

2

uh oh… “It begins…”

Legalities aside… for me it’s about respect.. TK has given me (and you) a great and special gift… all he is asking in return is that you abide by his few rules..

I wouldn’t question them.. just respect them.

Regards

Mike

3

Hello Alex,

Well it is simple to awnser your question.

It ain’t forbidden to sell your midibox.

However there are conditions:

* You have to ask TK permission.

* You may not sell it for profit

* You may only sell it on midibox.org

I really do not understand why people cannot live with this statement http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php/topic,5758.0.html

Those are the rules.

If disregarded the whole forum will do anyting within it’s power to stop it.

And trust me this can be utterly anoying.

Regards,

Jeffry

4

What kind of help or discussion do you expect here? Everything has been said, over and over again, just look around the “Sale Request” section of this forum. I cannot find any new aspects in your post, and I find such discussions very tiring, to the point that I think “oh no, not again”. The MIDIbox community’s spirit is basically about helping each other to develop tools that are not available otherwise, and about learning how to DIY.

One of the problems with your idea is that if you sell stuff, you will have to provide after sale service to “customers” who might not understand what they are doing. I would very much doubt that you are capable of providing this, infrastructure- and knowledge-wise. Customers would then turn to the community, but the community would refuse to provide help. This is where one of your problems would start, not talking of a number of legal issues you’d have to face.

Did I mention that I’m really tired of this type of discussion?

It’s all in this post.

5

basicaly my friends point was that how can you not have the right to sell your midibox?

A lot of people feel that way at first, because they are applying traditional commercial methods to a non traditional non commercial unit, they have trouble adding it up. Makes sense I guess, it’s not like very many things in the world can be obtained for only the cost of materials and your time (or else a Big Mac would be 20c + 1 minute at the grill!). As such it can seem alien to some people. Regardless, if they’re good people, they’ll respect the wishes of the person who gave them the box in the first place, anyway.

The simple answer to this is that you didn’t pay for the right to resell the midibox as you see fit, you paid for the right to build it according to the non-commercial DIY license which applies to it.

what is there to stop some one from doing this?

Honour, respect, adherence to the license. In my own opinion the former two are of far greater importance, and I guess that’s linked to your next question:

what could the consinquences posibaly be?

Well trick question there, it’s like saying “what can possibly happen if I drive my car at 200km’h?”. Maybe you’ll hit a tree, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll hit a pedestrian, maybe everyone else will do it too and noone will be able to cross the road, maybe nothing… it’s hard to say… The consequences could be very minor, they could be great.

But, like driving at 200km/h, there is a good reason why people say “don’t do that”, and it’s probably best to play it safe and not do it :wink:

i understand that the boards are copyrighted and reproduction of these would be illegel (or would this be the case if i pened and etched them myself?)

If TK provided you with an exception to the noncommercial license than that would be fine.

but the main point is that what is there to stop some one offering there services in a constructive manner, simply offering the service of taking components and building the MBSID then posting it of too my client?

Honour, respect, adherence to the license. It could not be done in a constructive manner without a license exemption, as the license protects the community.

again please dont take this as a probe in to the legality of the midibox system and feel free to remove this post if you so desire.

Respectful posts, probes or otherwise, are always welcome, and do not need removal.

Edit: the same does not apply if people turn those respectful posts into flamewars!

6

well as i mentioned and tryed to be so friendly in this discution, and was (in my view) so rudely replyed to, i asked these questions as a form of research, i have no intention of selling my SID, i love it and i laugh at any one who would ask me where i got it from, but after this torrent of sarcasam and abuse im not realy feeling the “midibox community spirit” perticualy and all i can gather from your responces is that there is nothing to stop any one from turning the MBSID in to another sidstation? if this is the case then why is there no copyright on the system? what is there to stop some random person who has no intealectual rights to the system copyrighting it for themselfs? i can understand that you are very protective of midibox but i dont think you need to be quite so rude towards some one who is an amature, you were all amatures once too.

7

to stryd_one only just saw your responce, thanks you have been a great help in answering my questions, i hope you will be flatted to know i will mention you in good favor in my disertation, midibox=love,honer&obay! lol :smiley:

8

Just to add… People are a bit tetchy about the subject of Midiboxes being sold commercially. It’s because it’s so disheartening. Personally it really pulls on my faith in the human race. Tk is putting his life in to this project and for somebody to rip him off is just disgusting. It’s happened before and it upsets us all. I suppose one of the things that stops people selling these things is basic human decency.

To get in to building them you have to do your reading and by doing so I guess that a lot of people would gain a great deal of empathy with the group of people that put there time in here (It’s not just TK putting his time in to these projects and for troubleshooting).

I suppose there would be the matter of interlectual property too ???

Also, as you know, the projects here are software driven… Selling that software on without adheering to the licenseing agreement is pretty much the same as software piracy.

Like I said, it’s a tetchy subject people selling them on, one of the worst things that could happen in this community, that’s why people are a bit funny about discussing it. Experience has shown that some people sometimes just don’t get the idea no mater how many times it is explained.

9

to stryd_one only just saw your responce, thanks you have been a great help in answering my questions

I’m glad it helped.

I see you got a bit offended by the other guys and although I understand why, I really I don’t think you need to feel that way… knowing them as I do, I can assure you that there was no animosity intended in any of the above posts.

I guess it’s a tough situation for all… as the guys said, this is a subject that has been ‘done to death’ in the past. If you imagine that someone’s been slapped in the face a bunch of times, then you walk up and wave at the guy, he might think you’re about to slap him, and duck and give you a dirty look. Then, you go “hey don’t look at me like that” and now noone is having any fun…

If you read through the forum you’ll see the reasons these guys reacted the way they did. When so many people have threatened to harm midibox in the past, it is bound to cause people here to be fearful. Regardless of all that, all that they have said is indeed true, so I hope you can accept it as just truth, even if the truth hurts a bit.

I would be lying if I told you, that I didn’t fear that the same would come of this thread, as some of the others that preceded it. I’m glad that such fears were unfounded.

midibox=love,honer&obay! lol :smiley:

LOL. Well, just like a marriage, in this day and age it is not really cool to expect your partner to obey your command… However, and again just like a marriage, if the two parties respect each other, there will be no “order/obey”, it will just be “ask a favour/do a favour.”

I guess midibox is just a big group of people who take turns to give and receive favours. That works well, unless one person ‘takes’ a lot and never ‘gives’, and that’s one reason why selling midiboxes is no good… There is only so much love to go around, and if one person takes it all, then they leave none for anyone else.

Woop, there’s a new post…

Just to add… People are a bit tetchy about the subject of Midiboxes being sold commercially. It’s because it’s so disheartening. Personally it really pulls on my faith in the human race. Tk is putting his life in to this project and for somebody to rip him off is just disgusting. It’s happened before and it upsets us all. I suppose one of the things that stops people selling these things is basic human decency.

My sentiments exactly.

10

My take on this is simply a matter of respect

I personally don’t care about the licence issue because you would have to pry my MBs out of my cold dead hands but i wouldn’t ever even think of taking the piss out of TK wishes not just because he is a genuine genius who has given so much for free round here it beggars belief but also because of the respect i have for the guys in this community.

If you don’t see the community spirit then let me tell you a tale of two days ago

I was building a particular design and to be honest i’m not just a newb i am the ultimate gimpazoid bastard when it comes to building stuff even though i’m really enjoying it

One of the guys here sat on IRC with me for hours while i soldered the board and walked me through every single step to make sure i had a working system

If that isn’t community spirit then i dont really know what is and you know what i guess from writing this post i made myself realise i do actually care about the licence hahahahahahaha

I dont wanna see someone using these guys designs and making money when the original designers have stepped up and done it for free

Besides that not only do they give the designs for free but they actually step to the plate and give support for free too

Yes this may seem weird in the modern commercial world but put simply it’s great

Flex

11

Group huuuuug!

12

Whoever’s hand that is, don’t touch me there!

13

Sorry S1, I thought you were nILS  :wink: :wink:

14

basicaly my friends point was that how can you not have the right to sell your midibox? say if i had bought the kit from smashTV constructed it then simpley said that i needed money and sold it what is there to stop some one from doing this? what could the consinquences posibaly be? i understand that the boards are copyrighted and reproduction of these would be illegel (or would this be the case if i pened and etched them myself?) but the main point is that what is there to stop some one offering there services in a constructive manner, simply offering the service of taking components and building the MBSID then posting it of too my client? and if this is a loop hole then whats the diffrence in this service and simply selling the midibox system directly?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_licenses

Although I’m not sure MIDIBox stuff is covered by the specific shared license provided by Creative Commons, it’s based on a very similar idea.

In practice, there’s nothing to stop you offering a build service unless you advertised it where one of the community might see it, because although it’s in breach of copyright, that can only be enforced if someone catches you doing it. It’s against copyright laws to do so, because although you’re providing labour, you’re still profiting from a copyrighted PCB design and microcontroller OS. It’s essentially the same as buying a DVD and charging people to watch it on your projector and screen. You own the DVD, but it’s still illegal to charge for a public performance of it. The license, as far as I know, also covers derivative works, so even if you alter sections of the PCB and MIOS, your new design is still covered by the original license which requires you to not sell it on at a profit.

The way I see it, especially with the MB-6582, TK, Wilba and SmashTV could have closed the rest of the community out (who I’m sure have provided extra ideas and advice) and set themselves up a nice cottage industry selling sequencers, synths and controllers for far more than the creation costs, but they have decided not to, and so if the original designer, additions designer (and SID obtainer) and producer have decided to not profit from from MIDIBox suff and instead give the designs and a cheap PCB buying service to the public, then I would be taking the mickey a bit if to make a profit, even if that profit was for my time spent building it. Doing so is breaching copyright, but even if you don’t get caught, there are moral implications about whether you should be profiting from someone else’s hard work.