RMweb Gold ian Posted February 15, 2011 RMweb Gold Share Posted February 15, 2011 FWIW the copyright holder gets a small fee every time their book is borrowed from a library... [Michael Caine mode]Not a lot of people know that[/Michael Caine mode] Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
trisonic Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 I wished I hadn't bothered re-reading this epic! It's less about copyright and more about letting someone else do all the legwork and then sitting back and expecting information to be fed through the Internet without getting off one's ass.................. Best, Pete. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold The Stationmaster Posted February 15, 2011 RMweb Gold Share Posted February 15, 2011 I wished I hadn't bothered re-reading this epic! It's less about copyright and more about letting someone else do all the legwork and then sitting back and expecting information to be fed through the Internet without getting off one's ass.................. Best, Pete. That comment sort of reminds me of the world before the internet - sometime in the last century (well presumably for most of it) - when if you wanted to know about something you had at the very least to do some legwork as far as the local library. Of course the one disadvantage that 'now' does have is that a lot of what folk want to model isn't there to go and look at or photograph ... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
tebee Posted February 15, 2011 Author Share Posted February 15, 2011 It's less about copyright and more about letting someone else do all the legwork and then sitting back and expecting information to be fed through the Internet without getting off one's ass.................. Best, Pete. I hate to say this Pete, as I'm not sure which of us is the oldest, but that's a rather old fashioned attitude - that the achievement is "better" though having been achieved through extra toil and effort. If someone has gone and done all the legwork why should I have to repeat it? If step 1 has been completed by another person what good is severed by me repeating instead of getting on with step 2 and finishing that much quicker. If you take that to it's logical conclusion we should all ignore all the books published on a subject and go and repeat the original research - for what else is using a book other than letting someone else do all the legwork? Tom Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium spamcan61 Posted February 15, 2011 RMweb Premium Share Posted February 15, 2011 There is always 'fair use' in which short extracts are allowed , as long as credited, but these days we have mobile phone PHoto-pickers who think every shot is a lottery win. The trouble with 'fair use' is its so hairy fairy in its description , that no one wants to defend a test case to see where the no-go area starts. I thought the limits for 'fair use' within the UK are fairly well defined, and indeed are on a poster next to the photocopier in my local library, and presumably most others. From memory Production of a single copy (physical or electronic) is limited to the following in order to be considered 'fair use' One article from a magazine or other periodical. One chapter from a book. Some other guidance is here, under 'what is fair dealing':- http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p27_work_of_others But as baldrick25 says, no-one wants to be a test case. Incidentally, why does the hobby need young blood specifically?, new blood yes, but I don't see a specific reason for trying to attract young blood. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest dilbert Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 If someone has gone and done all the legwork why should I have to repeat it? If step 1 has been completed by another person what good is severed by me repeating instead of getting on with step 2 and finishing that much quicker. If you take that to it's logical conclusion we should all ignore all the books published on a subject and go and repeat the original research - for what else is using a book other than letting someone else do all the legwork? Are you assuming that step 1 in this instance is 100% perfect ? Research is also about finding something new/different and even occasionally presenting an opposing view to the original findings - information that may have been overlooked, lost, abandoned, squirreled away or whatever... Seeing my son "researching" is soul destroying - it's case of how well he's learnt to manipulate ctrl-a, ctrl-c (or x) and ctrl-v functions. Take away Google and place several books with references to the topic in question is a different approach - you have to do the searching and not Google. Odds are that you will retain the infomation better, because you had to do the work... dilbert Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Talltim Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 If we had all thought with those limited minds we would still be in the era of the quill and clay tablet, and with only monks having access to the 'written' text. Well, to be frank the music industry does think with that sort of limited mind, and thats why it is suffering, it hasn't come up with a workable alternative. However the suggestion of making articles/drawings/whatever digitally downloadable for a fee is no different from the music industry model, apart from, as someone mentioned, the smaller market for any one railway related item. However I have seen illegal torrents of films and music that are extremely esoteric and and I'm sure would not have a much larger uptake. While I see your point that restricting access could be seen as a bit elitist, at the moment it is what has kept the railway book industry and similar) from folding in a similar way to what is happening to the music industry. Do you want a situation where only juniorised books about the most popular subjects stand any chance of making money without the authors going world tours? So, if anyone can work out a way of distributing information digitally, without the risk that it is purchased once and then shared, will make a fortune from many information industries. The parallel with library books, or photocopying for your friends is a bit of a red herring. Plenty of people lent their friends records/tapes/CDs before the internet, but it didn't have the same effect on sales that mass file sharing does. Reading the Sheffield library copy of the South Yorkshire Railway (D.L.Franks, Turntable Enterprises, 1971) made me buy my own. It took two years of waiting on eBay, but it was worth it. On a different note, doing the research can be fun. Someone upthread mentioned having to go the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) in Manchester to find something out. Well, thats nice day out, go by train for the proper experience! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
PGN Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 I am not myself convinced that copyright is damaging the hobby by inhibiting research - although maybe I might take a different view did I not enjoy borrowing rights at one of the copyright libraries. Where, however, I think that intellectual property law as a whole IS damaging the hobby is when the train operating companies insist on the payment of license fees by model manufacturers who wish to replicate their liveries on their models. One would have thought that the TOCs would actually welcome the additional publicity, but no! Far from it! They're in it for every penny they can get, and since their lawyers have advised them that they can charge a fee, then they will charge a fee. (And let's face it, they spent a FORTUNE on design and image consulants to produce the sort of nursery-style paint daubs and scribbles that pass for liveries nowadays, and they obviously want to recoup a little of it!) The effect for modellers is that EITHER the manufacturers choose not to offer models in certain liveries, or they have to charge more for them in order to recover their outlay. None of this affects those of us whose interests are exclusively pre-1923, of course. But for teh modern-outline modeller, it is celarly damaging to the hobby. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jim s-w Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 It gave an me epiphany as I realized that where as us older modelers are happy to have a vast library on paper and go to search there for information or go out an order a new book when we do not have the data, the younger generation are more used to instant gratification and want it now! Their first instinct is to go out and search the web. Is this one of the reasons we are finding it so hard to get new blood into the hobby? Hi Tom The hobby has nothing to do with instant gratification though and anyone of that way of thinking will get frustrated and leave anyway. Models take time to build, they take effort. If someone cant be bothered to look any further than the internet they are in the wrong hobby. Lets NOT try to sell railway modelling to the instant playstation generation. It wont happen. Theres always a steady influx to the hobby of middle aged/ retired chaps. The future of the hobby in no way depends on youth. Regarding copyright look at it like this. Yes its helpful to scan a book and email it to someone (ignoring the legalities) but you have paid for that book. It takes time to scan it, why should you give it to someone who refuses to pay for the book? If everyone refused that person would have to buy the book themselves and as such a small cash injection to the hobby and that publisher. Any hobby certainly has no future if everyone wants everything for free. As someone who has produced drawings copyright protects me. I give them away on my site for nothing but thats my choice. It is not for anyone else to do likewise with my drawings just because I do, Cheers Jim Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorious NSE Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 Nope. Okay, i'll just go back to reading back issues of Pacific Railnews from 1991 then, which apparently can't be there because it can't be done.... So, if anyone can work out a way of distributing information digitally, without the risk that it is purchased once and then shared, will make a fortune from many information industries. As I suggested, put the information out there *after* it has had it's natural run and ceases to be available conventionally. Most demand for the information will have been fulfilled, and any earnings "lost" through an illegal copy would not have made any money as a secondhand magazine being sold or a photocopy being passed on either. I don't particularly hold that a magazine article would be like a music or video file either, a magazine article would be something you would probably use in your specific research, it may hang around on your hard drive, it might not, but either way you are not likely to "reuse" on a regular basis. Less so for video but I would have thought music tracks in particular you would keep and reuse, that is certainly the case for any music tracks I download. (legally I might add) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianwales Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 Hi all 2 questions come to mind here reading this thread, 1st, if I want to make a model of which I have a drawing or photos in a book or magazine, but, I don't wanttomess the book or mag up on the workbench am I breaking copyright by photocopying the plaans or photos to use on my workbench? 2nd, I purchsed a book off ebay some time ago which has a couple of blank pages in it, I contacted the publisher to ask if I could obtain a photocopy of the relevant pages and they didn't have any source of the required pages as it was an oldish book, one of Paul Shannon's Freight only books, I was told my best course was to find someone who had the book and ask them to photocopy the missing pages, when I asked about copyright I was told this isn't a problem in these particular circumastances, but, I couldn't ask someone to do so on this list because it would be a breach of copyright and people on here reading the request would only have my word the conversation with the publisher took place. Ian Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sailor Charon Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 MOSIM have a lot of the Beyer Peacock engineering drawings on line - it would be worth picking through them first: http://emu.msim.org.uk/htmlmn/ Thanks for that. I'd forgotten I'd looked there. (I knew I'd looked at something on line, but couldn't quite remember what.) The problem is, that I'm not sure whether I typed my search in wrongly, or it isn't there... Actually, having had another go, the problem is that there doesn't seem to be a way to search by drawing number. So, if I search for 1922, I get a wholebuncha drawings including No 93537. No matter what field I type that number into, it doesn't find it... Oh well.. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold ian Posted February 15, 2011 RMweb Gold Share Posted February 15, 2011 Okay, i'll just go back to reading back issues of Pacific Railnews from 1991 then, which apparently can't be there because it can't be done.... They may have the rights to do it, there again they may not and not realise it. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorious NSE Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 They may have the rights to do it, there again they may not and not realise it. As it's the publisher themselves that has done the deal I would assume they know a lot more about their arrangement than I do... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sailor Charon Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 Hi all 2 questions come to mind here reading this thread, 1st, if I want to make a model of which I have a drawing or photos in a book or magazine, but, I don't wanttomess the book or mag up on the workbench am I breaking copyright by photocopying the plaans or photos to use on my workbench? Ian Well, I hope not, because I'd be in trouble otherwise. I suspect that, as long as it's a book or magazine you own, that you're allowed to do it. (Fair use, personal use of something along those lines). Having said that, and knowing how complicated it can be with things like console emulation... [Actually it's very simple. You can't do it. It doesn't matter if you own what you're emulating or not, it doesn't matter if you created the image yourself (because, I suspect, you're not allowed to use anything that can do it)] Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium spamcan61 Posted February 15, 2011 RMweb Premium Share Posted February 15, 2011 Hi all 2 questions come to mind here reading this thread, 1st, if I want to make a model of which I have a drawing or photos in a book or magazine, but, I don't wanttomess the book or mag up on the workbench am I breaking copyright by photocopying the plaans or photos to use on my workbench? 2nd, I purchsed a book off ebay some time ago which has a couple of blank pages in it, I contacted the publisher to ask if I could obtain a photocopy of the relevant pages and they didn't have any source of the required pages as it was an oldish book, one of Paul Shannon's Freight only books, I was told my best course was to find someone who had the book and ask them to photocopy the missing pages, when I asked about copyright I was told this isn't a problem in these particular circumastances, but, I couldn't ask someone to do so on this list because it would be a breach of copyright and people on here reading the request would only have my word the conversation with the publisher took place. Ian Both examples are within the limits of fair use as I outlined above, so no, there is no copyright breach in either case IMHO. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
tebee Posted February 15, 2011 Author Share Posted February 15, 2011 Hi Tom The hobby has nothing to do with instant gratification though and anyone of that way of thinking will get frustrated and leave anyway. Models take time to build, they take effort. If someone cant be bothered to look any further than the internet they are in the wrong hobby. Lets NOT try to sell railway modelling to the instant playstation generation. It wont happen. Theres always a steady influx to the hobby of middle aged/ retired chaps. The future of the hobby in no way depends on youth. Cheers Jim On the contrary, for some people it's all about instant gratification, otherwise why would all be rushing down to the model shop, wallet in our hot, sweaty little hand, the minute a new release comes out? But railway modeling is a broad church, it encompasses everything from the ready-to-run addict to the finescale scratch-builder and all sades in-between, for some of these patience is indeed a virtue. But todays PlayStation generation is tomorrows middle aged, it's not safe to assume they will change their ways as they mature if we want the hobby to have a long term future. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenton Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 It's less about copyright and more about letting someone else do all the legwork and then sitting back and expecting information to be fed through the Internet without getting off one's ass.................. I see that as simply "Internet Denial" - a sort of it exists but I'm not going to use it statement. Consider the same when the steam locomotive was invented. It will get you from A to B faster and further - but I'm not going to use it because I have 2 feet. The internet is with us and unless we wish a police state to turn it off we all have to learn to use it to our benefit or stick our heads in the prehistoric mud from whence we came. One of the biggest problems I have with copyright is that I could go out "get off my ass" and do the legwork to research say a particular wagon. I could visit a preserved exhibit, take photos and measurements. However, if make a drawing I run the risk of breaking copyright - simply because someone did it before me. If my intention is not to profit but to make it freely available it seems the potential risk is even greater simply because there are some over paid laywers gasping for more money hired by the original publisher. After all how is it possible to prove that the photographs that I took were original and the measurements that I took were mine and not just copied from the other guy's. Impossible when you are being threatened by the legal mafia. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
coachmann Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 Copyright could be the latest casualty in a smokescreens used by people who think it is perfectly alright to gain off the toil of others. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bernard Lamb Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 If you take that to it's logical conclusion we should all ignore all the books published on a subject and go and repeat the original research - for what else is using a book other than letting someone else do all the legwork? Tom Not ignore but digest with a large amount of distrust. If you are interested in a subject you read a book. If you are very interested you read another book. You then note the differences. I find historians can be very blinkered. Not just railway historians but let's not go there at the moment. You can then follow up and expand on the original research. Most railway books on lines closed following on from Beeching were published too early to contain any information from government sources. There is a 30 year embargo on such information. The forthcoming book on the Waverley Route for example will be the first to quote chapter and verse on the political situation behind a story that many people would claim to know quite well. On a different note a friend of mine writes books about famous motor cyclists. The subjects are only too willing to provide help as they trust him to be honest and in quite a few cases are very pleased to have their true story told. The law on copyright is probably in need of overhaul but how to do that in these days of the internet is another matter. Having had dealings with three government departments in the last week over the use of information I do find the current system a bit trying at times. Bernard Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenton Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 Copyright could be the latest casualty in a smokescreens used by people who think it is perfectly alright to gain off the toil of others. Support slavery or employment in the capital system? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
meil Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 Section 29 of the 1988 Act (as amended) makes it clear that copying for non-commercial private research is not a breach of copyright. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold PhilH Posted February 15, 2011 RMweb Gold Share Posted February 15, 2011 Although this is a huge generalisation would it not be fair to say that 'history' is almost subjective anyway? - what I mean by this is that as a sixty + year old my railway history information is indeed usually to be found in obscure books and other hard to find copyrighted sources. Perhaps for a 16 year old newcomer to the hobby his history begins and ends with Class 66s, and modern buildings, track layouts, rolling stock etc, for which information is much more readily available on the internet. As I said, a huge generalisation but hopefully you get my drift. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
shortliner Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 Phil - I think you are right, and as an oldie myself, I have read over time all sorts of things that have stuck. So when someone pokes about on t'internet and then asks a question, I can sometimes help out, by passing the info on - if the answer was in a long out of print book or magazine the questioner might never have found it! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pennine MC Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 Most would have no problem with an author/publisher getting payment for a book or magazine when in print or when out of print but still in commercial circulation. There comes a time however, when realistically there's no more money to be made from a publication. I'd like to think that at some time there'll be a better differentiation between the commercial use of material where long time scales for copyright would seem to make sense, and the non commercial use where some relaxation of the rules may be in order. It may well come from a different interpretation of the study and criticism clauses already present. I'd very much agree with that. Taking the typical example of someone wanting a copy of an article from a magazine that's, say, ten or more years old, I dont think anyone would begrudge tipping up a small sum to cover copyright liabilities - if there was a hypothetical system to actually collect it. But in reality, such a mag would only be obtainable secondhand and (more to the point) as a chance find or after serious effort hunting it out. As has been pointed out, it wouldnt result in any more revenue for the author or publisher anyway, and the idea that copying it for a mate is seriously depriving anybody of anything is a bit silly really. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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