I have many schematics scanned in 300dpi and they are great even for a3 printing. Take a lookk at "esquematico de informatica cce" (google it) as an example... Em 18/08/2015 10:36, "Tothwolf" <tothwolf at concentric.net> escreveu:

On 8/18/15 8:26 AM, Ian McLaughlin wrote: Ask Will Donzelli about the Cyber Resources rescue we did. You'll not get any sympathy for waiting 'til the last day

Just for the record, the Manuals Plus hoard is not, in any way, a bunch of "unique documentation". Test equipment docs are actually very common, and hoards of thousands of manuals are also fairly common. I will try to elaborate on the subject later, but I have had one helluva day...(in a mostly good way)... -- Will

Welcome to the collapse of the manual business. It used to be great! In a way, it was the easiest part of the surplus business - easy to store, easy to sort, easy to ship, easy to copy, easy to sell. Yes, I feel that pain. I certainly have been in similar situations. We can not read the minds of all the parties involved with these sorts of deals, so we do what we can. I just had a recent ham estate cleanout that was similar - a call on Thursday from a friend (the executor) resulted in a cleaned out shop by Sunday. My friend knew it was sort of crappy to give such short notice, but he was only doing what the family wanted. They dillydallied the panicked, basically. I have found that in many of these "last minute" cases, the urgency is just an illusion. The aforementioned Cyber Resources rescue was hurryhurryhurry, but turned out to take months. Often the estates or businesses folding completely understand how long it takes to shut things down. WTF? Why would someone do these things, unless they wanted the building? This I can understand. Low-ballers are everywhere. Most of them are not even serious about finishing the job. It is sort of like some guy that sees a classic car in the junkyard, but has no experience turning a wrench, but figures a low-ball bid might get him in the game. It almost never works out. I applaud you for doing this, and had my last five or six days been so hectic, I probably would have driven down and joined all the fun. I am no stranger to this sort of work. I would offer advice, but I think the time is too late. I applaud you not just for saving the manuals, very much most of which are simply not rare at all, but because you are actually a guy to follow through and do it. I am generally annoyed by the old radio folks (and I am including the test equipment guys in this group, along with just about all the other old electric technology people), as they see that digital archives of tech information is great - they just do all their archiving in a half baked, unorganized way. They just do not see that the Bitsavers model works great. Hell, many of them do not even have mirrors, and probably barely have backups beyond a burned DVD. More than a few has just vanished, left to rot on Geocities or AOL. In closing, I might ask you to consider taking your sweet time getting this stuff online. There are still some manual dealers out there. Let them handle the decline of their business in whatever way they see fit. All of them know it is just a matter of time - probably five years or less. If you flood the net with the free scans, it might really fuck them up. I know some of them, and it is not unreasonable for me to think that they might get really annoyed by your efforts and burn their libraries just for spite. -- Will

On 8/19/2015 11:52 AM, Jason Scott wrote: A counterpoint to this might be to only scan manuals that are requested and can't be found anywhere else (with any reasonable ease). - J.

On Wed, 19 Aug 2015, Sean Caron wrote: At the point when those "obsolescent" businesses have lawyers that can put you in prison and/or take away everything you've ever worked for in the past and will work for in the future. Getting charged/sued is not exactly conducive to preservation either. You're either a threat to their business or not, and unless you have the financial and political connections to defend yourself in court it's in your best interest to know your place.

I'm no lawyer but I'm pretty sure the intellectual property rights of the documentation belong to the original manufacturer of the equipment, not with some random guy selling Xeroxes on eBay or the Web. I suppose it's possible there's the rare case where an individual has actually gone and acquired the rights to the documentation but my suspicion is that 99% of these vendors operate in a legal gray area along with Abandonware vendors ... they have no standing to dictate terms to me ... and many are committing the worse IP violation of not just giving away the material to which they have no rights, but SELLING it. Sorry if I ruffled the feathers of the dealers here, or people who have friends who are dealers ... Daniel, where'd you get your JD? Best, Sean On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 9:39 AM, Paul Koning <paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote:

True. Also irrelvant; those "selling" PDFs are not selling their property, and the ways in which those selling papers manuals are are not relevant to this discussion. Nor does the making or distribution of unauthorized copies constitute stealing. Copyright violation is not theft. (That doesn't make it OK. I just get so sick of people tossing around emotionally loaded words like "theft" and "stealing" when discussing copyright violation I feel it incumbent on me to point out that they are not accurate.) The PDF "sellers" are not selling their property; they are selling right-to-copy. The paper manual sellers _are_ selling their property, the physical artifacts, but the discussion has been about copyright, and they too are not selling their intellectual property, only the instantiation of a copy of it and the accompanying right to that copy. The ubiquity of this sort of confusion, and the logic-chopping necessary for it to make any kind of sense, are among the reasons I think intellectual property is a failed experiment. (That too neither justifies nor excuses ignoring intellectual property law, mind.) /~\ 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

On Thu, 8/20/15, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote: Sure, if one is taking a physical copy without permission (with or without copyright protection) on the high seas. Otherwise, not so much... BLS

Not really. Forgery (at least of items) normally has the idea of using inferior materials or construction and passing it off as an product of another company. For example, if you wrote an 8080 BASIC with lots of bugs, with many functions missing, etc, and then tried to pass it off as the Microsoft BASIC that would be forgery I think. But a copy of the Microsoft product _is_ identical to the genuine article. It is the same bit patterns. Once loaded into your 8080 system memory it works the same way. So IMHO it is not really a forgery. -tony

Maybe, but originally the "copies" were , by example, printed cds with reproduced labels and so on. Weren't those forgeries ? -----Messaggio originale----- Da: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] Per conto di tony duell Inviato: gioved? 20 agosto 2015 21:12 A: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Oggetto: RE: More on manuals plus rescue Not really. Forgery (at least of items) normally has the idea of using inferior materials or construction and passing it off as an product of another company. For example, if you wrote an 8080 BASIC with lots of bugs, with many functions missing, etc, and then tried to pass it off as the Microsoft BASIC that would be forgery I think. But a copy of the Microsoft product _is_ identical to the genuine article. It is the same bit patterns. Once loaded into your 8080 system memory it works the same way. So IMHO it is not really a forgery. -tony =

But in each case, the seller is selling something of value (an object or a right) in exchange for a consideration (such as money). Copyright infringement may not steal the object, but it certainly steals the consideration. paul

(A perhaps better way for me to have phrased that might be, they are selling right-of-access to their (intellectual) property.) Possibly, in some cases - I don't know either industry (either the escort trade or the sex trade) well enough to be competent to comment. But what's your point? It looks to me as though you are trying to draw another analogy between copyright violation (and non-violation, eg, paying for a legitimate PDFed manual) and another industry, a service industry in this case - and, while I'm speculating here, your phrasing sounds to me as though it's trying to invoke disapproval by appealing to a culture in which the sex trade is illegal, or at least sub rosa. Any such analogy is bound to be flawed; if copyright violation were theft (of either property or service), we wouldn't need special intellectual property law. It's a fundamentally different thing and any attempt to shoehorn it into a framework designed for other things is bound to be a bad fit. That's why I speak out against attempts to paint copyright violation as other things, such as theft: it's an appeal to emotions, trying to equate "thing I want people to oppose" with "very different thing I expect people already consider bad". It's a fundamentally dishonest bit of oratory. I don't support copyright violation. But I also don't support attempts to bias people against it by depicting it as something it's not, whether the "something" is theft or selling sex. /~\ 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

On 2015-08-21 20:09, Evan Koblentz wrote: Well, technically I would argue that they are denying you the compensation that you should be entitled to. It's not the same as stealing from you. (Sorry for disagreeing with you, but I think using the correct terms are important.) Stealing implies that you loose something you had possession of. All that said, the action of denying you something that is your by right is also illegal. Johnny

On 8/21/2015 1:50 PM, tony duell wrote: To that last part - a few years back I corresponded via e-mail one of IBM's legal counsel, to see if I could get permission to provide scanned copies of IBM 1410 manuals. (Really, it was pretty amazing that he even took the time to correspond with me). IBM never gave the permission. I got the feeling that the issue was that nobody was willing to sign off internally that IBM could never derive any value from them in the future, even though clearly they never would. The problem was really cultural / organizational - there really was never any question about any real issues for them. And yet I am pretty sure those involved with bitsavers are reasonably confident that IBM would never sue them. ;) Or, if IBM did, that the damages, after worst case tripling, would be something under $0.03, ala Queens Bench VII. ;) ;) JRJ

In these times where income inequality in the USA is the worst it's been since the Gilded Age, I think a little bit of perspective is best used when dropping the term "meager income". If you've got pocket money for computer collecting, I don't think you get to make that claim. Best, Sean On Fri, Aug 21, 2015 at 3:36 PM, geneb <geneb at deltasoft.com> wrote:

On Fri, 21 Aug 2015, Mouse wrote: I'm confused on some of the terminology. I don't think that I'm alone. A friend of mine was in law school before he'd believe me that "burglary" and "robbery" were not fully synonymous. So, "steal", "theft"? require a component of having already gotten possession? Somebody who takes your packages off of the Fedex or USPS truck is not "steal"ing from you? If your publisher promises you $10 for every copy, then somebody who cancels their order to make their own unauthorized copy did not "steal" your $10? Howabout somebody who buys COD and stops payment? (apparently habitually) I had a college administrator cancel PO for "non-delivery" AFTER calling for installation tech support. But, after months of hauling six truckloads a day of apples that we bought for $0.90 a pound at the orchard to the neighborhood where we sold them for $0.90 a pound, we realized that we needed a bigger truck. Is "theft of service" valid under the law? Is "Intellectual Property" an oxymoron? It is too bad, when "SHOULD" and "LEGAL" are orthogonal. I have had software that I was not legally entitled to, but also I have dealt with infringement of my trademark, and with unauthorized distribution of my copyrighted materials. I haven't patented anything. Somebody suggested that failure to curtail infringement be considered defacto abandonment - I have to disagree, sometimes it's just not reasonable to make the effort. Somebody said that old software should be very cheap. And should be reduced in price proportionately to the reduced retail value of the hardware. Sure. Does that mean that the Altair BASIC or Apple 1 BRICKOUT should now be inordinately expensive? And labor costs have not gone down. (See our apple sales business model) Bob Wallace once explained to me that it seemed that public "perceived value" (what they sent in when wanting to pay for what they had acquired through copying) was consistently based on Marginal Cost Of Production, without a component of development costs. By contracting for the "help" of publishers, I have had some projects that were a lot of work but didn't recoup expenses.

On Sat, 22 Aug 2015, Johnny Billquist wrote: Just an example that most of the public do NOT know most of the terms. Thank you. THAT is the key element then. OK both. The component of "prior possesion" V "entitled to" clarifies that. Understood mostly, but also in the context of where we are facing it. I appreciate your clarification of the "theft" term. That summarizes it well. Thank you for the detailed reply. It is nice to be able to discuss these things without heavy emotions and/or self-serving rationalizations. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

Well, the Altos ACS-8000-2 power supply is all back together and working again, in reasonable health. And, as I posted a few days back, I swapped out the bearings. Unfortunately, that does not seem to have helped. Now that the problem child is the second drive, though, I was able to put a floppy in, format it, and test it without removing it. When I do that, everything is fine for multiple consecutive tests, which means that the drive electronics, head and so on are fine. The problem does indeed have to be mechanical. I do note that the problems do tend to occur more on the inner tracks, so it is possible that there is wear on the positioner lead screw, I suppose. Now that this drive is the second drive, its electronics are more accessible. So, tomorrow I plan to measure the "wobble" on various tracks during multiple insertions, using a floppy that was only ever written on the good drive (which has never had a problem with floppies inserted later after formatting). I can also try my Siemens FDD 100-8 which has been reliable forever. (Eventually I'll get back to that spare SA-801 that took out the power supply in the first place to see where the problem is. If it is in its electronics, then I might simply meld the two drives into one.) One other thing I have noticed is that sometimes after a read problem on the bad drive the FD 1791 floppy controller chip seems to get into a "snit" that even a reset does not cure - I have to cycle power to get it back. Now that I have a reliable drive as the first drive, it is clear that this is not a reinsertion / wobble issue. So, I will have to check the reset line going to that and the PIO chip that supports it to see if there is a problem on the board. I also have some spare FD 1791's I can try, that are of a slightly later revision, to see if the problem is related to that specific chip. JRJ

On 8/22/2015 12:20 AM, Chuck Guzis wrote: Yes, my thought as well.

No, you're not. I wrote it. You quoted it, with line breaks removed. Anyone who is confused here is invited to go back and consult Message-ID: <55D7694F.6040007 at snarc.net> - and the other list mail including my "That's why I speak out against attempts to..." text. /~\ 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

Yes, let the guys keep selling the higher demand documents - HP, Tek, Heathkit. Nearly all of those are super common anyway (and plus, you will run into problems posting Heath material). Focus on the weirder stuff - Krohn-Hite, Systron Donner, Clough-Brengle, Packard Instrument, Kay, and the like. In fact, due to your time constraints, I would not bother with the HP, Tek, or Heathkit manuals at all. They can wait for the next hoard. They are low value targets eating up your limited resources. And for some really-too-late advice: skip the boxes. Use gaylords. You will perhaps double your efficiency. Halfway through my Radio Research cleanout, I came across some gaylords, and they let me build them up and use them. Sooo much better. Manuals actually stack very nicely in them. -- Will

On Wed, 19 Aug 2015, Tothwolf wrote: I just found this on https://www.heathkit.com/heathkit-faq.html which confirms that despite his Big Scary Letters and legal threats, Don Peterson -did not- hold the copyrights to Heathkit manuals: Q. I read on the Internet that someone else owns the copyrights to Heathkit manuals. A. No, not correct. Heathkit has in the past given a contractual license to certain specific parties granting a limited right to reprint and sell paper copies of specific Heathkit manuals, to better serve valued Heathkit customers on those special occasions when you spill coffee on your original kit manual. Such reprinting agreements are designed to outsource Heathkit's reprinting operations to small companies who can provide replacement manuals cost-effectively but do not convey Heathkit's intellectual property, only permission to reprint authorized paper photocopies. All Heathkit copyrights remain with Heathkit. Q. So Heath Company owns all Heathkit copyrights? A. Yes. All Heathkit copyrights, and all Heathkit intellectual property, are property of Heath Company.

Years ago I needed a HP service manual for a plotter I was trying to repair that I owned. HP of course wouldn't let me have it, so I had to buy a PDF copy from someone on eBay. I ended up removing the password and posting it on my website. I think it's been up there for 10+ years now with tons of downloads. I wish companies like Sony would allow access to their repair materials. :-( The more of it turned free, the better. Sorry it's not our fault the internet has made manual selling irrelevant like public libraries. -- Ethan O'Toole

The person I had to buy the CD from off of ebay wasn't authorized to sell it. They're "authorized service center employees" (often times in Russia) that have access to special web portals of all the service documents. They then sell them. *Shrug* I bought the manual and freed it. Then bought the belt from HP by part number, which is all I needed from the manual in the first place. I don't see it as that dire. If I were the law, I'd make it so the service manual has to be included with every product!

In the general case both of the parties involved are breaking copyright law, and the injured party is whoever holds the copyright (which isn't likely to be the seller or the buyer in this case). In this specific case though, as it's an HP manual, if it's one of the ones that went with Agilent (now Keysight) then they seem to have an enlightened attitude and make their old manuals available and also point to a whole bunch of other places that do the same. So they may well be OK with someone making a manual available ... although I don't see any explicit evidence that they'd be OK with someone *selling* a PDF of one of their historic manuals. Antonio On 21 August 2015 at 16:18, Evan Koblentz <evan at snarc.net> wrote: > > That's called "stealing". >>> >> >> The person I had to buy the CD from off of ebay wasn't authorized to sell >> it. >> > > > > and freed it >> > > "Freed" is a euphemism. > > I'm not saying you should be in federal lock-up with Jared from Subway. > :) But don't pretend to not understand that what you did is illegal. >

That's odd, as long as I can remember, Lucent/Avaya distributed the manuals at least for their PBX and key products pretty openly; Nortel tried to keep them more closely held but eventually relented, too. Carrier-grade stuff (i.e. 5ESS and SL-100/DMS-100) was always another story, of course. I don't recall ever having any issues getting needed documentation when bringing my Definity up and that was circa maybe 2008? Of course, the Definity is so easy to figure out, you hardly need a manual ... Definitely need them on the Meridian though :O Best, Sean On Fri, Aug 21, 2015 at 11:50 AM, <ethan at 757.org> wrote:

As a musician sometimes the bar pays the ASCAP fees sometimes they don't but at least there is a way to compensate the song copyright owner when a band plays a cover song on stage at a bar. I wonder if some sort of ASCAP for out of print manuals could work....this way owners could register their manuals and make it public where to send fees AND the fees would be low enough that people would not mind paying them. This puts some responsibility on the manual owner to make their claim I suppose. Then you have international vs. domestic copyright, etc. This thread comes up every so often, nothing changes though. b On Fri, Aug 21, 2015 at 11:18 AM, Evan Koblentz <evan at snarc.net> wrote: -- Bill vintagecomputer.net

Perhaps, but the eBay vendor also stole the manual from HP in the first place, as well as the profit generated in selling the copy. I don't think they have a lot of moral high ground ... Best, Sean On Fri, Aug 21, 2015 at 10:57 AM, Evan Koblentz <evan at snarc.net> wrote:

If you have some equipment surely it would reasonable to have the manuals for it. How the manuals are obtained is open to debate but not if you have the right to own them. Rod On 21/08/2015 17:00, geneb wrote:

Excellent! EEC (Europe) is 70 years from the death of a known author or 70 years from publication if the author is unknown On 21/08/2015 18:19, tony duell wrote:

On 21 August 2015 at 14:08, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote: They might have been familiar with a different arrangement of the hymn tune; though no one really knows what was played during the sinking of the Titanic. You want fun with music copyrights? Please go look at the IMSLP project. Here's their page on how copyrights work with regards to the sheet music/scores they are archiving: <http://imslp.org/wiki/Public_domain> 2026 is when IMSLP will allow you to start uploading works by Shostakovitch to their archive. (Canadian servers only! The US and EU need to wait.) Regards, Christian -- Christian M. Gauger-Cosgrove STCKON08DS0 Contact information available upon request.

On 08/21/2015 01:49 PM, Christian Gauger-Cosgrove wrote: I'm very, very familiar with IMSLP as well as various other collections. I confess to have used a Canadian proxy server to get at some of the (non-PD, PD-Canada) scores for inspection. Dover, at one time, had quite a collection of Shostakovitch published--and then subsequently withdrew all of it when the copyrights were restored. The shame of it all is that this business extended to works for study that had been PD for several decades. My own collection, for example, includes scores for Shosti Symphonies 1-15. Can't arrange the stuff; can't republish it or duplicate it and probably not perform it without a "by your leave" from the estate (is Dmitry's widow still alive?). Sometimes, this business can get in the way, but you're stuck. For example, you'd think that the hymns of the US Armed Services would be all in the public domain. Not so! "Semper Paratus" for the USCG is used by them only by permission. The estate holding the rights firmly refuses to grant permission for arrangement. You want to see copyright and hungry lawyers? Cast a glance toward the music biz. --Chuck

Err .... carry on, then. :)

There are always exceptions. Anyway, http://www.ebay.com/itm/Agilent-HP-Keysight-05480-90013-5480A-5480B-Service… Is that a different instrument? Did HP/Agilent reuse numbers? -- Will

On Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 11:33 PM, Brent Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> wrote: They reuse numbers for what I call "marketing numbers". For example, with a LaserJet 8150dn, the "8150" is a "marketing number" and not the actual HP product number, which was C4267A. As far as I know they've never actually reused a product number. I know that's no consolation when you search for "HP 5480" for that product, and get printers or supplies with that "marketing number" instead.

I get irritated when I search for HP9100 (meaning the first desktop scientific calculator thing) and get hits for some modern-ish printer/scanner. Admittedly that is a 9100C (the calculators were 9100A and 9100B), but... I seem to remember that there are at least 5 different HP10 calculators : HP9810 (which was called the 'Model 10 Calculator') HP10 (or HP10A) : A simple handheld adding machine with printer HP10C : The simplest of the 'Voyager' series. Scientific, programable HP10B : A simple financial machine HP10B-II : An upgraded HP10B -tony

On Thu, 20 Aug 2015, Jay Jaeger wrote: With eBay, you can also group them: -(printer,scanner) It only helps a little though and when eBay eliminated wildcard matching awhile back, they also reduced the maximum query length. What I /really/ don't like about eBay's current search system, is how it substitutes keywords internally. If I search for "Compaq", I don't want results for "HP", and likewise if I search for "HP", I don't want results for "Compaq"...

On Wed, 19 Aug 2015, Jason Scott wrote: I have to disagree strongly with Will on this. There are quite a few "PDF manual dealers" who honestly deserve to go out of business. Those "dealers" tend to fall into two categories: First, the large number who have built their PDF libraries from collecting everything they can find online. Quite often they'll take the work of hobbyists and simply watermark / lock (encrypt) the PDF file then offer it for sale. Some of these "dealers" have websites, while others just try to hock their wares on eBay and other ecommerce platforms. Second, those that threaten others when they find a PDF manual online which competes with their offerings. Some of them will file bogus DMCA takedowns even though they are not the copyright holder. Some of these "dealers" try to assert that because they scanned a manual (...or claim to have scanned it), that /they/ then hold the exclusive copyright to the PDF version of that manual. Copyright just doesn't work like that though...the original copyright holder /still/ holds the copyright, no matter if someone scans it to a PDF or makes a xerox copy. Under US copyright law, they cannot even make a "sweat of the brow" argument as that is not an accepted legal argument under US copyright law. 17 U.S. Code ? 103 - Subject matter of copyright: Compilations and derivative works "(b) The copyright in by the author of such work, as distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the preexisting material. The copyright in such work is independent of, and does not affect or enlarge the scope, duration, ownership, or subsistence of, any copyright protection in the preexisting material." https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/103 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow

On 08/19/2015 06:50 PM, William Donzelli wrote: Well, you can, but the OCR process has one heck of a job - whether you use grayscale or not...

On Wed, 19 Aug 2015, Sean Caron wrote: According to Becky at Manuals Plus, these companies that have taken to selling people scans of manuals, combined with all the other freely available online manuals played a large part in them shutting down. Tektronix also issued a public statement giving permission for people to freely duplicate and distribute their older test equipment manuals not all that long ago, and that can't have helped either. The way I look at it, the companies that took to selling people PDF copies of manuals they've collected and then tried to lock up have had it coming, and some of them have been due such a blow for a long time now. I'm starting to look at this much like what happened with Netscape vs Microsoft Internet Explorer. Microsoft might have more or less killed off Netscape, but in releasing the source code which became Mozilla Firefox, they seriously damaged Microsoft's market share later.

Also, if you are dealing with somebody so childish that they would destroy their manuals just because somebody has set up in competition to them (which after all is all a free download service is), then when the inevitable happens and they do go bankrupt (with or without the stuff from Manuals Plus going on line) do you really think they will hand their stock over to hobbyists (who they might feel contributed to their downfall anyway)? -tony

On 20 August 2015 at 01:50, William Donzelli <wdonzelli at gmail.com> wrote: Not yet. But the tech is getting closer... From automatically reassembling the Stasi's shredded files: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19344978 http://archive.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/16-02/ff_stasi?currentP… http://www.bstu.bund.de/EN/Archives/ReconstructionOfShreddedRecords/Virtual… ... to reading burned 2000YO scrolls from Pompeii: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30888767 -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Cell/Mobiles: +44 7939-087884 (UK) ? +420 702 829 053 (?R)

On Wed, 19 Aug 2015, Paul Koning wrote: The ORIGINAL is in the public domain, and he would have no rights to restrict anybody else from scanning and distributing the original. HOWEVER, even the flimsiest claims of enhancement could enable a copyright claim for a "derivative work", and protect copies of HIS scans. Project Gutenberg ran into that in their early days. They thought that they could scan modern printings of public domain literature, and distribute those as images. But, although the WORDS are public domain, by dint of their typography, the modern printers have claim to those images. Whether you could OCR a modern printing to get back to the original [public domain] text now might run afoul of DMCA, but not any rational copyright law. Derivative work copyright will, of course, not stand up if the original was copyrighted and original copyright holder makes a claim of infringement. and, of course, there are those who claim "abandonware" as if it were a legal process. "I couldn't find the author" (not in top 5 hits on Google?), "therefore it is no longer subject to copyright". Expiration now takes a long time. Walnut Creek CD-ROM had to recall a bunch of discs, when they found out that Edgar Allen Poe's estate still had a valid copyright claim to some works. There have even been incidents where people have altered/removed copyright notices in order to try to claim that an object was public domain based on their having received a copy without [surviving] copyright notice. And there are arguments to this day about just how retroactive the Berne Convention is/was/should be. It relaxed the requirements on copyright notices. One of the aspects that Intel lost in the Intel V NEC trials had to do with procedural issues on copyright NOTICES.

On Wed, 19 Aug 2015, William Donzelli wrote: Actually, their collection was unique and contained a lot of material which others' libraries (either dead tree or digital) do not contain. This year, I purchased many one of a kind manuals from Manuals Plus for equipment ranging from the 1940s to 1980s that I've had sitting around for 10-15+ years. No one else had those manuals, period.

On Tue, 18 Aug 2015, Al Kossow wrote: Bullshit. His mirror has zero effect on your original site or organization. g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!

Ummm. Okay, *assuming* you?re right. You?re upset that the proprietary manuals that you?ve assumed that the original authors have abandoned (but are still technically under copyright, therefore technically illegal to distribute) that you put up on a web site for everyone to benefit from are now being grabbed from another site on the internet? But people are still benefitting from them. But they?re not going to Bitsavers to get them? What?s the problem? Are Bitsavers making a profit from the distribution? Is Bitsavers about preserving human knowledge, or is it about inflating the egos of the archivers? Ian

Are we going to do this here? I guess we're going to do this here. So, the way that I found out there was any issue at all happening between Al and myself was that a particular high spectrum colleague of mine happened to buffer a chat box in which Al insulted me. To say that I was floored and shocked and sad wouldn't begin to explain it. Al is a hero of mine, a true hero, someone who impresses me with both the breadth and focus of the work he has done over the years. Well I knew that this colleague of mine had crossed the line in bringing what had been thought of as an ethereal conversation to my attention, I definitely couldn't let it drop. I wrote to Al asking what the source of his dislike or distrust of me was, and what I could possibly do to make amends or at least reach a neutrality. Perhaps not surprisingly, he has never written back. Subsequently, it has apparently taken this mailing list to read and understand what exactly the scope of the issue is. If the core problem is that the structure of bitsavers is not being honored, it was a simple matter of a couple of nights and a few hundred keystrokes to bring it in order. As it is, a script is what brings new items on to the archive. I did some basic separating by vendor, but again, it would be trivial to do it according to whatever directory structure would be wanted. It would also be trivial to do backlinks in every item, if you are concerned about falling back in Google or other search engines. This sort of problem is a speed bump in the road to progress. The fact that I have to hear about it in detail, couched in insults, on this mailing list, perhaps strikes to the core of the problem. I can only imagine how many people would be disappointed to hear that collaboration between the Computer History Museum the Internet Archive is being held up by a misunderstanding about the mirroring of files between two locations. Al, for all my flaws of personality which I am more than happy to own, you have gained a reputation of being a brilliant man with skills and passion and a propensity to hold feuds that never end. Why do you do this? Why waste that energy, quietly seething over things that could be fixed? I'm not asking to be your friend, or someone you even respect. But at the least we can work together towards the many many common goals we share. My mailbox, phone and arms are always open, Al. Please help me to make this disagreement right, and help me to work to achieve the same goals as you are, even if my methods are unorthodox or strange. On Aug 18, 2015 12:09 PM, "Al Kossow" <aek at bitsavers.org> wrote: