Hey everyone,
I have a few (hundred?) magazines and tech manuals (ie: SoftTalk, Nibbles, AppleCider, a slew of tech manuals such as Gutenburg, AppleDos, BeagleBros) What i would like to do is scan them and put them into PDF or a ebook configuration and put them on a public site for all to have. Id like to know what your thoughts are on this and if i would be stepping into infringement laws concerning copyright with the magazine companies, I know alot of them are out of business but would i get sued for doing this? Im not doing this for profit, im sharing information to the public. anyways id like some thoughts on this.
You need to be somewhat cautious. Typically if someone with the copyright gets upset with what you are doing they will issue a "cease and dissist" paper as a precurser to any lawsuits, so then you could just take the item down.
The Beagle Bros. have declared their stuff to be "freeware" (I'm pretty sure, as they posted the software on the web themselves).
Someone else beat you to the putting Nibble on the web, but I think as JPEGS, PDF is more work, but a cleaner, smaller result (if you OCR the text).
I've considered doing a similar thing with various A][ manuals (in PDF, I've already done up all the paperwork that comes with the Apple //c Memory Expansion Card), and even posting them on this site, but Tom O. requested that if I persue that I make sure that I have written permission from Apple in advance. I just haven't taken the time to persue it, though I think that I will, over the next couple of months.
Good luck with the project.
Mutant_Pie
Great idea !
Thanks a lot !
Greetings
I've got a scanner with automatic-document-feeder set up for this purpose, but it's currently working on another project.
Magazine copyrights are tricky because they have so many contributors. Manuals are less controversial as they're typically owned by the company and useless unless you buy the company's product.
If you'd like to talk about particulars, or want space on Applefritter to post documentation, email me.