> Just out of curiousity, what are the
> legal and/or ethical implications of
> putting such copyrighted material
> on the website? Wouldn't it be first
> necessary to obtain permission from
> the holder of the intellectual property
> rights?
Uncertain about this.
Should we pull every item that could possibly have been
copyrighted from the website and seek permission from it's
owners in writing to post it? -Seriously, -not made as a
retort because this is a truly valid point about
intellectual property. I think that the stuff that we
already have posted has broken down that barrier in
practice, even if magazines still hold copyrights to the
19XX ads and such that you'll find all over our site.
This question has come up many times, and there are many
different answers to be had depending on the person
writing.
I thought about that line of discussion as I wrote that and
expected to see a question like this.
I am not a lawyer, and that is one realm.
Ethics is another realm that is not always connected to the
law.
My take is:
No victim = No crime.
There are folks selling service-manual reprints as a
cottage industry on Ebay, and I don't think that this is
high profile enough to warrant legal concerns. The IML is
non-profit and nebulous, not a vendor or company.
We propose to do this for free and are providing an archive
of out-of-print technical information to support our cars.
The goal here is distribution of info, not depriving some
person or company of revenue. I will not hesitate to buy a
hard copy for my cars, and would use this as a back-up or
"copy machine".
The country's litigious, and it makes people gun-shy.
The absolute worst case scenario is that some lawyer for
Diamler Chrysler writes a cease-and-desist letter to us and
the material gets taken down.
Why would someone pay their lawyer to come after us?
To protect themselves.
Who would pay lawyers to protect themselves from us???
Certainly not the Chrysler Dealership Network (asked them
to fix your pre-historic car lately?). We're on our own
with these barges.
Ethics? As far as the above is concerned, all of this is
non-current, historical info whose posting does not appear
to me to harm anyone and is done with altruism in mind. I
see nothing wrong with sharing inforation that is no longer
in circulation and is not terribly proprietary (the 1990's
stuff might not fit this model, but is getting gray at the
temples as we speak).
The high road is to say that nothing that was someone
else's should be posted here or elsewhere. I think that
from a practical standpoint, that we're bending, not
breaking ethical/life rules here in a harmless way.
If you feel that the Napster-like ties to posted Imperial
content is wrong in concept, abstension from those
web-pages is always an individual option.
-Kenyon
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