Illegal CD copy

Just saw this ***THREAD*** over on HMEM where the poster is pleased to have purchased what is likely to be a rip-off CD. As far as I know Model Engineer never produced or sanctioned a CD.

To save following the link the post reads:-

"Just found a CD copy of Model Engineer from 1901 thru 2014 on ebay for $29.95 including shipping. Believe it is available out of Canada, provider sent me a copy on one issue that I was able to download and print without difficulty. Sure will beat collecting stacks of magazines and being able to print any article for easy future reference. Haven't received it yet but will give you a report after receiving the CD."

John

Edited By Journeyman on 17/08/2018 17:01:24

It's not very complete either as the last issue was number 4593 and this collection apparently only has somewhere around 1600 mags.

There was, many, many years ago, long before this forum ever existed a collection of ME's from a public library in the US that were scanned and OCR'd. That collection was distributed person to person, for free or just the cost of the media if I recall correctly, on something like 20 CD's, so at 650MB it totalled around 13GB or around 3 DVD' s. It covered up to the 1980's with lots missing, no idea how many magazines were scanned.

The UK situation might be different but pre-1923 issues would be out of copyright in the US, with multiple authors per issue it's not 100% clear what is the status of the rest of it.

The legalities are indeed questionable, but the usefulness of having something essentially archived forever and readable without repeatedly thumbing through increasingly fragile bits of paper taking up lots of shelf space and with rusty staples are IMHO immense.

You seem to have scared them off. The listing has been taken off Fleabay.

MTM don't seem inclined to spend the money on lawyers to pursue these matters though. Discs of pirate copies of MEW going back to issue 1 are regularly posted for sale on eBay. Probably cost more to pursue the legalities than it would be worth in terms of lost revenue from subscribers to the official back issues, which I believe only go a certain way back. (Certainly not to 1901 in the case of ME!)

It's a shame MTM don't sell an official set of discs of back issues but I suppose the cost of scanning in the case of ME would be phenomenal so price would have to be high. And once the discs were out there, pirate copies would appear about one day later.

But But But if MTM did do this, someone would copy it and sell it cheaper on the giant "Flee"! Sadly , many designs have suffered and have been lost due to "Copyright" issues, many now in the realms of obscurity cannot legally be reproduced despite the originals being lost by the so called new "Owners" but are still "Protected".

And re scanning being too expensive, a few years ago, a group of ME enthusiasts offered to scan the entire MEW collection in their own possession FOR FREE, (many hands make light work) from issue 1 to 150. This was rejected BUT months later, "Official" copies on CD were offered from the mags owners and what a pigs ear they had made at scanning stage.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions , - - - but some low life will always try to rip a fast buck on others efforts.

Regards Ian.

And as a quick edit, two inches of shelf space is worth far more than 20 feet of clutter.

Edited By Circlip on 18/08/2018 11:40:26

It will be the same one that was around a few years ago

Call me old fashioned but I still prefer paper copies of magazines and books, I find them easier to flip from page to page when reading an article. If I ever need a page for reference in the workshop I will scan and copy that page and use that saves the page getting dirty and when finished destroy the copy.

There is a woodworking disc going around that half of what is on it is just plans from the internet many are copyright material and the rest are what can be found for free some of them don't even have the complete plans.

Do I think it is wrong Yes

I do not see the point of putting it all on 'puter. I have every issue of MEW in hard copy, together with every ME 1930 to date + a number of miscellaneous vols back to no. 1. In other words, nearly complete.

I once trawled through the pre - 1960 MEs, photocopying only one off articles of interest to me. Sometime soon, I intend to get the copies in some sort of logical order and make an index of them. The difference in quantity of paper in the interesting items compared with the sheer bulk of paper in the original mags from which the copies were made is simply staggering. Then I will have one last trawl through for any multi issue series articles of personal interest before disposal of the originals. I won't buy any missing vols; will just go to the club which has them and study their copies. I have frequently been emailed in the past with offers to supply me with the missing vols., often at silly prices of up to £30 each! Oh yeah?

So far my method has worked well for me but I must now make final decisions on downsizing such a formidable pile of paper.

It's very complicated.

Our copyright in the typographical arrangement of the magazines lasts 25 years. This is just how they look, it is nothing to do with copyright in the content. It just means that 25 years after a magazine is published 'X' could compile all their own articles together and republish them as originally published, for example.

The copyright in any articles written anonymously is 70 years.

For all work copyright to a named author (including an employee) is 70 years after their death.

This is why we agree an unlimited licence with authors imagine trying to track down the copyright holders of long-dead contributors to seek agreement to publish a back issue...

Potential costs and returns from scanning all the back issues is prohibitive as no doubt it would be pirated within days. So all the 'helpful' 'well-meaning' folks making DVDs available are essentially starving the law-abiding of access to back issues in such a format.

Hello Fred,

Of course it's 'potential' as we haven't incurred it yet.

I do know that the cost of re-scanning the back issues that were not produced electronically to a higher standard that the existing archive is forecast to be significantly higher than the returns from selling them.

We have to consider the impact of piracy as a significant proportion of readers subscribe to access the archive.

The kindly DVD sellers? Well 99% of them have never scanned an issue, they just buy someone else's and then clone it. They don't have to worry about quality or completeness and only have to cover the price of the DVD and a stamp. So they sell it for a 'couple of pounds' and effectively put a limit on what we could charge for a high-quality, complete DVD. They also duplicate a handful at a time, while we would have to do a run of several hundreds or even thousands.

So while pirates both limit the size of the market and the price for official, quality, DVDs, it's unlikely we can make sufficient profit to make the exercise worthwhile.

Don't complain about a publisher wanting to make a profit out of their publications - there would be very few magazines at all if they couldn't make a profit.

It's ridiculous to suggest the DVD pirates are selling their 'products' out of a sense of altruism - they rip off the work of hundreds of people producing magazines and thousands of people writing them to line their own pockets.

If an 'official' DVD ever appears its function will be largely be to promote the magazine rather than to make a huge profit.

Neil

Incidentally - how can the DVD pirates ' provide a valuable service ' to 'the law abiding' if their 'product' is illegal?

Well, that's an "interesting" first post by Fred. All guns blazing, pity he seems to have shot himself in the foot. That's slapstick comedy for you, or it's his Chinese/Scottish ancestry.

Andrew

Edited By Andrew Johnston on 10/06/2019 10:57:40

Is fred one of those that copy the machine details, from machine based fora sites - and sell poor hard copies to unsuspecting machine users (who do not realise the manuals are available free from many sources)? Just wondering....

Careful, Fred's got an army you know...……...

A slightly different situation, but all the archive of the Horological Journal has been scanned (from 1858 I believe) and is available to members on the BHI website. What's more, it's been OCR'd which makes the text searchable. I suspect that there's more interest in ME back numbers than HJ.

The early editions of ME are well over 100 years old now and likely to remain of some interest to future Model Engineers. Paper copies can be found, sometimes very cheaply but the supply can only be decreasing as no doubt some get binned following the demise of their last owner. Neil outlines the difficulty in making material protected by ownership rights available but you get the feeling that nobody can benefit from owning the rights so what is the point of ownership? I am all in favour of creators being paid for their work but at the moment copyright law seems to frustrate making money from your work, Noddy Holder has a very nice pension from the royalties from one song, I doubt that even the most popular edition of ME would ever make anyone rich. I suppose eventually ME will fall out of copyright due to the time passed.

Mike

A bit out of season, Mike. But for those who don’t know who Noddy is:

**LINK**

.

A munificent gesture by the Antiquarian Horological Society, I believe.

MichaelG.

I doubt they are any more legit but 200 or so issues of ME are available to download from the Wayback machine - www.archive.org

Nick

Edited By Nick Clarke 3 on 10/06/2019 14:29:27

" I do know that the cost of re-scanning the back issues that were not produced electronically to a higher standard that the existing archive is forecast to be significantly higher than the returns from selling them. "

Yes, but your predecessors were offered the service FREE, now long gone as the offer died with the guy who made it and at least all the pages would have been scanned and collated in the correct order.

Unfortunately the big "C" word covers publications long out of print and copies have long been "Stored" at the local tip over the decades.

Hopefully, the 4 issues of a long defunct mag. I'm trying to complete will turn up before my toes do.

Regards Ian.

I suppose there are some who don’t know the song or person, remarkably I have met youngsters who claim they have not heard of the Beatles, at least they get a chance to hear Slade and Noddy's song every Christmas.

Mike

Not really true Fred, we quite often get a request on here for a copy of a particular article and someone can usually provide it. In cases like this MEM don't take the post down and take the view that as the scan is not being done for profit it is fair enough to allow it even though it is not for private use by the magazines owner.

It is also possible to copy an old mag if your library holds old issues and most clubs will have an archive that members can take scans/copies from. Though with whole volumes of ME selling for as little as £2.00 from dealers it is often cheaper to buy them than pay for copies or scans with the bonus that you get the authentic smell of an old magazine.

There are still some coptright issues even if the old mags were scanned. On of the reasons the previous editor David Clarke declined the offer was that after scanning some older issues and making them available on this website certain parties wanted them taken down as it would have affected sales of books which were basically just a reprint of the articles so to save possible legal costs links to all of the scans were removed from the site. That would still be the case today and add to the cost of publishing a CD if there were legal challanges to be fought. 

Edited By JasonB on 11/06/2019 07:37:33