India Broadband Forum

just4kix

This is an incident that happened to me.

I had purchased my O2 XDA IIi in UK in 2005. I purchased it for £259.99 with a one year plan with O2 (£19.99 per month).

Before returning back to India, I had used it for nearly a year (10 months) in UK and as per the contract plan I had fulfilled the one year minimum connectivity plan (paid the balance for the unused months). So legally the device belonged to me now and I was now free to choose any provider. Since I wanted to use it in India, I wanted to get it unlocked. O2 flatly refused. So I paid £20 to get it unlocked.

After another year of use, I lost both my stylii and I wanted to purchase one. I checked with the O2 online shop in India. Do you know what they said? They told me, "since your device was not sold in India, we do not service it". I told them, "I wanted to buy stylii. I am not asking you to service my device. And by the way, if my device develops a fault, are you telling me that I should find the nearest trash can?"

And they said, "Asking for spares is also a service. And the answer to Q2 is also, yes. For any service, I must get back to UK". I mean "WHAT THE F**K?".

Lesson number 1: Forget any guarantee/warantee. It ceased to exist in as soon as you cross the border.
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Yesterday, I was reading the "Living Digital" magazine. The editorial ran this story (I forgot the exact words). The gyst is like this:

There is a guy in New Delhi. He believes in original stuff. He purchased a Sony PSP. Never modded it, never loaded pirated games, never did anything wrong. One day, the PSP stopped working.

He went to the Sony shop and they asked for the warranty card. He told them that it was out of warranty and he is ready to pay for the repairs. They told him get the original receipt. He said that he does not have it. So they told him, get a duplicate. This guy was really angry now. He said, 'when I am ready to pay for service, why can't you service it? Can't you locate from the serial number whether the device is genuine or not?'. They said they can't and refused any further help.

So this guy went to Palika Bazaar. He got the job done in a few hundred rupees. He got it modded also. He purchased a few games for Rs. 50 each. Now he is proudly declaring, 'Sony made me a pirate'!

(As it so happens, the guy discovered later that the shop where he purchased the device closed down and he could not have procured the duplicate even if he wanted to).

Lesson 2: You are good as long as you have documents. Big companies have no right to complain about piracy.

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Your thoughts please .

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mickey

its a bad experience for you and a lesson for us...

The same happend to me last year, i told a friend of mine(who was onsite) to buy a Sony cam from USA($540/- if i remember correctly)
later on i found that there were some voltage irrelevance, so i went to Sony ppl here in Haldwani Uttarakhand.. they told me to leave this to them, so they can send it to someone called Sony repair centre. i disqualified his suggestion. than i went to Boston for the evil and there i shown those guys what alteration was required, they did it,.yet charged me $70/- for this f***. since my 540 american bucks were on hold, i had to take this step...

panchabhut

@j4k
Seems like your views on the subject of piracy is changing.

mickey

@panchu...

i never ever like anti piracy laws....

most of irc/web/ftp pirates are someway sitting in USA.. piracy rules are just to acknoledge that whatever you have with you is American..

@panchu...

i never ever like anti piracy laws....

most of irc/web/ftp pirates are someway sitting in USA.. piracy rules are just to acknoledge that whatever you have with you is American..

just4kix

My views for the small people (those who write shareware) is unchanged. I still support genuine.

And my views about buying genuine DVD is purely selfish. I don't really care about the big studios - I think I mentioned this somewhere. I buy genuine DVDs because I cannot compromise on quality. What is the point of having a 2 Lakh plus Home theatre and buy cheap/fake DVDs?

mickey

LOLG..you rock... but its correcto,,,...

newprouser

I'm still wondering what happened to Admin's fridge (Whirlpool fridge) !

mickey

^^npu SPAMMer king :lol;

Admin

Court has ordered Whirlpool to pay me Rs7000 as compensation and refund the money I paid and take their fridge back... I am yet to hear from whirlpool ... probbably need to file a recovery suit as well to get the money out of these bloodsuckers.

mickey

^i thought admin was offline...

so what will you do next??

newprouser

and when was this order given ?

panchabhut

@ j4k
after moserbaer entered market, there's no point in downloading movies or buying fake DVDs.

@admin
congrats for the order.

just4kix

So let me again share my thoughts on the argument by big studios. They say:

When you buy pirated or download illegally, you are denying the fare share of royalties to the producers, artists, workforce, etc. You are also making us keep the cost high, etc.

Sheer nonsense. The price of a new DVD in US is $20. The cost of the DVD including marketing and royalty is never more than $5. The cost of manufacturing is a mere $1. The rest goes towards the profit of the studios. Some of it is distributed to shareholders as dividend (if there are any).

Do they share their profits with the artists, workmen, back room boys, etc.? A mule will be smarter than you, if you do. A very few top notch actors demand a premium by asking for a share of the profits also. But apart from that everything is pocketed by the studio.

I have seen prices of DVD's as follows:

Brand new launch till 3-5 months: $19.99 to $24.99
After six months: $15 to @18
After nine months: $12 to $15
After a year: $10 to $13
After two years: $5 to $10

How is the price drop possible, if royalties are to be paid as before? You rarely see cost of a book go down like this.

As I said, I like to possess the original. Pure and simple. Too hoots about the studio but too bad that some of my money goes to feed the studios.

mickey

@punchu,..moser baer movies costs Rs.40/- or more..

i think most of the ppl in India dont even wanna invest even this money for a movie or two,,

most of fakies are avlble at Rs.10- 15/- each nowadays..

just4kix

Saw this post later (after the above post). Check out the third link in my signature.

mickey

Yeah, i confess J4K is smart..

you know Abhijeet once said, he will like people to download music rather than buying cds,,, (he clearly meant about royalty shares,) but irony no studios taking him now..

newprouser

@ J4K

Piracy is generally related to s/w, so why this thread title ? when i saw the title i assumed it was about movies or software.

just4kix

@npu, anything that is illegally downloaded, sold, purchased, etc. is piracy/theft.

When I paid 20 bucks to unlock my phone, that is also piracy.

Logik

hey kix, welcome aboard (offcourse to pirates side)

remember i told u once (long back in 2k8, when i was new here)........i support piracy at extremely personal level.

u wanna toss me that post??

just4kix

Hmm. I am not saying that I support piracy. And I will still have to lock/delete any thread that discusses warez. And I will continue to buy genuine.

All I am saying is that big corp's stop being so noble and high about this. They release movies in 4000+ cinema's. They recover the money in the first week itself and make huge profits in the first four weeks. So when the DVD is released, they should keep it cheap.

(Some may argue that not all movies make money. Yes. Too bad. No one or not many will buy those DVDs anyway).

Same goes for software too. It is easy for MS to sell Windows for $50 retail and still make money. They sell that to OEMs at that price anyway. So why are retail customers penalized?