41 Module Library: Last chance for common sense

[rprosperi]

(07-14-2016 01:50 PM)Accutron Wrote:  Does it? This community has a well-established culture of claiming copyrights on scans of official HP documents and shielding them behind a pay wall, and everybody is complicit. When a new person comes on here and asks, "Does anybody have a copy of X manual?", the universal response is "Buy the DVD." For the record, this is an unenforceable copyright, based on a position known as "sweat-of-the-brow", and it has been consistently shot down in multiple legal precedents.

Flatly refusing to duplicate the ROMs in question is pointlessly selfish for such obsolete material, but it's not unethical. Offering to provide images in exchange for money or physical ROMs is deeply unethical, and is no different than pirating movies and selling the duplicates. As the ROMs in question have no commercial value, selling their image is perhaps a victimless crime, but it's still unethical, no matter how you cut it.

Though I generally agree with all Accutron's latter comments, I will share my view of why I reply with "get the DVD" to these kinds of requests.

1. Supporting purchases may help, in a small way, to offset the costs and time spent by Dave hosting this awesome forum for all of us to exchange info and comments. I would not be surprised if this actually lost money.

2. It cuts down on what would become many, many threads of do you have this or that, based on the whim of the day.

3. Most folks seeking such a document do now, or will, also be seeking others which are also in the same pkg.

I recommend getting the DVD probably as often as any other person, and no one has ever asked or told me to do so, it just seems the best response based on the above.

I've never seen anyone assert any copyright claim for the HP docs, have you? The price one pays is clearly not for any kind of copyright/royalty payment, nor is it described as such.

I've never seen a complaint when someone publishes a link to doc which is included on the DVD. Also, I've never heard anyone complain about someone sharing a file from the DVD, rather I believe folks encourage newcomers to get it in order to benefit from having all the other content.