Ethics question: Repro parts and pricing.

Frax

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So, this guy has been selling repro shuttles for Space Shuttle on ebay for a few months, 5 here, 10 there, another batch of 10 after he said the last batch was the last one....60$+10$ shipping. They do have decals that he printed on them, pre-applied.

I'm sick of waiting on Pinball Inc who doesnt say shit about what theyre doing since they were supposed to have repro ramps out at the end of October by their own account and have not released them yet.

70$ is a lot, Imo for a 5$ sheet of petg plastic and some stickes probably printed on avery paper bought at office max and an inkjet. He is vaccuforming them off a mold he made for himself (defective mold at that) and has it listed as buy it now or submit offer.

So I did. 20$ plus his 10$ shipping. I told him that since he hasnt bothered to licence either the labels or the toy itself from Planetary, and is using a flawed mold, dont think that his "product" is worth the price he is asking. I basicslly get an email back saying he accepted the offer but that he is barely making any money not out to screw anyone over and that he is trying to recover his cost of trial and error and lost materials yadda yadda. Whatever.

My question for consideration is this:

If you make a repro part FOR YOURSELF, and then decide to offer a few to the community, do you try and turn a rather large profit as this guy seems to be doing to recover all the costs of making your first one, or do you sell a little bit ocer the actual cost of the materials and eat the decelopment loss since you were going to do it ANYWAYS?

This particular issue is pissing me off because I specifically did not pursue this project because Planetary told me that I could not sell them because Pinball Inc was going to do them. I have reported this guy to them and didnt evrn get a response from them and this is the second time he has had them for sale since. If they arent going to make their licensees produce in a timely manner, or even protect their patents, why should I give one flying f about what they say not to do? :|
 
I'm a dick, I can take it. ;)

I was trying to BE a dick with the 20$ offer to the guy, didn't figure he'd actually accept it. If I could figure out how to reject it without penalizing either of our accounts I'd do it..just wanted him to understand that he's bascially illegally counterfeiting something that's been licenced out. I'm more pissed at Planetary Pinball than this guy. :|
 
So... you reported him to the copyright holder then bought one anyway? That in itself is unethical. At worst it's petty, selfish, and hypocritical but I'll stick with unethical.

Personally, if I were doing it I would be selling them for as high as the market will support. You've decided to do something unethical by creating an unlicensed product in the first place, effectively stealing from WMS. Might as well make it worthwhile. You mention the cost of materials but you don't factor in the equipment or time involved involved. That stuff isn't free. It always amazes me how people expect others to give their time away for free. Why should they? Seriously. I give a lot of my time to this hobby for free as it is. That's my choice. The last thing I'm going to be doing is manufacturing shit for free.

I would also have told you to shove your $20, veiled threats and condescending attitude. But that's just me :)

Just my opinion.

EDIT:
Of course, I would have also tried to get the thing licensed then moved on to something else when I couldn't. No sense running your name through the mud to make a couple hundred bucks busting your ass making stupid plastic space shuttles. In short, I would never make these in the first place and I definitely wouldn't sell them unlicensed. Not because I think it's unethical (I do) but because it's not worth it.
 
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I haven't bought it, and I do know how to reject it, but "being a dick" isn't really a valid choice according to ebay. Funny, since they seem to support being a dick quite a bit. :p

*edit* He didn't buy the equipment to make these for sale to the public...or at least that's what he claims, so I don't see why the cost of the equipment is relative. He either already owned it for other use, or bought it to make his own and would've purchased it either way? Not really veilied when I told him I reported him last time. Believe me, I'm just as confused as to why he accepted the offer as you are. Maybe to give me a bad feedback...if that turns out that way, I'm okay with the consequences..that's karma.

So here's another question: At what point of waiting for Pinball Inc to get these things out is enough waiting before I just take it into my own hands to make my own mold and be done with it? Guess technically, the way I take that is if I'm not selling any to other people, doesn't really matter when and just up to me to spend that 180$ on the equipment to do it. =\
 
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I haven't bought it, and I do know how to reject it, but "being a dick" isn't really a valid choice according to ebay. Funny, since they seem to support being a dick quite a bit. :p

HAHA! Yeah... I think you have to consistently be a dick and make them a profit by doing so. They seem to love those dicks.

Hard to say how to handle it. I would probably just pay for the thing and call it a day. You kind of bullied the guy into the low price but that's his problem. If he didn't like the price he shouldn't have agreed. If you feel bad about "stealing" from WMS and Planetary Pinball then treat this one as a temporary solution and buy one from them when it comes out.

I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. Yes, it's unethical on your side too, but not Karma that I would be worrying about getting hit by a bus over. Buy a sandwich for a homeless guy and you should be straight ;)
 
*edit* He didn't buy the equipment to make these for sale to the public...or at least that's what he claims, so I don't see why the cost of the equipment is relative. He either already owned it for other use, or bought it to make his own and would've purchased it either way?

Okay... so he didn't buy the equipment. His time is still not free. Tools, workspace, etc... also not free. Sure, he may have had those anyway but their use in this project has to factor into their total cost.

In any case... I just said what I would be doing and why. I would be considering all that stuff. If this guy wants to work for free then that's his choice.
 
I would still buy one from PI if they EVER get them out anyways, because this guy made changes to the decals to make them more "symmetrical" and I expect that it's not riveted, etc etc.

I dunno, like I said, I'm just pretty much miffed over the whole situation because I wanted to do this months ago, PP says no, then doesn't even enforce when someone else goes ahead and does it. >=(
 
No-one owes you a cheap price on anything just because you want it. If you think its such a rip-off there is always the route of making your own mold and producing it.
 
I would say if they haven't sent the guy a C&D letter, it's not necessarily an issue. If the license holders know of the situation and do nothing, that is tantamount to approval. It's how copyright law gets weakened. Then again, if this is a copy of the Space Shuttle, who actually owns those rights anyway? This could be a dubious infringement in the first place.
 
I would say if they haven't sent the guy a C&D letter, it's not necessarily an issue. If the license holders know of the situation and do nothing, that is tantamount to approval. It's how copyright law gets weakened. Then again, if this is a copy of the Space Shuttle, who actually owns those rights anyway? This could be a dubious infringement in the first place.


Didn't really consider that side of it, good point. Kind of makes me wonder if perhaps that's why they're not enforcing it. =\

*edit* You'd think that Williams BITD would've had to licence it from the US Govt...they did use the NASA logo at least. ;)
 
Didn't really consider that side of it, good point. Kind of makes me wonder if perhaps that's why they're not enforcing it. =\

*edit* You'd think that Williams BITD would've had to licence it from the US Govt...they did use the NASA logo at least. ;)

They would definitely have had to license it from NASA. You would think, anyway. That makes me wonder how these things work. Would they have a license with NASA that could expire making it impossible to reproduce these parts? I've wondered that about a lot of products.
 
They would definitely have had to license it from NASA. You would think, anyway. That makes me wonder how these things work. Would they have a license with NASA that could expire making it impossible to reproduce these parts? I've wondered that about a lot of products.

When it comes to NASA stuff, and other US Govt stuff, it gets a bit tricky as to licensing and such. A LOT of it is all considered to be public property, so no licensing is necessary. Signal Corps films and photography fall under this, which is why you see the same videos in just about every old war movie.... that's what was declassified and free to use at the time.

But emblems and things like that generally require some kind of licensing, which NASA doesn't do. Notice that the game did NOT have the Nasa blue disk emblem on it, nor did it use the name of an actual shuttle. I don't know how CPR was able to use the Nasa anniversery logo on their special playfields, but I think that having Ed Cheung being an actual NASA employee probably helped. Could also be that Ed is the license holder for that particular image, or it may not be in the 'protected' batch of emblems. The original shuttle toys also said NASA, but it was tweaked to be different from the actual logo at the time which would have created a licensing issue. The horizontal bar in the A's and separated AS made all the difference between being a logo and just a word.

Of course, you could also go straight to the source too
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelines.html

As to the guy making reproduction shuttles..... you'd have to compare to the originals to see if he is making "duplicates" or something that is similar but not identical. Tricky grey area to play in.
 
Cool, good info. :) I appreciate the feedback guys. Like I said..I was the dick here, trying to make a point to the guy. I'll probably apologize, seeing as I think we've determined there's a pretty vast grey area on this one, and cancel the order if he feels like he's really losing money. It wasn't at all about me trying to get it for cheap from him. If he really feels like he's losing money, he's certainly free to keep it and sell it at the price he feels is warranted. I'm not going to buy it for half the price just because he wants to prove the quality of his workmanship to me, lol.

Still not going to pay 70$ for that unless it's legit though. =F
 
Cool, good info. :) I appreciate the feedback guys. Like I said..I was the dick here, trying to make a point to the guy. I'll probably apologize, seeing as I think we've determined there's a pretty vast grey area on this one, and cancel the order if he feels like he's really losing money. It wasn't at all about me trying to get it for cheap from him. If he really feels like he's losing money, he's certainly free to keep it and sell it at the price he feels is warranted. I'm not going to buy it for half the price just because he wants to prove the quality of his workmanship to me, lol.

Still not going to pay 70$ for that unless it's legit though. =F

He's probably not expecting to actually sell them at $60 each, otherwise he wouldn't have the best offer feature running. My guess is that he'll probably take just about any offer, as you found out, and anybody clicking the BIN is just icing on the cake.

Kinda like that guy running the $180,000 auction for a warehouse full of machines. Great advertising for the inventory he does have, but doesn't expect anybody to actually buy it.

-Hans
 
Didn't really consider that side of it, good point. Kind of makes me wonder if perhaps that's why they're not enforcing it. =\

As I understand it, In the 80s, Stern copied Bally's MPU and Bally chose to look the other way (at least for a little while) and not C&D the infringement.
 
I needed a couple parts a few months ago and contacted several companies about them, was told that production was tied up in liscensing. Finally found one place that was making them and got the parts. The way I see it, if they are making the parts, Ill buy the official liscensed parts. If they wont release the liscense, or drag thier feet producing the part, Ill make due with what I can find
 
if i was to make some repro parts, i would hope i could sell some to offset the costs of r+d and production. The idea would be to at least pay for the efforts or mabye even make a little. I could take that money i made and roll it into another repro project, etc.

Kind of like ram controls but with actual product good customer service and no scamming of tens of thousands of dollars lol
 
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