Copyright on HP service manuals

My favorite US Presidential quote is from George Bush I:

"I am the President of the United States of America, and I will not eat broccoli."

John

Close (mine too, BTW).

"I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I'm President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli." George H. W. Bush

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  Keith

I read in sci.electronics.design that John Larkin wrote (in ) about 'Copyright on HP service manuals', on Thu, 28 Apr 2005:

Unlike Emperor Franz Ferdinand, 'I am the Emperor and I want DUMPLINGS!'.

GB probably remembers his childhood aversion. To me, it taste quite different now, 60 years later. And the costly 'purple sprouting' version is even (much) better, whereas I couldn't stand it at 8 years of age.

Mind you, I steam it for 8 minutes or microwave with water for 2 - 3 minutes, whereas my mother used to boil it for 15 minutes, and that makes quite a lot of difference.

--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
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"The shadow of Love is Power. Love first gave much of his Power to Lucifer. And then over time he denied the rest of his Power, handing it to Ahriman. "Love, real Love feels much better than Power... yet most humans have chosen to worship the god of Power, not the God of Love. Praised from the pulpits and beseeched in the deepest prayers for relief from pain and oppression, the god of Power has been very popular. "Power has constantly affirmed that he and only he is God. And he has been very successful at this... many beings have never even known that the God of Love exists." - Heart:

But I have it on Good Authority that this is changing, even as we speak.

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Love,
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for further information, please visit http://www.godchannel.com

You really mean "even as we cut and paste."

John

Yes, it does!

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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Sometimes we get (at restaurants) the Italian broccolinni stuff or whatever; it's small, bitter, and awful.

I thing there's been a lot of selective breeding going on lately [1]. The last batch we had at home was *sweet*.

John

[1] riffs are obvious. Go for it.

Bingo! I learned to hate most vegetables, early on, due to the way they were cooked... boiled until limp and tasteless, reduced to a nondescript shade of greenish-brown.

I still hate 'em when they're prepared in that fashion. Don't even get me started on one of the greatest culinary crimes ever invented: canned green peas.

On the other hand, the very same vegetables, prepared as John suggests, or briefly stir-fried with a drop of good oil and a smidge of garlic, are one of nature's perfect foods... yummy!

Some of us learn the benefits of new approaches as we grow older. It sounds as if GHB didn't. His loss.

--
Dave Platt                                    AE6EO
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  I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
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Seems like an idiotic or Ludite philosophy to me. So we can share old manuals, but only if we ask permission and then waste time and physical resources in the process.

I can buy most software now with a choice of waiting for a physical copy (which is usually down-level from current) or downloading the package from the web. Works to the advantage of me and the seller.

Sure would be nice if Agilent adopted the Tek point of view on this.

like

"mad"

Whatever's

by

while

out

come

As to your ad hominem argument about well-off businessmen all watching each others' backs, I showed that to the War Department, and she got a good laugh out of that one. A slightly bitter laugh, but a good one. I expect to be called "The Well-Off Businessman" or "Bourgeoise Capitalist" or "Moneybags Industrialist" for at least several days. But as a matter of fact, most of the manuals I've purchased over the years have been for employers or customers. If you compare the cost of a new lab instrument to a used/reconditioned one, $25 to $75 is small change. They're still way ahead. As to my own few lab quality instruments, if I can't afford the manual I need, I can't afford the instrument.

It's not an issue of being an acolyte of the neo-liberal economic church of Milton Friedman and his divine maxims. It's an issue of fairness, which usually comes from the other side of the political/economic aisle, as do I. And it's an issue of encouraging creativity and rewarding the creators of intellectual property for their work. Copyright is a very American idea. Before the formation of the United States, the King of England had the right to award monopolies on the publication of books. This monopoly was sometimes used to reward cronies or punish the creators of the IP by burying the book. Look at any American History survey course textbook, and Article I, Section 8 of our constitution, as well as the original Copyright Act of 1790.

It's kind of funny, really. Here's a newsgroup for electronics design. Contributors include researchers, authors, teachers and professors, chip designers, and many really good electronic engineers who make original contributions to the field and write for everyone's benefit in this newsgroup, trade journals and their websites. (I don't belong in their league. For the most part, I just try to stay out of their way and answer simple, obvious questions so they won't have to, along with a suggestion to post to s.e.b. next time.) I'm just happy to read their conversations and learn from them. But one thing they all have in common is creating intellectual property for a living. One would think they would be willing to go to the wall for IP rights in general. Or possibly they're just being a little short-sighted.

These are not good times for U.S. engineers in general, particularly in manufacturing. There seems to be a disconnect in our country between the value of a thing which is made and the value of the intelligence behind it. Managers of manufacturing companies feel they can do it with fewer engineers, and then are surprised when their product line gets stale, customers complain they can't get support with their product and will buy something else next time, disastrous manufacturing glitches happen on the floor -- things don't work right and nobody knows why.

In my career, I've seen good engineers creating IP and increasing the value of the companies they worked for, far in excess of whatever they're paid (sometimes the equivalent of years salary on one project), then being thrown away like used coffee grounds. The current crop of tender, green MBAs could have a notion to shoot the company in the foot by reducing "indirect labor and overhead costs". Management may decide they can hire a fresh fish out of school or a foreign visa applicant for a lot less money. They might even just let an engineer go if he gets sick. In short, they really don't value IP because they don't value the creators of IP.

TAANSTAAFL means There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch (Robert A. Heinlein, "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress", one of the icons of my misspent youth). That's been used as a motto of the Scaife, Coors and Murdoch neoliberals at the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute and Fox as they try to march the United States back to the Gilded Age of the 1890s. I'm afraid Heinlein even used it himself that way. But before the politics and the macroeconomics comes the basic issue of paying for value received and doing what's fair. If you don't pay an engineer for the value received from his IP he's trying to sell, he'll stop making IP and do something profitable to support his family. If you don't pay for the value of IP received from a coprporation, the people whose job is making the IP will not be profitable to employ, and will be let go. Fewer working engineers, less creativity and less IP will mean a declining manufacturing economy. And as things go down the drain and there are no more manufacturing jobs available, people will just console themselves with anti-intellectual, anti-science beliefs, following people like Ron Grossi and staring at Fox. They'll let other countries take the lead, and they'll call it God's just punishment on a sinful society.

So much for the big picture. I treat IP as always having value because it does. I do it out of respect to the creators, and to maintain the value of the IP. I also do it in order to keep from devaluing IP in general.

Agilent isn't running around with platoons of armed library police, and they definitely aren't buying up old manuals to keep 'em out of your hands. I have never known of anybody who quietly copied a manual for personal use who was busted by the legal department at HP or any instrument manufacturer. I don't believe they really care about manuals for orphaned instruments, except that there are several long-term consequences to not making pro forma efforts to defend their IP from obvious attempts to devalue it (like putting scans on the net). Actually, I'm sure they look on this whole issue as a money and good will loser and a general PITA. They see you acting like since it's their fault they made these great, reliable instruments 25 years ago that still work great today, they should be punished for it. I get the feeling they already are, and I'm personally afraid they might be thinking about learning from their "mistakes".

And as for me, I'll "pay for my pleasures", and have my employers and customers pay for theirs, not so much because I can afford to light my cigars with $100 bills as that's just the right way to do it. You know, the right thing to do? Like, ethics and honesty and all that? I know it seems obsolete in these times, but some of us (at least as many Blue as Red) still feel that way.

Good luck Chris

How does free distribution of *obsolete* manuals work against "encouraging creativity"?

We are not attacking the concept of copyright. Many of us are saying HP would benefit from allowing free redistribution on the Web of old manuals for equipment that they no longer sell.

There's good news from BAMA News,

"HP Manuals Will Return to BAMA. A license has been granted by Agilent to allow BAMA to carry HP manuals. The HP page will need to be recreated and the files returned to the server. This will take a while, but they will be back! (April 28, 2005)"

--
 Thanks,
    - Win

Looks like HP has agreed to allow BAMA to publish. A well coined letter to Agilent counsul was the key to open this door. Thanks to all involved with getting this important job done. We all love surplus HP gear!

regards N9NEO

We should download them all and burn CDs before they change their minds!

What I really want are the schematics for the HP9100 desktop calculator, ca 1965. I have two, both dead, and it's sad that they won't allow anybody to get the info needed to restore these classics.

It's amazing that HP actually reused the 9100 model number for some poorly-reviewed inkjet printer/fax thing.

John

A few observations:

- If the manual is separate from the instrument, it will get separated from the equipment and lost. Doesn't matter if it's on paper, a CD, a website, or whatever.

- In these latter days, memory is cheaper than dirt. Especially if it's ROM.

- Small flash-memory drives with a USB connector are rather ubitiquous.

So... why not store the manuals INSIDE the instruments, and not have this problem again?

Have a USB port somewhere on the instrument. Plug in a flash drive, push a button, and get a .txt or .pdf dumped to the flash drive. A fancy instrument could use a menu selection to dump a nice PDF from a big ROM; an inexpensive one could use a little recessed switch on the back panel to bit-bang a text file out the USB port with an 8051 or something. Perhaps even a serial port doing an ASCII (or Kermit or similar) transfer for a really low-dollar solution. Instruments fancy enough to have their own Ethernet / Web server could simply serve documents through that interface. If they just have Ethernet and TCP/IP, maybe a "magic packet" to a well-known port (17?) on a non-routable IP address could trigger a manual dump via FTP.

The storage inside the instrument would need to be in ROM, or else it will eventually get erased. If the instrument takes firmware updates, there should be a mechanism for the updates to include addenda pages in the manual dump, but the updates shouldn't be able to overwrite the original manual.

This won't do a thing for all those instruments floating around out there now. (Or maybe this has already been thought of and implemented; I don't get to buy much brand multi-kilodollar test equipment at work.) But if the market could agree on some kind of standard, and get the vendors to accept it, the "missing manual" problem could be reduced a great deal.

Matt Roberds

In fact you are attacking the concept of copyright. Aligent owns the copyright and has the last say. It seems that they _have_ reversed their position, so maybe your whining did help. ;-)

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  Keith

I beg to differ, we did not attack Agilent's legal right to restrict the manual information if they chose, we attacked Agilent's apparent choice to do so. It now appears they did no more than (roughly) assert their right to grant permission after it's sought, which we do not question. But we do argue that it would have been unreasonable, counterproductive, mean-minded and unfair to deprive the legitimate owners of their older instruments the right to fully run and maintain those instruments, if they were unfortunate enough not to own one of the rare original manuals.

--
 Thanks,
    - Win

Tektronix has specifically released their copyrights on obsolete manuals.

--
Many thanks,

Don Lancaster
Synergetics   3860 West First Street  Box 809  Thatcher, AZ 85552
voice: (928)428-4073 email: don@tinaja.com

Please visit my GURU's LAIR web site at http://www.tinaja.com

I should add, that at this point, after the dust has settled, it does not appear Agilent is in fact overly restricting the copying of their old manuals (despite the language of their lawyer's take-down letter), because they do grant permission when it's sought, including a type of blanket permission, and also even including the right to charge for the service, AFAICT. BTW, I received an email from the (former) co-leader of HP's company-wide committee handling this issue, and this was their economically-derived carefully-thought-out company policy six years ago, and it would still appear to be, unless we learn otherwise.

So, it all appears to be a non-issue. Move along, nothing to see here.

--
 Thanks,
    - Win