In article ,
John Smith wrote:

| I NEVER want to copy whole books, I can't see a reason for copying
| whole chapters, seldom would there be a need for whole
| pages--usually short of a page would suffice--this would fall under
| "fair use", if proper credit is give author/material

You stated that most technical docs fall out of copyright quickly. I
asked how you defined quickly, since technical docs don't fall out of
copyright now any faster than anything else. (And they didn't before
either, though it's possible that copyrights were not renewed more
often for technical docs.)

As for facts and ideas, neither are copyrightable. Books are. If you
learn something from a book, the knowledge is yours, not covered by
the copyright by the book. (It may be covered by a patent, or a small
phrase you learn may be trademarked, but that's different.)

| But, make no mistake, I am not here for "hero worship." However, if you
| don't think I have gotten to here without having stood upon the shoulders of
| others--you are mistaken--and I DO NOT make that mistake

What are you talking about? Obviously, all of civilization is based
on what our ancestors learned. If we were each starting out fresh
every generation, we'd be just another animal, and even they pass
knowledge down from generation to generation (like how to hunt, etc.)

But none of this has anything to do with copyrights. I never said you
had or had not violated any copyrights. Fair use is another issue
that I did not touch.

| I am not here to claim other mens knowledge as "original ideas" of my
| own--rather my whole knowledge is composed of bits and pieces of
| others--isn't yours?

The majority of my knowledge is, perhaps. Not all of it. I suspect
you've learned a few things on your own too.

For example, to make this antenna related, I've learned, on my own,
that if your SWR meter is pegging, and your transmitter is only
putting out one watt of power (when it's capable of 100 watts) that
one thing to check is that all your connectors are tight. I'm sure
that somebody figured this out before me, but I did learn it on my
own, as I was trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with my
radio (I'm also lucky I didn't let out any magic smoke, but that's
probably because somebody learned before me that if they don't make
the transmitter back off when the SWR goes high, the magic smoke
escapes and that's best avoided.)

| At this point, it would be impossible to tell what bit or what piece
| has come from who--or when... but I will do the best I can
| here... someway we will find a way for this to work...

I wasn't talking about bits of knowledge. I was talking about books,
or parts of a book, or diagrams, schematics, etc. These are all
covered by copyrights, though many have expired, and smaller parts of
a larger work may be usable under fair use.

As a society, there is some benefit to having things protected by
copyright (and patents, but they're different), as it can help provide
an incentive for people to create things. But I suspect that our
current society has gone too far, with Disney buying extensions from
Congress every few decades, just in time to keep Mickey Mouse from
becoming public domain. I do believe that we've already found a way
to make it work, but the beaurocrats are finding ways to keep it from
working for everybody, and instead keep it working for them.

--
Doug McLaren,
internet, eh? I hear they have that on computers now.