Serge Auckland wrote:
"jasee" wrote in message
...
Serge Auckland wrote:

"Mike Cawood, HND BIT" wrote in message
...
"jasee" wrote in message
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Mike Coatham wrote:

Somehow it goes against the grain to pay money for this sort of
thing. Although this appears to be an original. I hate these
companies/individuals who are making money out of selling usually
copies of this sort of thing. Information should always be free.
I'm very much in favour of sites like this:

http://www.eserviceinfo.com/

Where manuals are free and you can upload any old manuals to. It
doesn't have your Tandberg manual, but you can request it.

I agree.
They should turn the manuals into pdf files & put them up on a
website for FREE download.

Who are "they"? If you mean a private individual, hobbyist, then I
agree, it is a nice thing to do to. However, if the manual owner is
a commercial organisation, who will pay for the time to scan a large
document and create PDFs? Also, if the commercial organisation in
question sells vintage equipment, why shouldn't they also be able to
make a commercial return on the information they own?

Because very often, or maybe always, they haven't scanned any
documents, they've simply copied someone elses scan or got the pfs
from somewhere else. So the price is out of all proportion to the
cost. They don't even own the copyright anyway.

Whether they own the copyright or not is a matter for the copyright
holder, if they still exist. However, you have not answered the
question as to why should a commercial organisation not make a return
on the information they hold. They are not a charitable or
philanthropic institution, so the alternative to charging for the
information is not to make it available at all. I would rather pay a
modest fee (and £ 5 *is* modest) and have the information than not
pay it and not have it.

I don't think it _is_ modest if they've just done the above and if they
don't own the copyright how can they legally sell them anyway. I think
anyone with any manuals should not let any commercial organisation near any
manuals they have. Make them into pdfs and send them to:

http://www.eserviceinfo.com/

Eventually they will stop and hopefully put what they have left in the
public domain.

In a certain newsgroup, people ask for manuals. Immediately, a commercial
advertiser pops up advertising his site. I'm pleased to say, I've stopped
his game one or twice by emailed the poster the required manual.