Winfield Hill wrote...

keith wrote...

On Thu, 28 Apr 2005 21:06:45 -0400, mc wrote:

How does free distribution of *obsolete* manuals work against "encouraging
creativity"?

We are not attacking the concept of copyright. Many of us are saying HP
would benefit from allowing free redistribution on the Web of old manuals
for equipment that they no longer sell.

In fact you are attacking the concept of copyright. Aligent owns the
copyright and has the last say. It seems that they _have_ reversed their
position, so maybe your whining did help. ;-)

I beg to differ, we did not attack Agilent's legal right to restrict the
manual information if they chose, we attacked Agilent's apparent choice
to do so. It now appears they did no more than (roughly) assert their
right to grant permission after it's sought, which we do not question.
But we do argue that it would have been unreasonable, counterproductive,
mean-minded and unfair to deprive the legitimate owners of their older
instruments the right to fully run and maintain those instruments, if
they were unfortunate enough not to own one of the rare original manuals.

I should add, that at this point, after the dust has settled, it does
not appear Agilent is in fact overly restricting the copying of their
old manuals (despite the language of their lawyer's take-down letter),
because they do grant permission when it's sought, including a type of
blanket permission, and also even including the right to charge for the
service, AFAICT. BTW, I received an email from the (former) co-leader
of HP's company-wide committee handling this issue, and this was their
economically-derived carefully-thought-out company policy six years ago,
and it would still appear to be, unless we learn otherwise.

So, it all appears to be a non-issue. Move along, nothing to see here.


--
Thanks,
- Win