Joe wrote:
>
> At 09:23 PM 5/29/98 -0500, you wrote:
> >On Fri, 29 May 1998, Shawn Rutledge wrote:
> >
> >> FWIW, the company that currently sells Heathkit manual reprints doesn't
> >> look too kindly on people publishing web manuals from what I've heard.
> >> I'd sure like to publish my stash too if I could do so without getting
> sued.
> >
> >Hmm, I know that any patents associated with the EC-1 have expired by
> >now, but I don't recall how long a copyright lasts (more than 38 years, I
> >suspect).
>
> Yes, but are they still valid if the owner is out of business? I know
> the HK manuals are WIDELY copied and the copies sold. So are Tektronix, HP
> and a lot of others, and they're still in business!
>
It depends, copyright law now extends to something like 60 years past
the author's death, and of course corporations never _die_, they are
bought up by others who abandon the product and deny that it ever
existed -- witness VisiCalc by Personal Software renamed VisiCorp then
buried by Lotus when they bought VisiCorp, nowadays Lotus is owned by
IBM (makers of my beloved RS/6000 line) and who knows whether or not
IBM will pursue a copyright violation there?, since the machines that
ran VisiCalc are (mostly) long dead. Case law seems to be vague and/or
variable -- since when the copyright laws were last (poorly, from the
point of view of a libertarian) rewritten, software for anybody except
large businesses or governments was not a factor. My personal opinion
is to copy the stuff and wait for the writer to object -- copyright
applies to the creator of the product and used to end at death -- the
families of politicians who'd written memoirs caused the first extension
of the time limit, it being a time when politician weren't automatically
rich when elected.
--
Ward Griffiths
They say that politics makes strange bedfellows.
Of course, the main reason they cuddle up is to screw somebody else.
Michael Flynn, _Rogue Star_
Received on Fri May 29 1998 - 23:04:08 BST