Uncle Willies vs Skystone01

Look it up. Uncle Willies is the subject of much controversy.

He has a history of allegedly selling illegal copies of plans on Ebay, allegedly violating just about every copyright law in the book.

snipped-for-privacy@rochester.rr.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

Thanks for the tip. What I saw on his site was a one sided argument with skystone01. What he posted was sky's replies without anything he said. I figured a prudent businessman wouldn't hand dirty laundry out but show his best instead. I'll Google, I thought I'd see what some had to say beforehand ...

- HPT

These two are the two bigger ones, but there are others.

Actually, I use these guys as research material. If I see a good-looking plan up for sale by them, I then do some digging around on the magazine websites (RCM, MAN, FM, Traplet, Nexus are my usual choices) until I find the plan.

I then order from the publisher simply because I know that the plans are going to be good, I'm supporting honest publishers, and often you get a copy of the original construction article.

Yes, I do sell my old plans on eBay but I don't flog copy upon copy upon copy...

When I was doing a corporate logo, I checked with a copyright lawyer on what the situation was (this is 15 years ago so it should be close-to-current for Canada and the US at the least.)

Unless you have made substantial changes to the original, all you have made is a copy not a new creation that can be protected by copyright. Removing water marks, tears, stains, and refixing lines does not alter the drawing enough.

If you take the original drawing and then update the cosntruction techniques and internal structure (eg, coverting a IC engine to an electric motor and lightening the bulkheads and shifting the wings and stab around a bit for better performance), then it can be classified as a new creation.

I did notice that SS01 is selling CD-ROMS of plans. Big clue that he has no respect for his sources and buyers. I once picked up someone else's (dirtriderdude) and everything was scanned from magazines. Poorly at that.

snipped-for-privacy@sympatico.ca (Byrocat) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com:

Personally I do like you, if the plan is available from the magazine or company, I prefer the clean copy that sometimes come with the construction article. In the mid '90s, I bought Berkeley plans from SIG when they still had them, were originals, reasonably priced and you can't get better than that.

Flying Models still sells a lot of their older plans, I picked up a few of their earlier rudder only R/C plans. (However, I dropped their subscription when someone on their staff changed the descriptions to these older plans stating them as multichannel back around the late '80s early '90s. That degrades the value of them, I don't mind a release based on some engineering and an updated plans article. I don't like misleading information. I recently wrote their books staff on this and wanting to see the descriptions corrected but have not received a reply yet.)

However, there are plans although copyrighted are not available from a proper source. These are the Scientific's and Berkeley's among others. In that case I'll buy. I was a little disappointed that John Pond Old Time Plans folded and was donated / purchased by AMA. It seems to be taking an extraordinary long time for AMA to release them. I contacted my regional director, he told me there is no time line released yet. IOW, when they are ready to release they will announce and who knows when. It was through JPOTP that I got kit plans of long out of production aircraft and plans. I'd even like to see AMA do partial releases appending their MA plans lists as they become available.

That is good to know, I wondered how others could have a magazine article on a plane that was based on a copyright plan but modified, without permission of the original owner. These are planes that were originally free flight or U/C made into larger R/C planes.

- HPT