| Author | Message | ||
     Court |
We intend to gather enmasse the first weekend in June and turn ourselves in. | ||
| Bwbhighspl |
Other links on this site have been pulled because they linked to material that could be purchased. This thread is linking to material that can be purchased. Remember the kittens. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Str aw_man | ||
| Jules |
This thread is linking to material that can be purchased. Where? | ||
| Reepicheep |
Sorry for the tangent here, but I have been trying to figure out my position on "theft" and copyright for a while... I think both sides have it wrong (the "information must be free" crowd on one extreme, and the "I completely control how people can use something I create" crowd at the other extreme). Its good in these discussions to keep a balance and remember the roots of the "fair use" and copyright law. The concept that someone can both "own" and "share" an idea (or a creative work) is not a natural one. You can hide it, or you can share it, pick one. This was seen by society as a bad thing, as creating some creative works takes a lot of sweat and treasure. So a legislative "truce" was created that gives some legal controls to let you "own" an idea (or creative work) in limited ways. This was seen as a "win - win", as the ability to profit from an idea or creative work will lead to better and more being created. But it wasn't a statement that people universally and completely own ideas (or creative works) once they share them. That is unfortunately what people are trying to tell us today. The idea was that we give specific legal protections for a specific period of time. During that time, there are specific carve outs for things that people *are* allowed to do with your work (cite it as part of a teaching effort, shift it to more convenient mediums, etc). And after a fixed period of time, the work then entered the public domain. It was a reasonable "deal" between society and content creators. They get some protections they could not have any other way, society gets (in the fullness of time) more neat things created and shared. So the right thing to do here is an interesting question. If copyright law was intended to be a means by which a content creator can profit from a work for a period of time but comes at the requirement that the content eventually be transferred to the public domain, what is the right thing to do when the company has lost the ability or interest to make the content available any longer, but the time period of control has not yet expired? The content creator isn't profiting, and society isn't benefiting. So the law is the law, and I am not a lawyer so I don't know exactly what it is here. But I think it's important to keep in mind that copyright law is not so much a "moral" law like "theft" if I took your motorcycle, it is a contract between content producers and society as content consumers, and that the "rights" the content producers have were ones specifically "loaned" to them from content consumers in return for activities that were supposed to be for the mutual good. Harley, by asserting rights to that content, but not making the content reasonably available (if that is the case), has failed in maintaining the spirit of that contract. | ||
| Sprintst |
Anything that was on the website was free to the public | ||
| Court |
Another tangent . . . as ya'll sift through your thoughts on Reep's comments. I am amazed at the propensity to "steal" material by intentionally taking from websites, or about any source, and removing the source of the information. I use lots of research, both web and library, in my academic research and teaching. In tonight's lecture, as an example, I'm going to use one quote right smack dab out of Wikipedia. But . . at the bottom of the slide I ALWAYS put "SOURCE: list source. Last year I had a student submit a mid-term and apparently something was still in the cut and paste buffer. Right there in the midst of a 3 page essay question, the entire subject shifted from Contract Law to Eastern Religion. Columbia, and I assume all other Ivy League schools are the same, takes a very dim, as in zero tolerance, view of plagiarism. It's grounds for immediate expulsion. Which, during my last year, caused a bit of a funny situation you'd have to be over 40 to appreciate. I'm a lot less concerned with the "legal vs. not legal" than I am the ease with which some folks do so damn little of their own research. I can teach them, I can grade them . . I can't raise them. P.S. - tonight’s class kicks off with a rousing guitar solo if you happen to be in NYC.  | ||
| Mickeyq |
Court, who's playing guitar? | ||
| Easttroy |
From Harley: Yes, I heard back from the group responsible for the web-site. The manuals will no longer be posted on the web-site. Harley-Davidson Motor Company is fulfilling the commitment of supplying replacement parts and service. If an owners manual is needed, one can be ordered from a dealer, I do not have a .pdf to give you. Best Regards, | ||
| Thefleshrocket |
If anyone has saved data (such as the owner's manuals) that was freely available on the Buell website and would like to help make that information available to other Buellers, email me and I'll give you an FTP to which the data can be sent. I'll then host those files for other BWB patrons to download. I hope this won't run afoul of the BWB administrators. I definitely don't think there is anything morally wrong with freely redistributing information that was freely available until recently, and I don't think there is a strong case for it to be considered copyright violation. Of course if I get a cease and desist letter from Harley's lawyers, or if the BWB administrators disagree, then I'll refrain from hosting or posting anything. | ||
| Froggy |
Flesh, you would be doing the exact thing I would be doing, assuming we can find copies of the owners manuals | ||
| Jdugger |
> I don't think there is a strong case for it to be considered copyright violation. It is. Just because I gave something I own away for free previously doesn't mean I don't have the right to change my mind. That said, I think if you do it with good intentions and not to widely/broadly and without any opportunity for personal gain, the odds of HD legal enforcing their rights on you are minimized. * btw, I'm not a lawyer. | ||
| Blake |
We can put the owner's manuals online here. No need for a third party hosting. | ||
| Thefleshrocket |
That would be great, Blake. My bandwidth definitely isn't up to a bunch of users hitting it, but I'd host it if there wasnt a better option. | ||
| Easyrider |
The dealer list on the Buell page is not accurate at all. There are a lot of Dealer on that page that have not signed up to get a Buell license and are not able to deliver the support. There names are listed on there and can give some people the wrong information and they can get the wrong service. Be aware that you need to go to a dealer that still has signed up for the Buell dealership to get all the recall work done unpaid and to get the service. | ||
| Bwbhighspl |
I can host it as well, but you should double check that you're allowed to.  | ||
| Court |
>>>doesn't mean I don't have the right to change my mind. Actually, in the world of intellectual property it does. Once something is in the "public domain" . . it's in. One of the ways that can occur is lack of defense. Act like you don't care. . . your actions will be assumed to communicate your intentions. | ||
| Dannybuell |
Court "Once something is in the "public domain" . . it's in. " +1 | ||
| Jdugger |
Court, Are you sure? We ran into this a couple of years ago in the software business around something called a copyleft. Basically, code that was released to the public domain for consumption in anyway also enforces that any enhancements we made as a private corporation we had to also release to the public domain. Our lawyers told us it was very much enforceable. I'm not saying there will be an issue here with the owner's manual, just suggesting I think it's a little more complex and a whole lot more subtle than has been implied. | ||
| Sprintst |
I don't see where anything on the website is protected. If you were reselling it, there may be a case, but we're just talking about making free information available again. | ||
| Sprintst |
I've uploaded the missing sub folder stuff. The manuals saved as the web site had them, so I don't have complete .pdf's. Best it gets,and all I have! | ||
| Reepicheep |
Great question. The thing is, that software wasn't released into the public domain, it was licensed under very specific terms (which vary amongst various open source licenses). Some of the licenses say "you can do anything with this except claim it is yours or try and prevent others from using it". (MIT, BSD, Apache, LGPL, etc). Others say "you can do what you want with it, but if you enhance it and distribute it, you must release those enhancements under this same license". So it's a license that says you can use this software, but only if you promise to give any improvements away under these same terms. Kind of a recursive license. Software has a different set of controls and laws then other intellectual property. Click through agreements seem to be standing up fine with software (even though they are pretty ridiculously anti consumer). Those kind of retrictions would never stand for other types of IP (it's a minor miracle they have stood up for software). (Sorry for feeding the tangent. ) | ||
| Davegess |
There are potential copyright issues here that I see. The material is copyrighted. That much is abundantly clear. Copyrights are not exactly like trademarks; trademarks are "use it or lose it" and "defend it or lose it". A copyright does not operate under the same law as trademark. My understanding is, and I am not a lawyer nor do a I play one on TV, that one can distribute copyrighted material freely to anyone I want and I still retain the copyright. I can sell you a book and you can than resell that book. You could give me your original PDF but you can't copy it and give me a copy. BUT you cannot make copies of the book and distribute them. There are some reasonably well defined exceptions to this but they are limited. Making and distributing copies of pdf files would, in my opinion, be a violation of copyright. Just because I gave you copies for free at one point does not mean I cannot now stop doing that. Of course providing individuals with copies of your PDF would be impossible to stop and I doubt that anyone would try. Host the files on a web server for all to access would be something they might go after. Now would H-D bother? That is tough to know. the worst case would be you get a "cease and desist" letter or they ask the host to take them down. | ||
| Court |
I confess this does have me thinking . . . as I have EVERY Buell manual since 1988 sitting here . . about making a .pdf of everything . . manuals, catalogs, bodywork, decal catalogs, race catalogs, the original "race set up" publication from Henry, the Dual Disc Brake bill of materials, all the Road Works and a stack full of product development schedules and strategies and putting them on a DVD. But wait . . . that'd take months to do and once I did it . . . well, it'd take 9 seconds to copy. Never mind . . . . HD could care less at this point. You need to read no further than the opening paragraphs of their current report to know they have other fish to fry (Wisconsin saying) | ||
| Court |
I did . . with the help of my SCU . . toss a box of old parts and service manuals the other day. I put them on e-Bay, never got one bite and black bagged those babies. I have one more large, 30" long, file storage box of them and we'll have those cleaned out. Next task is digging into the cases of sales literature, some still in plastic shrink wrap cases, from years gone by. | ||
| Thefleshrocket |
I received the missing attachments for the owners manual HTM files from SprintST. (Thanks!) I've converted them to PDF and removed all of the HTMs. I've updated the everything.zip file with the owners manual PDFs as well. Just to reiterate, if you are going to download the everything.zip file, please do so after 6PM CST. It's about 90MB and will probably take 45 minutes to an hour to download if nobody else is on it. I'll increase the bandwidth cap to 512Kbps after 6PM too. | ||
| Pmjolly |
Court, do you keep all that in a fire safe? I would. | ||
| Thefleshrocket |
Court, if you did decide to PDF all of those documents, that would have to be one of the "out of the kindness of your heart" deals. Of course, you'd have the appreciation of everyone who downloaded the documents, if that's worth anything to you. And a few people might send you a few bucks out of gratitude--who knows. That would be a REALLY long job to do. I guess it depends on how much free time you have, what that free time is worth to you, and how important you think it is for all of that stuff to be preserved indefinitely on a digital medium. | ||
| Bwbhighspl |
Davegess says: "...or they ask the host to take them down." They don't tell you to stop linking to it, they tell the hosting site to take it down. | ||
| Skntpig |
Court, If you have a parts manual for a 97 S1 I will buy it before you bag it... | ||
| Blake |
I guess I have to say it again... Do not post links to pirated documentation here. In addition, do not offer advice on how you think one might disingenuously skirt the law in such cases. Doing so justification for revocation of posting privileges. |
