re CarDisk continued AD V7 #438

["Jack Chesley" <Jwchesley@xxxxxxxx>]

Brian,
     I'd be real interested in your "good authority".  I've known Leo =
since long before he started the cardisk project (mainly as a service to =
folks without the paper manuals).... I've loaned him a couple hundred =
pounds of my manuals to help with his project... hoping he'll get around =
to one for my passion, the Giulia sedan line.   The permissions he was =
given were informal, almost certainly to avoid setting precedents, but =
they were given.  If you think about it, it would make no sense for Alfa =
to kill a project that would help keep alfas on the road in one of the =
larger markets that they have yet to re-enter.   They have no money to =
lose and, if nothing else, it keeps down requests to Alfa for books that =
they no longer sell.  Alfa had no compunctions a while back in Australia =
(where they are back in the market) when sending their lawyers after the =
local clubs that they considered infringing on their copyrighted logos.
     If you find/write a good HTML or other interface for one of the CDs, =
why not send a copy along to Leo to include with future issues of that =
disc to make it more useful to the minority with Apple computers and those =
with more hard drive space than I (remember that these projects were =
written several years ago, when copying several hundred megs of images to =
your 500meg hard drive would just about fill it up).
      As for piracy, yeah, copying someone else's work and selling it =
could be considered that.   There is quite a bit of work involved in =
scanning hundreds of pages of manuals for each CD (note the lack of real =
copyrighted book material in there, even from out of print books) and in =
writing code to display them and testing it and re-writing it and =
investing in hardware and distribution costs... been there, done most of =
that.
     No flame intended to you, just remember that a bad word, once =
uttered, cannot be taken back.  I feel kinda strongly on this, as I =
mentioned when the digest got littered with comments on exposing the shop =
in Mass. that blew a year long repair job on a Milano.... but then =
refunded the money... a reasonable thing to do.  I'm glad their name =
wasn't unfairly smeared. =20
  =20
Jack Chesley
67 super
67 super
65 spider
68 gt jr project

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>From: "Brian Shorey" <bshorey@domain.elided>
>> Lifting data from the CarDisks, reorganizing it and then distributing
>> it would certainly be piracy, and I hope nobody thought I was
>> encouraging that. A conversion script such as Tom suggests would be
>just as an aside, i have it on good authority that the cardisk folks do
>*not* have permission from alfa romeo to reproduce any of the manuals =
that
>they do.
>i'm glad that didn't stop them, but all should be aware that there may
>already be some 'piracy' involved, and anybody who scans and reproduces
>manuals without permission is probably committing a little piracy of =
their
>own.
>that said, i'd love to be able to store all four of mine on my hard disk =
for
>quick access - any of those who have written conversion or alternative
>viewing applets, feel free to forward them to me!

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