Re: Unfair use of service manuals
Hi Sam
There have been discussions on this before, but scanning an image from a fragile 80 year old paper document, cleaning it, Creating a PDF and adding it to a website for the vintage radio community to use takes a lot of time. I bet there are not many people who would appreciate it to know that their hard work had been taken against the written wishes of the owner and was being used to make profit to line the sellers own personal pockets.
Copyright is a much misunderstood thing. But my understanding is there is automatic copyright on any original image, book, music, or data file as soon as it is published. Adding the file to the internet is publishing it. Publishing it is often backed up by written conditions on the use of the files, Creative Commons Licence etc. Obviously if there were existing copyright still on the original papers then publishing them on the internet would also be an infringement of the original copyright, and the copyright owners would have the right to insist that they were removed.
Copyright normally lasts for 50 years from the date of original publishing.
It is the accepted norm for anyone who wants to re-publish any image or file to obtain permission before hand. Selling them with out permission is plain abuse.
Paul's CD is excellent value and a great reference for checking on a vast range of radio models. I soon found it wiser to buy the CD rather than paying for individual files.
Mike
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