To Al Kossow at bitsavers

In general, probably. But I have seen it said that there are jurisdictions that do not recognize copyrights other than their own, or possibly even do not recognize copyrights at all. I would be surprised if there were not some networking with at least one such, leading to the interesting (in the abstract) question of where the infringement, if any, would occur if someone in such a jurisdiction were to make it available. Personally? I think the rightest way is to eliminiate the legal fiction called "intellectual property", as a good-sounding experiment that has failed. It is not producing the effects it was put in place to produce and it is producing a lot of other, ill, effects. However, it is, to put it mildly, unlikely that will happen; too many of the mechanisms that would have to be convinced have a vested interest in keeping it the way it is. I think the best thing "we" can do here is preserve things in a demonstrably not-directly-usable form. That is, however, difficult; second best is probably to privately keep archive copies, not redistributed, until and unless someone comes forward with a credible claim to being the owner. Quite aside from the other possible projblems with that mentioned upthread, it's possible that the contract with Mentec is such that that's not an option for them. (If HP doesn't have a copy of that contract either, the Right Thing would be for them to negotiate some kind of replacement with XX2247. Unfortunately, I can't see any business case for them to spend the staff time that would involve.) It sucks. But, sometimes, the world loses. :-( /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B