[Heathkit] IP-17 Manual

[Van K7VS]

Hi Danny.   Well, I understand as you do.  Selling original manuals is just fine.  It’s the selling of copies of the manuals as several sites are doing.  Obviously, “manualman” was simply attempting to let people know he has heathkit manuals for sale with his cute little note on the reflector about the quick sale.  It sorta steamed me a bit.  No, haven’t heard a peep from anyone including the fellows selling Heathkit manual copies to the public.  I would be surprised if I do.  They know they are doing it illegally.   I know Don went after the copywrite and spent many thousands of dollars to acquire the rights.  And that several respectable resellers and the Bama site in good faith dropped Heathkit manual availability.

As an aside,  I met Don about ten-twelve years ago at least,  while tracking down some problems in a Heath Weather Station I had purchased and at which time he had managed to find a programmable IC, get it programmed to replace the primary chip that powered the wx stn and that no longer was available thus minimally saving one generation of popular weather stations.  He also added rs-232 capabilities to the one I was using at the time and we became sort of friendly.  I mentioned along the line that I had around one hundred fifty or so original Heathkit manuals (which I still have!) as he was selling copies then.  I  noticed that I had many which he didn’t have and sent him the ones I had for his copying purposes.  Which he added to his “inventory.”  As time went along and as I increased my collection of Heath gear he would provide me with free copies of anything I needed and continue to mentor me when it came to my weather stations.  He sells a lot of parts for the weather stations and seem like that is his primary interest.  I know he was concerned with all the Heath buyouts over the years that the manuals would disappear into a dumpster somewhere and probably thought he could make a few bucks to supplement his hobby.  Who knows.  By the way, he worked as a newly minted  electrical engineer right out of college for Heathkit at Benton Harbor in their design department.  So he has a strong connection to Heath.

Van         

From: W3ZF 
Sent: Friday, December 09, 2011 10:28 AM
To: wa7fab at cdsnet.net 
Subject: Re: [Heathkit] IP-17 Manual

Van, might you have received a private response to your question to Manualman?  

Obviously, selling ACTUAL original manuals is not an issue here, right?  It's COPIES of manuals that aren't saleable under this copyright.

Although this topic leaves a sour taste in most ham's mouth, I can't get over how bold/blatantly some hams have been in their reckless disregard of this relatively recent development regarding the acquisition of the Heath manual copyright.
As much as I may not like it, it was acquired by d8pro quite legitimately and I feel, as a fellow ham,  it should be respected.

Danny  W3ZF





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