I feel the IP is embedded in the instrument, not the manual. Thus the manual provides a way to make use of the IP you've bought and paid for in the instrument. It's the old instruments HP / Agilent no longer supports that we're talking about here. The simple fact is that there are *far* more instruments out there, than original manuals, because when one goes surplus the company's file drawers of manuals tend to get thrown away or otherwise lost, while the old instrument exchanges hands a few times and finds a new home.
Plus there are manuals that disappear for who knows what reason. The manuals for some HP equipment I purchased new when I came to the Institute 17 years ago somehow no longer exists at the Institute. Did a postdoc carry it off with him in his files when he left? Did it get thrown out by mistake? Who can say, but it's gone. And now a copy is not available from Agilent, the product line having been discontinued long ago... So I do rely on others who are willing to make a copy to keep the IP in my instrument useful.
HP should certainly retain the copyright so that (for example) a portion of one of their manuals couldn't be reproduced in the manual of a competing product. But HP should be willing to let people distribute HP manuals in complete unaltered form, because HP benefits thereby.
I read in sci.electronics.design that Chris wrote (in ) about 'Copyright on HP service manuals', on Fri, 22 Apr 2005:
Absolutely NOT!!! There is no objection whatsoever to legitimate defence of copyright.
What is NOT acceptable is to use copyright to deny ALL access to legacy data.
IIRC, the Sherlock Holmes stories are still just in copyright. Would it be reasonable for the estate of the author to assert the right to prohibit the use of the words 'Sherlock Holmes' in any context?
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I read in sci.electronics.design that John Larkin wrote (in ) about 'Copyright on HP service manuals', on Fri, 22 Apr 2005:
But that's the carly-haired attitude. Maybe the new admin will be a little more sensitive to their public image, and see that IPR isn't the whole of the Universe.
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Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
There are two sides to every question, except
\'What is a Moebius strip?\'
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Thanks for taking the time to respond, Mr. Hill. I stand corrected -- there are far more "orphaned" old HP instruments out there than original manuals. Your point is valid.
Maintaining an instrument document control system is relatively easy in a manufacturing facility with a limited number of engineering personnel. It's certainly much more difficult in an academic environment with dozens or even hundreds of students who all want access to the instruments and their manuals, and don't have enough experience with instruments to make educated guesses about how they work.
Agilent and other manufacturers might be inclined to cut academic institutions some slack as far as making copies of manuals for internal use. I'm sure they want their meters to be specified by as many future engineers and professors as possible. Considering your special requirements, they may be inclined to allow a limited waiver in your case.
People who need the OP/SV manuals will generally get them, whether through purchasing a used manual, copying one from someone else, or another means. The market, like life, usually finds a way. Although I can understand why, I don't think not selling new manuals helps Agilent get more business. They may wake up some day and farm out their obsolete instrument documentation orders to either a book on demand or lawyer's/barrister's Xeroxing firm. They could provide ring- or comb-bound copies of these operating and service manuals with only an additional day or two on turnaround compared to keeping thousands of cubic meters of printed manuals on the shelf in stock. I know of several automation machinery manufacturers that do just this with their prints and manuals very profitably. Until then, Agilent is perpetuating a bad setup, and annoying loyal customers.
I guess I'll keep doing it my way, though. If one is willing to pay, there isn't much of a shortage of manuals now on most common older "orphaned" HP instruments these days. (Of course, if more people felt the way I did, the limited supply would undoubtedly dry up, as you suggested.) I agree that the value of the instrument is inherent in the instrument itself, not the manual. But just the fact that we're having this conversation indicates the documentation is of value, although of another kind. It allows me to utilize the investment in the instrument. And I find that value sufficient that, if I cut a CER for a used/reconditioned "orphaned" HP instrument, I'll make sure to include the purchase price of a legal copy of the manual from ManualsPlus or another of the instrument documentation resellers along with it. I'm saving more than enough by buying used to afford a little more for the docs. As a bonus, I can get it FedExed so it arrives before the instrument, and I will have read it and be just about ready to roll when the box arrives.
Thanks again (and the check is still ready to be signed ;-) Chris
Again, this is a job for a copyright lawyer, but if Agilent *benefits* from the "unauthorized" copying -- and cannot claim any loss of sale or any other harm -- then a judge would laugh them out of court if they sued you.
Agreed. What is it about lawyers? These land sharks have this mentality that if their corporation doesn't say NO to absolutely everything - that if even one teeny-weeny yes gets out, that sheer pandemonium will result.
As a result, counsel recommends (and usually gets their way) that any - even the smallest - violation be immediately stopped. One example.
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It's truly shameful.
Another point. Because of corporate bullying of copyright infringement, the price of manual often exceeds the price of the used equipment it belongs to. So sellers buy scrap not for the value of the equipment, but for the manuals they contain.
One thought. Many of the test equipment (and manuals) were duplicated for the miltary. One off the top of my head is the AN/USM-81 which was the same as the Tek 541 'scope, IIRC. This may not be copyrighted, or may have some other way of getting around the copyright laws. And many schools, such as the military schools, published schematics to use for training.
Also, I'm sure that some other countries had something similar, such as when NATO or other int'l org published an equipment manual in a foreign language. Hey, a schematic is a schematic, even if it's in French, right? ;-))
But their scopes always took a back seat to Tek, so if they didn't want to flush money down the toilet, they would not have bothered to invest the money to make and sell a scope that was competetive with Tek.
However I used a HP 1741 back in '79, and I thought it was a solid scope. It was a blessing after rubbing my fingers raw from turning the timebase and other knobs 100's of times a day on a Tek toob scope. The HP probably saved the company tons of money on electric and air conditioning costs by getting rid of those old Tek toob scopes, which used a half a kilowatt of power all day long.
I'd like to be a bit of a contrarian here for once.
[snip]
Many of these equipoments and manuals are no longer sold or supported by HP. So I don't see what benefit they get by enforcing their copyrights. All they seem to do is make it exceedingly difficult and miserable for the owners of that old equipment.
a
As I said, no longer sold or supported, so this doesn't apply.
[snip]
Do they get a payment from the manual reseller when a manual is sold? I doubt it.
You are ignoring the fact that the equipment was shipped with the manuals to start with. As far as the image quality have you ever tried to use those lousy microfilm manuals?
--
Former professional electron wrangler.
Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida
A CD-ROM image is normally an ISO 9660 image, which doesn't contain the error correction codes. It only has the 2048-byte data payload of each sector.
Some software will let you generate a "raw" image (2352 byte sectors rather than 2048). This does contain the top level of the error correction codes. But it doesn't have the bottom two layers, or the interleaving, so by itself it doesn't gain much.
See "The Art of Digital Audio" by Watkinson or "Principles of Digital Audio" by Pohlman for details of the CD-Audio format (Red Book), or buy a copy of ISO 60908.
The CD-ROM format is layered on top of the CD-Audio format, as documented in the Yellow Book. ECMA 130 is equivalent to the relevant portion of the Yellow Book, and a PDF file can be downloaded at no charge:
formatting link
If you're worried about data corruption, you are best off keeping multiple copies of your data, preferrably on separate mediums. And it probably is worthwhile to either put it in ZIP files (which store a CRC of the file to detect corruption), or to store an MD5SUM of the file on the same medium.
We've got a long ways to go before it becomes easy to access and share out-of-print stuff. Look at this link regarding the copyright status orphaned-works and have some hope for our children's kids...
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I would like copyright to be a little bit more like trademark law. If you don't use it for a number of years, you loose it. The way it is now is pretty mickey-mouse if you know what I mean:
Do not know about their scopes, but i still have an HP410C analog VOM in excellent condition; only had to replace pass transistor in power supply once. I got the manual when i got the meter, so there has never been a problem for calibration or repair.
Jeepers, I wish those military manuals were better. I downloaded a few of them from
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and although they were usefull, they certainly were not up to par when compared to the real thing. Often unreadable schematics and missing vital info.
If anyone has found a better place to download this stuff then I'd love to see a follow up post about it.
On a side note, it's my experience that there are not many folks out there who really know how to maintain electronic records without corruption and loss for more than a few years. I've seen data get corrupt because folks do silly things like copy large repositories of data from one place to another and then neglect to do a binary compare, run disk defrag software against large drives containing valuable data on machines with crappy systemic bit-error-rates, transfer gigabytes of data on computers without ECC memory or without UPS protection, no backup strategies or crappy media or unmaintained tape drives. Failure to check C1/C2 error rates on freshly burned CDROMS, and on and on. Many perils.
It is awakening to see how a paper record can last thousands of years while digital data evaporates out of EEPROMS and magnetic media in a few ephemeral years even before the copyright has a chance to expire. When the duration of copyright protection, far exceeds the data retention of digital media, then there is an increased risk of loosing it. This is not the fault of copyright but a weakness of the media and a lack of use of digital signatures to prove authenticity or heritage.
It's interesting to note how long ago the DNA of dinasours appeared on earth, in comparison to the half-life of digitally preserved data. Note also that data evolves over time in a way reminiscent of the evolution of DNA in living species. After all,only the most valuable data survives and it is constantly improved upon and stepwise changed. Data however, seems to evolve much more quickly than living species, and the host machines it lives in seem to evolve with it at an equally fast rate.
On one HP gear that i had bought, i had to settle for the manual (from HP) in the form of microfiche; the equipment was long discontinued, and that was all they had. The quality of the copy was excellent.
It just occured to me that I used to do a nifty thing to protect my most valuable data from single byte corruption as can be caused by oxidized memory DIM contacts etc. I would burn the data to a RAW CDROM image file which includes error correction and just save it to my hard drive. Once I did that I could open up the CD image in a hex editor and pepper it full of crap, but then when I would mount it the error correction would keep it perfectly readable! Pretty cool.
I think you underestimate the legal mind. One could argue that the copyright infringement unnaturally prolongs the useful life of unsupported HP/Agilent instruments, thus reducing the overall market for new instruments. It's perhaps possible to dig up figures that would support a cost to Agilent of x% of a new instrument for every instance of infringement.
Best regards, Spehro Pefhany
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