Copyright on HP service manuals

Hear, Hear!

Indeed.

The man who apparently convinced Tektronix to release their manuals to the public domain, David Hopkins, has left a message on yahoo groups offering the help of his experience...

Note also, that for HP to release these manuals to the public domain, would be an act of charity towards third-world and developing nations, where used test equipment can be of great service. I hope that someone with inside knowledge of Agilent management can take this forward...

Stepan

I asked Agilent as was refused permission to put copies on the web.

BUT they said they can grant me permission to distribute (charging if I wish) copies of manuals for obsolete equipment on CD or paper - but not the web.

I was sent a short half-page letter, asked to fill it in, sign it, send it back and are awaiting confirmation of permission by email.

So it is not as bad as it seems.

So anyone selling CDs on eBay can do it legally if they ask permission first - I doubt many do.

Did they say if you could list the files you have on a website so you can sell or trade CDROMs?

I don't think you'd have a problem with HP allowing you to have the manual for your equipment maintenance. Publishing it on the web is rather a stretch though.

b.

The last "new" price for a 5370B was over $30K, hardly hobbyist turf. A decent used one can cost from a few hundred dollars (ebay, as-is) to a couple of thousand (guaranteed, calibrated from a broker.) $75 ain't bad in this context.

Once free? What you are complaining about is precisely freedom. If you don't like Agilent equipment, or their policies towards their intellectual property, buy something else, or build your own. If you don't like paying somebody for their book or their music, write your own.

John

Well, how nice for you that you function in a world where $75 for a manual is small change! There are lots of us hobbyists out here who like to experiment with electronics but who might find that to be their "mad" money for a month. Somehow, as one of them, I'm not convinced by your "all us well-off businessmen should be good t each other" argument.

This kind of stuff is part of a trend that's been going on, to my amazement, for a couple of decades now. It might be summed up as "Business is more important than anything. The market is God. Whatever's good for either is great, and the devil take the rest!" Under this regime each new enormity perpetrated by some business, like this one by Aligent (or the copyright extension that business got away with a while ago) first causes a bit of squirming on the part of the victims, but then other virtuous souls remind them of the three divine maxims set out above, and everyone then naturally knuckles under.

How did a once-free, and in fact instinctively rebellious, people come to this?

Leonard

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

I read in sci.electronics.design that Leonard Martin wrote (in ) about 'Copyright on HP service manuals', on Wed, 27 Apr 2005:

You didn't eat up all your broccoli when Mom told you to.

"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.

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

John

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

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

Yes, it does!

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

like

"mad"

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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

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.

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.

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.

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.