[Boatanchors] BAMA Manuals on Ebay

Thu May 27 11:48:19 EDT 2004

All true.  Even so, it would be nice to ask as a courtesy.

There are various ways to look at things.  Many still have slow dialup connections and downloading takes forever, and that's probably one of the reasons bama is tied up so long -- or used to be until the mirror site was set up.

It appears there are also a number of CD sellers who got their material from the Army LOGSA site.  The non-restricted manuals (folder "A") are available to the general public, but there's a lot of fine print on the "I Agree" page, so I don't know.

Meanwhile, another seller is including the R-390A "Y2K" manual on his CD.  This was a new piece of work -- I was one of three primary "authors" -- having done the scanning OCR'ing from the last published Navlex manual.  (Pete Wokoun re-created most of the schematics and line drawings, Al Tirevold did the overall Acrobat publishing, and others pitched in with new color photos, proofreading, etc.)

The original version was about 4.3 megs.  The revision exploded into much more with a later version of Acrobat.  As far as I know, the CD guy did not ask any of us.

My personal opinion is that it's OK if the CD or hardcopy manual is provided at a reasonable price considering the time/cost of compiling and producing it -- as well as the alternative.  For example, if someone tries to print a 200 page manual on an ink jet printer, it will probably cost them two or three ink cartridges.  Some of these manual guys do a great job of making reprints on quality paper with nice covers, etc.  CDR blanks are dirt cheap, but there is the original prep work of just gathering and listing all the contents, and there is the wear and tear on the CD burners.  So, something like $5-10 is not unreasonable in my view.

The availability of the reprints and CD's also serves the purpose of reducing bandwidth demand on the popular download sites.  Also, people in some countries pay their ISP's by the bandwidth consumed or still have connect-time charges.  So, it's a worthwhile service and, in some ways, we all benefit.

Since none of us owns the copyrights, that makes us all thieves (heh heh) -- but I suppose what we want here is some "honor among -- ". ;-)

"Hey Joe, is it OK if I glom your Widget 4000 manual file for my CD?"  "OK, George, but only if I can grab off your Frammis 500 skee-matic.  Keep the change."

Barry

Glen wrote:

BAMA does not have a copyright on the manuals!  In
fact, technically, Ken is violating the Copyright Law
of the United States of America by even providing the
service (and yes, I have uploaded a number of manuals
to the site).

Materials are copyrighted now for 95 years (with the
upholding of the Bono Ammendment by the Supreme Court
of the United States last year that extended the
"normal" copyright length from 75 years to 95 years). 
Everything (written, photographic, electronic, etc.)
is automatically copyrighted when it is created and
"registering" the material is NOT required.  All that
does is to make it slightly easier to recover "treble"
damages from those who violate your copyright.

Even if a company "goes under", is sold, etc., someone
still owns the copyrights.  They do not go into public
domain until 1 January of the year following the 95th
year of their creation or publication.

Now, with the exception of Collins Radio (now Rockwell
Collins) none of the amateur radio manufacturers
(either past or present) seems to have objected to
their manuals being reprinted or posted on the
Internet.  Even Heathkit (that is still in business in
St. Joseph, Michigan, at the old site - just isn't
making kits anymore) will still furnish copies of
their old manuals doesn't seem to mind.  Frankly,
those who are reprinting the manuals and those that
are posting them on the Internet seem to be doing the
companies a "service" by making this information
available (the company doesn't have to "bother" with
the old information).

However, at any time, any, or all, of these companies
could put a halt to this dissemination of their old
manuals.  Even if the company went "under", someone
acquired the rights to the copyrights and may have
transferred that ownership many times.  But, the
material is still subject to copyright law and that
means that posting the information on the Internet,
making copies for sale or use by anyone other than
themselves ("fair use" applies in some cases for
individual use) is a violation of copyright law.

Fortunately, for the boat anchor community, most
copyright holders have "overlooked" the blatant misuse
of their copyrighted material.  The exception being
Rockwell Collins who have transferred the right to
post copies of their manuals to the Collins
Collectors' Association.  Those manuals are available
for free from the CCA website so the "spirit" of
making them available is still there.

Unfortunately, several people have been downloading
material from Ken's BAMA website for hours at a time
(that is why he added the mirror site) and are selling
them.  Yes, technically it is illegal to do this. 
But, it is also technically illegal for BAMA to exist
in the first place!

As for myself, I have downloaded manuals that I don't
have originals of to work on equipment belonging to
others.  Since I occasionally do this, I also feel
obligated to upload manuals, especially on some of the
"rarer" equipment (at least in terms of the manuals)
and on common equipment that the manuals are not as
yet available on BAMA.  That is the least I can do to
support this technically illegal, but "winked at"
effort.

Glen, K9STH

--- Kim Herron <kherron at voyager.net> wrote:

Be aware that Mike Green, KQ6MU, is selling copyright
BAMA material on Ebay under the user ID MIKROUNIT.

Could somebody please explain to me why this is such a
big deal??

=====
Glen, K9STH

Web sites

http://home.comcast.net/~k9sth
http://home.comcast.net/~zcomco

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