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Modeling in General
General discussions about modeling topics.
Unless you have permission. . .
JackFlash
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Posted: Sunday, November 29, 2009 - 05:03 PM UTC
Please , please be cautious about downloading materials that have copyrights. I found a site that is offering free downloads of Datafiles and no matter how well meaning the owner is, it is illegal. This is a hobby and if you need casual or specific information websites are fine. BUT pirated copies of copyrighted materials will only get you in a jamb.

When I review kits I always send the manufacturer a head's up. Most of the time just being courteous avoids problems. But pirated copies of monographs or images that have copyrights is a bad idea in any situation. If we frequent these sites it only encourages online theft.

Please understand I am only trying to give the membership a head's up here.
MCR
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Arizona, United States
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Posted: Monday, November 30, 2009 - 06:44 AM UTC
Well, unless you know as fact that copyrighted material is being used without permission you'd be hard pressed to legitimately criticize any given site or blog. Sure, there are any number out there who make entire books available on-line without the knowledge of the publishers or authors but there are also many that do so legitimately. I personally haven't made use of either (I'm old fashioned and like hard copies) but how can you easily tell one from the other?

As far as using quotes or even, I believe, photos in a review or a discussion, these generally fall into the category of "fair use". There normally isn't an attempt to copy the entire source or to make money from posting the excerpts and so this does not breach any laws or even represent immoral behavior.

Mark
gremlinz
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Hamilton, New Zealand
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Posted: Monday, November 30, 2009 - 07:35 AM UTC
If the sites are US based and the works aren't you also have to take into account the US allows legal violatation of copyright under the "rest of the world doesn't exist" arguement where works not available in the US ( even if they are readily available elsewhere in the world ) are classed as out of print and therefore public domain.
MCR
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Posted: Monday, November 30, 2009 - 08:43 AM UTC
For the US being out of print does not negate the the copyright.

Mark
gremlinz
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Hamilton, New Zealand
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Posted: Monday, November 30, 2009 - 10:40 AM UTC

Quoted Text

For the US being out of print does not negate the the copyright.

Mark



Several thousand foriegn writers currently having their works made available on Google books without their consent would disagree.

"If a book is not generally available for sale in the US, even though it is widely available elsewhere, it is considered out of print and Google can display excerpts without consent".

My understanding is that it does not apply if the copyright is held in the US.

This is an issue that has been ongoing in my industry here for sometime with a lot of seriously pissed off authors.
JackFlash
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Posted: Monday, November 30, 2009 - 06:09 PM UTC
Ok lets go back to the beginning. This concerns our hobby. Albatros Pub. puts notices on almost every page of their Datafiles especially on the drawings. I am not addressing Google or such. The subject is hard copy drawings and books that are copied then released to the public in a scanned media. Whether for profit or not. Just because you own the book does not mean you own the rights to the drawings, or text.

If we let these sites proliferate by participating we kill the profits of the parent company who make their livelyhood on these books. We will loose them like gutting a goose that lays the golden eggs. Then there is the liablity. If one of these illegal download sites gets tagged for not paying taxes their records will give up whoever used their downloads. And face it folks the Govt. will do whatever is needed to collect taxes.
MCR
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Arizona, United States
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Posted: Tuesday, December 01, 2009 - 04:08 AM UTC

Quoted Text


Quoted Text

For the US being out of print does not negate the the copyright.

Mark



Several thousand foriegn writers currently having their works made available on Google books without their consent would disagree.

"If a book is not generally available for sale in the US, even though it is widely available elsewhere, it is considered out of print and Google can display excerpts without consent".

My understanding is that it does not apply if the copyright is held in the US.




I'd be curious to hear more about this as it does not seem to conform to my understanding of US copyright law at all. I may be wrong (thinking the wrong company) but hasn't GB been busted for this sort of thing before?
In any case, I have a bit of direct experience with the question; two years ago now I did some research concerning a book, published in England in the 1970's, that I wanted to republish and update.
The publisher was no longer in business and the author seems to have been a pseudonym because I was never able to find him.
I went to a lawyer who specializes in copyright violations with all the information I had collected and he was kind enough to enough to check into this for me gratis (friend of a friend and all that).
What he came back to me with is that the copyright was still in force, even with the publisher gone and even if the author was no longer alive and that I would have to either find the author or his estate and get written permission to do what I had in mind. I was shown specific passages in the US code to back this up.

Mark
MCR
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Posted: Tuesday, December 01, 2009 - 04:21 AM UTC

Quoted Text

Ok lets go back to the beginning. This concerns our hobby. Albatros Pub. puts notices on almost every page of their Datafiles especially on the drawings. I am not addressing Google or such. The subject is hard copy drawings and books that are copied then released to the public in a scanned media. Whether for profit or not. Just because you own the book does not mean you own the rights to the drawings, or text.

If we let these sites proliferate by participating we kill the profits of the parent company who make their livelyhood on these books. We will loose them like gutting a goose that lays the golden eggs. Then there is the liablity. If one of these illegal download sites gets tagged for not paying taxes their records will give up whoever used their downloads. And face it folks the Govt. will do whatever is needed to collect taxes.



Stephen, thanks for posting this but without more information on who you are speaking of specifically how are we to tell what e-books are legitimate and which aren't? I'm asking this in all honestly.

Mark



JackFlash
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Posted: Tuesday, December 01, 2009 - 05:12 AM UTC
Greetings Mark

In a bit of a quandry here. I can't give out the illegal website as that defeats the purpose of the thread. But with any copyrighted image or text unless you have the permission of the owner you can't copy it to any media. Also these images or text have clear indications of copyrights. Again if you don't have the owner's permission it is illegal. US or UK.
MCR
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Posted: Tuesday, December 01, 2009 - 08:17 AM UTC
OK, I understand.
BUT, you are not entirely correct in regards to copyrighted material:

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

(Hope this is the link I'm thinking of!)

Copyright law, especially international copyright law, can be convoluted at times but most often is pretty easy to understand and deal with.

Mark



pigsty
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Posted: Tuesday, December 01, 2009 - 09:42 PM UTC
Wouldn't it be simplest just to use the precautionary principle and assume two things:

1 Anything you find on the web is copyright unless you know for a fact that it isn't.
2 Quoting small excerpts from copyright material is fine because of the "fair use" allowance, but dumping the entire work from cover to cover onto a new location goes way, way beyond fair use.

Applying these principles, it's also probably best not to post links to a site that you suspect is violating either of them. The rules on this are different from the rules on defamation - dissemination isn't taken to be a fresh violation - but even an inadvertent slip can lead to lots of grief for the administrators, so avoid it if you can.
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