----- Original Message -----
From: "Vintage Computer Festival" <vcf_at_siconic.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 2004 8:58 PM
Subject: RE: 20,046 page doc archive still available
> On Tue, 7 Sep 2004, Ashley Carder wrote:
>
> > I believe that a complaint can be filed against the seller and eBay can
> > shut them down. However, since some of this stuff probably still
belongs
> > to IBM, I would not want someone to attempt to shut down bitsavers
because
> > of this.
>
> Unfortunately, Al really doesn't have any recourse here. First of all, as
> you allude, Al does not own the material. He owns the labor he put into
> scanning it all, as well as the bandwidth that is used to download the
> documents, but those are somewhat intangible. Since Al is not charging
> for the documents (he couldn't anyway since he doesn't own the copyright)
> and is in fact allowing for them to be freely downloaded, he really can't
> prevent people from doing this. If Al tried to sell the documents, or
> otherwise charge for access, he steps into a gray area that could get him
> into a lot of trouble if someone should decide to prosecute (as far as I
> can tell it would be a pretty open and shut case).
>
> The best tool we have is shame. Barry should be shamed for not sharing
> the revenues with Al. The idiot in Israel selling the CD as a regular
> product in his eBay store should be bombarded with hate mail.
>
> --
>
> Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer
Festival
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Since when does money have to change hands for somebody to prosecute you for
having copyrighted material reproduced and distributed? I would get in the
same amount of trouble putting Windows XP on a server for free download as I
would be for making cdr copies and selling them (same for the manuals).
So if its illegal to be offering the copyrighted material in the first
place, why would Al want to share in the profits from this activity in the
first place? The only reason either party gets away with it is because the
products are old and not sold anymore so the manufacturer could care less.
If any of the manuals were current I would bet the owners would be looking
into legal action in both cases.
Received on Tue Sep 07 2004 - 20:36:42 BST