Ignoramus7361 wrote:

The US government (military) has published many technical manuals. All
of them are produced with taxpayer money and are in public domain.
Most of those are not secret and are generally available to the
public.

Unfortunately, as they go, many are hard to find and there is a
cottage industry of CDROM sellers and spammy websites that charge
money for PDF copies of those manuals.

Needing one manual or another from time to time, I appreciate how
difficult it has become to find a genuine manual for a free and easy
download.

I would like to change all of this, and offer them all on my website,
completely for free, and provide a BitTorrent download to get them
all, so they could be reposted elsewhere amd become more available to
the general public.

I looked at a few "Sets of manuals on DVDs" that are offered for sale,
and saw the following statement:

``As we are the sole creators, manufacturers and distributors of this
product we hold legal copyright to the product and its
contents. Products are produced in-house using state of the art
duplication techniques and conforms and is in compliance with any and
all policies that may apply regarding the sale of media on recordable
formats and buyers may not reproduce, copy or resell under any
circumstances as materials are watermarked and protected. Some manuals
may not include covers. THE ULTIMATE ARMY TECHNICAL MANUALS DISK SET
IS COPYRIGHTED 1993-2010 WWW.DVD SELLER STORE.COM. NO SALES TO
DEALERS OR SELLERS.''

I would like to know how can they claim to hold "legal copyright" to
documents that are in public domain.

Secondly, if I purchase a set from them, can they rely on contract
theory to prohibit me from reproducing their manuals? As in, could
they say that by purchasing the item, I agreed to their terms, and not
allow me to publish them online?

Thirdly, if the contract theory can be used to prohibit me from
reoffering their content, can I have someone else buy the set, and
then give it to me as a gift, with no strings attached?

Again, I am not looking to resell a DVD set that I purchase from
someone. I intend to distribute those public domain manuals for free
online. Free as in freedom, meaning, anyone is completely free (and
encouraged) to redistribute this content.

I can hire a lawyer if necessary, meaning, just a lawyer letter would
not freak me out.

i

Consult an actual copyright atty.

I believe that in general, the public domain source material CAN NOT be
"re-copyrighted" by a third party. What I believe they can copyright is
their scan / republication of that source material. So if you can get
the source material from an original public domain source, they can not
claim copyright to your version of that material and you may distribute
your version of that material any way you see fit, including releasing
your version as public domain.

A rough parallel to this would be in the music world where music may be
long out of copyright and anyone can produce their own rendition without
paying royalties to the original composer, but those individual new
renditions are copyright by the person/company that produced the new
rendition.

"Pete C." wrote:

Ignoramus7361 wrote:

The US government (military) has published many technical manuals. All
of them are produced with taxpayer money and are in public domain.
Most of those are not secret and are generally available to the
public.

Unfortunately, as they go, many are hard to find and there is a
cottage industry of CDROM sellers and spammy websites that charge
money for PDF copies of those manuals.

Needing one manual or another from time to time, I appreciate how
difficult it has become to find a genuine manual for a free and easy
download.

I would like to change all of this, and offer them all on my website,
completely for free, and provide a BitTorrent download to get them
all, so they could be reposted elsewhere amd become more available to
the general public.

I looked at a few "Sets of manuals on DVDs" that are offered for sale,
and saw the following statement:

``As we are the sole creators, manufacturers and distributors of this
product we hold legal copyright to the product and its
contents. Products are produced in-house using state of the art
duplication techniques and conforms and is in compliance with any and
all policies that may apply regarding the sale of media on recordable
formats and buyers may not reproduce, copy or resell under any
circumstances as materials are watermarked and protected. Some manuals
may not include covers. THE ULTIMATE ARMY TECHNICAL MANUALS DISK SET
IS COPYRIGHTED 1993-2010 WWW.DVD SELLER STORE.COM. NO SALES TO
DEALERS OR SELLERS.''

I would like to know how can they claim to hold "legal copyright" to
documents that are in public domain.

Secondly, if I purchase a set from them, can they rely on contract
theory to prohibit me from reproducing their manuals? As in, could
they say that by purchasing the item, I agreed to their terms, and not
allow me to publish them online?

Thirdly, if the contract theory can be used to prohibit me from
reoffering their content, can I have someone else buy the set, and
then give it to me as a gift, with no strings attached?

Again, I am not looking to resell a DVD set that I purchase from
someone. I intend to distribute those public domain manuals for free
online. Free as in freedom, meaning, anyone is completely free (and
encouraged) to redistribute this content.

I can hire a lawyer if necessary, meaning, just a lawyer letter would
not freak me out.

i

Consult an actual copyright atty.

I believe that in general, the public domain source material CAN NOT be
"re-copyrighted" by a third party. What I believe they can copyright is
their scan / republication of that source material. So if you can get
the source material from an original public domain source, they can not
claim copyright to your version of that material and you may distribute
your version of that material any way you see fit, including releasing
your version as public domain.

A rough parallel to this would be in the music world where music may be
long out of copyright and anyone can produce their own rendition without
paying royalties to the original composer, but those individual new
renditions are copyright by the person/company that produced the new
rendition.

An additional thought:

Given that your goal is to host a public domain library of out of
copyright manuals, and given the apparent false copyright claims of the
CD pushers, it may be worthwhile to spend a modest amount to consult
with a copyright atty. and get a letter from them citing the relevant
copyright law and their position on it's applicability to your manual
library, so you have that letter to forward to any sites that try to
delete your posts, ban you, etc. based on false accusations from one of
the CD purveyors.

On 01/03/2011 08:41 AM, Pete C. wrote:

Ignoramus7361 wrote:

The US government (military) has published many technical manuals. All
of them are produced with taxpayer money and are in public domain.
Most of those are not secret and are generally available to the
public.

Unfortunately, as they go, many are hard to find and there is a
cottage industry of CDROM sellers and spammy websites that charge
money for PDF copies of those manuals.

Needing one manual or another from time to time, I appreciate how
difficult it has become to find a genuine manual for a free and easy
download.

I would like to change all of this, and offer them all on my website,
completely for free, and provide a BitTorrent download to get them
all, so they could be reposted elsewhere amd become more available to
the general public.

I looked at a few "Sets of manuals on DVDs" that are offered for sale,
and saw the following statement:

``As we are the sole creators, manufacturers and distributors of this
product we hold legal copyright to the product and its
contents. Products are produced in-house using state of the art
duplication techniques and conforms and is in compliance with any and
all policies that may apply regarding the sale of media on recordable
formats and buyers may not reproduce, copy or resell under any
circumstances as materials are watermarked and protected. Some manuals
may not include covers. THE ULTIMATE ARMY TECHNICAL MANUALS DISK SET
IS COPYRIGHTED 1993-2010 WWW.DVD SELLER STORE.COM. NO SALES TO
DEALERS OR SELLERS.''

I would like to know how can they claim to hold "legal copyright" to
documents that are in public domain.

Secondly, if I purchase a set from them, can they rely on contract
theory to prohibit me from reproducing their manuals? As in, could
they say that by purchasing the item, I agreed to their terms, and not
allow me to publish them online?

Thirdly, if the contract theory can be used to prohibit me from
reoffering their content, can I have someone else buy the set, and
then give it to me as a gift, with no strings attached?

Again, I am not looking to resell a DVD set that I purchase from
someone. I intend to distribute those public domain manuals for free
online. Free as in freedom, meaning, anyone is completely free (and
encouraged) to redistribute this content.

I can hire a lawyer if necessary, meaning, just a lawyer letter would
not freak me out.

i

Consult an actual copyright atty.

I believe that in general, the public domain source material CAN NOT be
"re-copyrighted" by a third party. What I believe they can copyright is
their scan / republication of that source material. So if you can get
the source material from an original public domain source, they can not
claim copyright to your version of that material and you may distribute
your version of that material any way you see fit, including releasing
your version as public domain.

A rough parallel to this would be in the music world where music may be
long out of copyright and anyone can produce their own rendition without
paying royalties to the original composer, but those individual new
renditions are copyright by the person/company that produced the new
rendition.

What Pete said. In essence, they've copyrighted the pdfs in which the
uncopyrighted material has been put.

Look at it this way: The moon is not copyrighted. Yet if I fill a book
with pictures of the moon I can copyright _those pictures_. You then
cannot copy my book and sell it, but there's nothing preventing you from
taking your _own_ pictures of the moon and selling _that_.

They're doing the same thing, they're just taking pictures of stuff
that's less interesting to the general populace, and more interesting to
you.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Do you need to implement control loops in software?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" was written for you.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html