Re: Wiring diagrams

[Richard Welty <rwelty@domain.elided>]

On Tue, 23 Jul 2002 12:48:05 -0700 alfacybersite <acs@domain.elided> wrote:
> I'm not sure what the copyright is on the Alfa CD discs, but assume they
> came from copyrighted material. Bottom line, can they be used to
> reproduce quality hard copies?

that's a good question. first of all, IANAL, so therefore this can't
possibly be legal advice.

the original copyright is of course Alfa's (or Fiat's for newer cars.) at
most, Cardisc has what is called a "collection copyright" over the
particular presentation of material; i seriously doubt that Alfa/Fiat would
have done anything other than license the material for use by Cardisc.

in other words, if you take material off the Cardisc and reproduce it,
shorn of the Cardisc value add of the convenient CD-ROM packaging and
software, then any resulting beef will be with Fiat's lawyers. they may
be somewhat nastier than Cardisc's lawyers, they're probably getting paid
more.

some of the older material may no longer be covered by a copyright; they do
age and eventually expire, but they can also be renewed a couple of times
before the final expiration occurs. whether proper steps were taken by
Alfa/Fiat with respect to this renewal is also a big unknown to me.

> If I understand correctly, both the national and 'local' AROC's have
> libraries. Could their archives be made available to reproduce
> 'original' wiring diagrams - or have they been 'thumbed through' far too
> often?

same deal with the Cardisc source -- it's probably still Fiat's copyright,
and all other things being equal, i personally don't like to mess with
lawyers who have been retained by very large corporations.

> Sure wish someone would step up to the plate and take over getting some
> (if not all) of these diagrams reproduced.

i think you need to resolve the copyright/licensing issues first. i'll
presume that Cardisc already did this once, so it can't be that difficult.
of course, it might also be the case that they didn't resolve it, and
simply haven't gotten onto Fiat's radar screen yet, but more than likely,
they did the necessary groundwork.

richard
--
Richard Welty                                         rwelty@domain.elided
Averill Park Networking                                         518-573-7592
              Unix, Linux, IP Network Engineering, Security
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