Copyright on HP service manuals

Thanks for that. I have in fact been offered the loan of a manaul.

Try using a proxy.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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["Followup-To:" header set to sci.electronics.design.] On 23 Apr 2005 09:01:48 -0700, Winfield Hill wrote in Msg.

When shopping for expensive lab equipment for my employer I've always made the purchase dependent on the vendor's willingness to supply full schematics. Not only for repair, but also for modifications that are sometimes necessary for research use.

Some of our best STM data aquisition systems were purchased from a company that was very hard-ass about releasing the schematics (a British company named "WA", later aquired by Oxford Instruments). If it weren't for the schematics that we forced them to turn over those systems would now be useless. Ironically the company went out of business, whereas another one in the same market that always ships equipment with full schematics (Omicron) is still doing fine.

--Daniel

["Followup-To:" header set to sci.electronics.design.] On Sat, 23 Apr 2005 16:53:08 -0500, John Fields wrote in Msg.

I don't think they should _have_ to, but at least they should refrain from enforcing copyrights on the manuals (i.e., keeping customers from sharing copies).

Bad marketing. I at least am much more likely to purchase some new equipment from company X if I know that they are actively or passively supporting out-of-date equipment.

Lynx Robotics, for example, is such a company: Although they have long ago shifted their line of business to something else, you can still download the old DOS software for their motion control equipment made in the 80's from their website. For free, without registration. In my eyes, as a potential customer, that makes them _very_ attractive.

--Daniel

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And that\'s a fact because...?

I can't even access that website. A real pity. It appears I have misplaced the PDF file with the service manual of my HP3466A multi-meter.

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Wow. 1T byte. What are you storing, if I may ask?

I read in sci.electronics.design that Nico Coesel wrote (in ) about 'Copyright on HP service manuals', on Sun, 24 Apr 2005:

Not accessible form outside the US of A, I believe.

Hint!

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I can get to it from Canada (!!!). Nice screening - NOT! No wonder we had Sept 11 happen. Oh the shame....

Stepan

What? It happened because of Canadians using the internet?

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Joe Leikhim K4SAT
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when he's only partially mad.  And this is the time when he's
going to throw his best parties.

Sonny Bono got the law changed before he ate a tree.

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GW

I disagree, we're not talking about manuals that can still be purchased from HP / Agilent. (And by this I mean real manuals, not microfiche dups that can't be used at the workbench.) We're talking about the real shortage of manuals for old instruments, where more manuals than instruments have been thrown away or lost.

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 Thanks,
    - Win

that's

DVDs.

Hey, life's a compromise. If you want the convenience, then you have to pay for it. So pay for a couple more 250GB HDDs, and quit complaining.

Right. That's how I understood it. The issue is NOT how to get things free (or cheap) that are for sale by their rightful copyright owner. The issue is how to deal with things that the actual owner no longer bothers to sell.

And in that kind of situation, copyright law is quite lenient when copies are made for "private study or research" rather than resale. It is perfectly legal for you to copy, for your own use, any HP manual you can get your hands on. Paying other people to do the copying is a gray area.

But the underlying principle is that if HP wanted to make money off these things, HP would offer them for sale, and HP doesn't, so HP isn't losing anything.

I read in sci.electronics.design that Winfield Hill wrote (in ) about 'Copyright on HP service manuals', on Mon, 25 Apr 2005:

If HP/Agilent still have these manuals but withhold all access to them, then I think a good lawyer would find ample grounds for dissuading them from that practice. It might be difficult to challenge them if they offered them for USD200 each, but perhaps not impossible.

--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
There are two sides to every question, except
'What is a Moebius strip?'
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

Competitors are the first to buy a box and tear it down! They have the time and money to derive anything that's visible. There are professional teardown companies to do it for you, too.

And they give away very little. They can help maintanance; lots of failures are in power supplies or interconnects, still fixable.

Right. That's better left hidden in most cases!

If there is a liability suit, they'll subpoena it anyhow.

No. But if a customer sends us an email promising to use the docs for maintanance only, and keep them confidential, then we usually do. We've also put designs, full fabrication documents and sources, in escrow or just in the customer's hands. Some of our customers expect to use a system for 20 years or more, and need to feel confident they can maintain it, or even make more themselves, if we all run away and join the circus.

John

Winfield Hill wrote:

I think I've already taken up too much of your time here. If someone told me I could have several minutes of Mr. Hill's time to talk about electronics, I'd be absolutely delighted. But instrument manuals would be just about the last thing in the world I'd like to talk about.

If you would indulge me anyway, I might add a few personal observations:

• Just for my own curiosity, I looked at the Yahoo hp_instrument user group mentioned near the beginning of this thread, and read every post for this month. It was kind of interesting how many posts this month involved manual .pdfs and obtaining other non-legitimate copies of HP manuals. So I read all the posts for the HP model numbers for every HP instrument, scope, and add-on card where there would have been a manual. And you know what? Every HP product mentioned in this month's posts (a few dozen items) has the _real_ OP/SV manuals available from the same single manual reseller recommended by HP on their website -- ManualsPlus. I didn't even have to look around. But they were selling for a price, of course.

• Over the years, I've been in several jobs where I've been the only one who cared about instrument manual document control, and ended up maintaining the system myself in one case. Engineers would draw and quarter (on your side) or tar and feather (on our side) someone from another department who treated other company- or University-owned engineering IP like prints or purchased software with the same disdain almost all engineers have for instrument manuals. At best, they will squirrel them away in their own desk or lab bench so they don't have to go to the bother of signing them out or returning them. Usually they'll ignore and lose them or throw them out as clutter. I guess my personal opinion on this subject is kind of rare.

• Older instruments are generally a better value, as well as usually being easier to use and less expensive to maintain. I try to specify used/reconditioned instruments wherever possible, because I feel they're generally a good deal for my employer or customer. I always buy used for myself, because that way I can afford a better instrument. I've specified several "orphan" (manufacturer no longer provides service or parts, including the manuals) HP instruments, and bought one myself for my own use. Years back, I got burned by buying a tricky instrument from another manufacturer, then blowing a project deadline partly because I couldn't buy, beg, borrow or steal the manual, didn't use the instrument properly and was getting bad data. Since then, I make sure not to buy a used instrument without the manual. And while manual availability has affected which used instrument I chose, I've never had to buy a new instrument because I couldn't find a used one that would do the job and that had a manual available from somewhere.

• Let's say that I walked into a job where I was required to use a piece of existing equipment for which I had to have the manual. Let's also say I made a good faith effort to find the manual, and couldn't get a legal one. Would I start scrounging around for a .pdf or other non-legitimate copy? Sure, I would. I'm not a zealot about this. Just like everyone else, I've got to do the job, get it done on time, and if there's no other way, I guess I'd have to clip the coin. But there's almost always a legal way to do it as things are set up now, especially for orphan HP instruments. But it _does_ cost money.

• I would also concede it's likely there are many more orphaned HP instruments out there than there are manuals. What would happen if more engineers took the copyright law seriously as it relates to instrument manuals? Well, first off, I suppose existing inventory on manuals would go down and prices might go up a bit. Not as much as you might think, because as prices go up, new instruments and other used instruments with manuals become more attractive options. As demand increased, suppliers would institute waiting lists, and since they would be guaranteed fast turnaround, they would loosen their restrictions on purchasing individual manuals, and pay more for them (currently most of these manual resellers are miserly, and will only buy manuals by the bale and "pay" by the ton ;-). Possibly owners of manuals without instruments would register their copies with resellers in case someone wanted them. More manuals would crawl out of the woodwork as useless paper turns into potential cash. Manuals might be rented, or offered on consignment. Engineers might even form a co-op to rent or to minimize brokers' fees (the markup on these manuals is extravagant). And eventually a new balance would be achieved. The new price of the manuals would more accurately reflect their real value. I don't think the price would be that much more than it is now, though. And at that point, if manuals were still printed on unobtainium, we would all have a legitimate beef against Agilent and the other manufacturers, and I think they might then be more inclined to offer either "book-on-demand" or high-quality Xeroxed copies of their old manuals for a price a little higher than the asking price for used manuals. And engineers would start getting more serious about spending the time and effort to maintain document control on these newly valuable books.

Sorry to bend your ear, but it's kind of a "hot button" issue for me. I've not found it hard to comply with the law as it now stands. I just pay for my pleasures, which is my perogative and one of the joys of the business world. Original manuals for nearly all orphaned HP equipment do exist out there, and paying for them is a legitimate cost. Of course the copyright law is messed up, especially in the States. 75 to

95 years is too long for a corporation to own a copyright on anything. But out of direct respect for the law, and indirectly out of respect for the creator of the book, I'll try to buy the manual if it's legally available.

Thanks again for your time.

TAANSTAAFL Chris

[snip]

When Tek shipped those wonderful manuals with their scopes, they were partly protected by the difficulty of making CRTs and later on a variety of other specially-made components. They didn't want to give too much away to competitors -- which is not an issue with older pieces of equipment.

There's so much firmware in stuff these days that full schematics don't really help as much as they once did. And what sort of awful surprises might we find if we did have access to the code? Would there be a new field of endeavor for lawyers, especially for medical equipment?

Just out of curiousity, John: do you ship full schematics with the devices you produce? What about firmware listings?

-frank