Uploading PDFs of railroad modeling magazines (scans) - inappropriate?

You might run afoul of the copyright owners if you upload them. Could cut into the zine's sale of back issues.

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If you get permission from the copyright owners, you could put the files on a download site such as Rapidshare and place the links here.

Bill Bill's Railroad Empire N Scale Model Railroad:

History of N Scale: 's Store--Books, Trains, and Toys: to 1,200 sites:

I very much appreciate the thought and effort represented here.

BUT --- You are going at this in a way which exposes you to much in the way of lawsuits.

ALL of the subject matter is 'copyrighted material', and NOT owned by you.

Go ahead and scan everything, but keep quiet about it. Your grandson MAY be able to profit from your work when he is retirement age.

Chuck Davis

On 7/14/2008 8:46 AM Skiffy spake thus:

Yes.

Just to summarize what others have said here, there are two major problems with what you propose:

1. Copyright laws, which presumably still cover the material you want to scan.
2. Posting *huge* binaries on Usenet. Better to put it on a web site somewhere and post links to it (or better, just a single link to the web site).

Unless Disney ceases to exist, probably not. Copyright duration keeps getting mysteriously extended every time Steamboat Willie approaches the public domain...

-Brent

Good point, Brent. Copyright protection was originally intended to protect the original creators of a work from theft for a reasonable amount of time, with the idea being that a work *should* pass into the public domain after a while so as to benefit the public as well as the work's originator.

These days copyright has largely become a way for huge corporations to continue to rake in the profits long after the person -or persons- who actually created the work have passed away.

And, as you pointed out, if those big corporations have their way, copyrights in the US will eventually *never* run out.

Well, if money becomes an issue, you could be sued for any resulting losses. And, copyrights are about money. This is also true if people are making copies from your materiél to save themselves a buck and someone is losing out on a sale.

There is no real way to protect the material from being copied other than don't post it. If it was strictly for historical purposes and there is no competing resale market, it's unlikely much would be said. If you're not sure, ask the owner.

Cheers, John

This may be true of the USA, but actually copyright was invented in the

1500s by English book sellers ("stationers"). A cartel (The Stationers Company) was formed to control the market, and copyright was the method. It had nothing whatever to do with rewarding the creators of content. By purchasing a copyright from a writer, a publisher guaranteed that no one else could legally publish the work. Nice deal, eh? By the time the US Constitution was written, there were enough creators with market clout that the emphasis had shifted slightly towards their interests, hence the constitutional protection of copyright in the USA. (The fact that several of the founding fathers were writers is probably relevant, too.)

The history of copyright, and the ever increasing expansion of the notion (it's now all "intellectual property") makes for fascinating reading. At all times, those controlled the media attempted to control the distribution of content. Ever since printing was invented, technological changes have enabled people to challenge that control. It's significant, IMO, that these challenges initially come from the creators, but sooner or later the distributors regain control.

I saw an article by a writer recently who argued that just as ownership of real and personal property doesn't cease, so ownership of intellectual property should not cease, either. His heirs should own the copyrights in his works just as they own the house he passes on to them. Interesting argument.

Invalid argument based on pure greed. (And I'm stating that as a writer who's benefitted from the copyright laws.)

Just as your boss is unlikely to continue paying you long after you've quit working for him -or just plain died- so there is no reason to expect that you should be paid ad infinitum for something that your grandfather produced. My personal belief is that a copyright should remain valid for the lifetime of the creator, and not one moment longer.

Otherwise all new information or art produced will eventually remain private property in perpetuity, and this would *not* benefit society as a whole. (Where would we be today if Archimede's heirs still owned the rights to every machine on the planet that used a lever in any way?)

-Pete

I know everybody loves to blame all of the copyright problems on the Disney Co., but they are certainly not solely to blame and possibly not the biggest sources of the ever-extending copyright lengths. The Gershwin heirs have been extremely vocal about keeping their royalties to Rhapsody In Blue, etc. rolling in. The heirs to Irving Berlin's massive catalog of works have also been quite active in keeping their rights to White Christmas, God Bless America, There's No Business Like Show Business, and so much more generating as much continual income as possible. Irving Berlin himself lived to be over 100 years old and was a major influence in testifying before Congress years ago to get the copyright terms lengthened to Life or longer so he wouldn't lose his royalties under the old system of expiration. At least some classic works *have* entered the public domain, like Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson.

And in case of sudden death? Could lead to targeted assassinations if someone wants to distribute a particularly lucrative property, say the hot new album of a hot band or a hot movie.

Two problems.

This is a text only group. You do not own the copyright and unless you make arraqngements, do not have the right to post the documents.

Howard Garner

Oh, it's a valid argument all right. Just 'cuz you don't like the premises or conclusion doesn't make the argument invalid. The writer's premise is "If I make it, it belongs to me." Everything else flows form that premise.

Your premises are different, is all. Your argument is also valid, based on your premises.

So which premises should govern? That's not a matter of logic, unfortunately.

HTH

Uh, yeah, sure.

-Pete

As an artist, I produce paintings with my signature on them and sell them at whatever price I can get for them. Sometimes people offer less that the price I put on them. If I'm hungry or need to pay bills I might well accept the offer. Once the exchange has been made the work of art is gone.

My expectation of the customer is that they will use the painting as ornamentation or as an investment. If that owner sells the painting for (say) $1,000,000- I don't expect a proportion of his profit just as if when I sell my house do I consider the builder should get a proportion of my profit. That sale of my signed work of art increases the value or the expectation of value of all my other works, including any that I create after that sale.

I don't expect to come across my painting displayed with the buyer's signature replacing mine, nor any part or portion of that painting used in such a way that an impression is given that it is the work of someone else.

It's much the same with a magazine artical - once it has been published it is effectively in the public domain. I would expect anyone reproducing it in total or in part to acknowledge it's origin. I would not expect it to be republished without acknowledgement as a complete work in itself.

Inventions: I can't patent any invention to the point where it is fully protected, so I can only profit from it by having it in production sufficiently ahead of competition to make a profit. Companies like GM or P&G can utilize patents in the sense of evidence for litigation, but reality is the outlay to protect an invention world-wide is beyond the rest of us.

Regards, Greg.P.

Um, you might want to consider that they're probably still under copyright, and that Kalmbach, etc, might come after you.

mark

Rick Jones wrote in news:J3Rek.16387 $ snipped-for-privacy@nlpi069.nbdc.sbc.com:

Make it lifetime + 50 years, but no longer. Companies who produce written works as their product should get 100 years, no longer. If the written work is not the product, such as an included manual, it should be covered under copyright protection for as long as the device is patented. (Patents should only last 7 years, too.)

In the case of Mickey Mouse and other such icons, there should be a "lifetime" protection for a symbol that is an integral part of the company. So long as the symbol remains the symbol of the company, or perhaps becomes the symbol of a new parent company the copyright is kept. If the company decides to move away from that symbol, then copyright is lost. The company would be required to have maintained the icon as the company's flagship icon for at least 25-50 years before applying for "lifetime copyright".

I never knew my great grandmother or great grandfather; most people share that in common. By the 5th generation, it's unlikely they'll know anything about the 1st. Why would the 1st generation need their works still protected under copyright?

Puckdropper

To claim that all premisis are equally valid is to deny morality.

I never claimed that. Premises are neither valid nor invalid. Only arguments based on them are. That was my point: both your argument, and the one you object to, are valid. Validity just means that the argument follows logically from the premises. It doesn't mean that the premises are equal in terms of morality (or any other standard of judgement you want to use.) That is a different issue, which can't be settled by constructing valid arguments from the premises.

Of course a premise may be validly derived from other premises, but ultimately you gotta start somewhere. Those ultimately basic premises are called axioms. You can't prove axioms, because to do so would make them logically dependent on still more fundamental premises. See? (Sidebar: that's why proofs of God's existence or nonexistence are pointless. They make God's (non)existence depend on something else.)

And that's the problem: We all start with a set of axioms, of basic beliefs. Trouble is, for most things, we don't know our basic premises

-- all we have is gut feelings. And even when you've tried to figure out just what you believe about something, you'll manage only a hazy and vague notion of your basic premises/beliefs. That's a limitation of being human.

But that shouldn't stop us from trying. As Socrates said, "the unexamined life is not worth living."

Most argument or discussion consists of people talking past each other because neither of them know just what premises they're assuming, and even less what the other person is assuming. A basic logic course in high school would help, and basic logic is not only accessible to students, it's fun. Leastways, that's what my students discovered, much to their surprise. ;-)

HTH