"Chris" wrote in message
oups.com...

An important point that's being neglected here is that these manuals
are intellectual property which has been copyrighted to make sure the
fruits of that work goes to the owners.

HP should certainly retain the copyright so that (for example) a portion of
one of their manuals couldn't be reproduced in the manual of a competing
product. But HP should be willing to let people distribute HP manuals in
complete unaltered form, because HP benefits thereby.