In article ,
arne thormodsen wrote:

| What really annoyed me was it has my call letters on the front page.
| He was too lazy or did not know how to remove it.
|
| Next time try call letters plus "if this is being sold to you by other
| than the owner of these call letters a crime is being committed".

But what crime exactly is being committed?

He may be infringing upon National's copyright on the manual itself
(but the odds are good that National doesn't care -- I certainly have
not asked them), but I don't see how BAMA could have a copyright on
the item too. Merely scanning an item and making a PDF doesn't give
you copyright rights to it, and while you may call it stealing or
piracy (stealing from you) when they download it from your site and
sell it to somebody else, I don't see how the law could agree with
you.

Copyright covers `original works of authorship', according to
http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/fa...l#what_protect.
Merely scanning something created by somebody else hardly makes it an
original work ...

If you want to claim copyright on something you've scanned, perhaps
you should write a poem about ham radio or boat anchors or something,
and put it on the very last page, along with the very clear `Copyright
2005 Bama' (which is not required, but it helps.) So even if the
manual itself falls under somebody else's copyright, your poem is
certainly yours, and you could prosecute for unauthorized reproduction
of that. (Of course, it also makes it easier for somebody to
prosecute YOU for unathorized reproduction of their manuals ...)

As for when exactly things fall into the public domain, this page is
very useful --

http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/public-d.htm

as I understand it, most copyrights were not renewed when they
actually had renewals, so the odds are somewhat good that things
written before 1963 are in the public domain (especially things like
manuals), and anything published before 1923 certainly is.

And no, I'm not a lawyer. And most of this is specific to the US, if
that's not already clear. If you really want to pursue this, I'd
suggest contacting a lawyer familiar with IP law.

| At least the SOB in question will have to do some work for their
| money... ;-)

.... and they probably wouldn't.

--
Doug McLaren,
Programming is an art form that fights back.