Selling HD2 on Ebay with Gingerbread installed

[tbdromore]

Hi all.

Over the last number of weeks I have had a nightmare trying to sell my HTC HD2 on ebay with Gingerbread installed on it and this is one of the reasons that ebay pulled the listing:

"Your item was removed because it breached eBay's Prohibited,
Questionable & Infringing Items policy. I can see by looking at your
listing that you are indeed offering software that bypasses the original
software (WM 6.5) and replaces it with android. While this software
maybe freely available on P2P networks online we cannot allow the sale
of this software as it breaches HTC's original software agreement. I can
confirm that all associated listing fees were credited back to your
account."

I contacted HTC and they confirmed that this was not in any way a breach of their terms and conditions of the original software agreement.

I also had put together a guide on how to upgrade an HD2 device to android, but was not selling the software online, and ebay pulled that too saying :
"You may not list unauthorised copies of media on our site because selling them is both illegal and against eBay policy. Unauthorised copies include (but are not limited to) backup, pirated, duplicated, or bootlegged copies of software, video games, music, films, television programs, photographs and books, both published and unpublished."

I obviously am not selling the Android software, but even if I wanted to sell my upgraded HTC HD2 running gingerbread, does anyone out there know of any legal/licensing issue that ebay can prevent this listing taking place? Surely as it is open source, it can be put on any machine and the machine sold on...????

I questioned them about regular pcs that are being sold on ebay, that are not running Windows which was originally supplied and replacing this with Ubuntu, but they have not come back to me.

Many thanks
Trevor (Ireland)

 

[Talderon]

HTC were the wrong people to go too. It did not breech any of THEIR agreements because when they shipped the phone, THEY were in FULL compliance. What you have to do is call GOOGLE and ask them if this is a breech. They will say Yes, but only if you have a ROM that is fully build to their Open Source policies (and stock CM is the only one I know that is). As soon as someone distributes a ROM with apps that have proprietary code without permission (which is any GOOGLE App that is NOT Open Sourced (GMail, Calendar, Maps and all that), then you and the dev are breeching the ULA. Google stopped doing much about this after the HUGE backlash of going after Cyanogen.

In short, eBay is correct. Your HD2 is out of compliance with their Policies. Your guide is also out of compliance as it shows how to modify an existing device to potentially run what is, in essence, pirated software.

Also, if you wrote the guide by yourself, good job and good going to try and sell. If you used anyone else's material, I hope you have permission from them to sell their hard work for a profit.

Thanks.