Hello Jack,
Am 04.04.2023 um 16:57 schrieb Jack Woehr via MIDRANGE-L <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
As a many-times-published author, I *do* understand the problem. The way copyright law works, *if you don't enforce your copyright, you lose it*.
Well, now this will get hairy. What exactly is "copyright"? I'm sure you ask 20 lawyers and get 25 opinions in return. And at least one who claims "it depends!" ;-)
The original takedown request was:
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Dear owner of ibmdocs.pocnet.net, it has come to the attention of IBM that a significant amount of IBM copyright material is reproduced in full on ibmdocs.pocnet.net. This hosting and distribution of IBM copyright material without express written permission from IBM appears to be unauthorized and in violation of IBM terms and conditions for the use of IBM products. We ask that you remove immediately from ibmdocs.pocnet.net all IBM copyright material which you are not authorized to reproduce and distribute. Thank you for your cooperation.
Regards, Paul Taylor.
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One can now dissect the wording and guess what exactly I have failed to comply with.
Maybe they tolerate "some" documentation but not a massive collection such as mine. I usually don't do things half-ways. ;-) But there are other, much smaller and long standing documentation caches to be found on web servers in the internet which stay. Either because there was no takedown request or the request was ignored and no further action took place. I don't know. Since Mr. Taylor refuses to comment any further, there's no definitive answer.
The requestor refers to "terms and conditions" which I neither was aware about, nor are those reproduced in the document samples I reviewed, nor can I be bound to those terms and conditions unless I have been made aware of those before before a mutual contract is valid. At least in German legislation. Not sure if the act of downloading publicly available documentation automatically creates a legally binding contract between me and IBM: I know IBM, but IBM doesn't know who is downloading documentation. Can a contract partner stay anonymous? I doubt that.
His claim is blurry although sounding very official, and there might be ways to legally challenge the wording of him. But as stated before, I don't want to fight but find a mutually acceptable solution in a cooperative way.
"Publishing free of charge" does not equal "Allowing the documentation to lapse into the public domain".
"Ignoring Patrick Schindler publishing your copyrighted work without permission" *does* equal "Allowing the documentation to lapse into the public domain".
Is this so? Each and every document contains a copyright disclaimer, eventhough it was available to the public before. I assume that this effectively prevents that lapse you mention. Even OpenSource code and documentation retains the copyright of the original authors, and is tied to the licensing terms ideally being mentioned in that code's comments.
No matter what, "IBM" said "don't do this", and I adhered. I don't question them to say "no". The documentation was written by people most likely being employed for the sole purpose of writing and processing of documentation. It costed real money to be created. I just want a fair chance for my case to be considered. This is why I seek assistance from a (heavyweight) BP to get from IBM a written, verifiable exceptional permit to be allowed to publish "those" documents.
If it lapses into the public domain, *it can be published with alterations*, possibly *harmful* alterations that would reflect badly on IBM were they to be acted on in a system administration context.
Interesting remark. That is clearly not my intention. I want documentation to stay original, eventhough it's (possibly) erroneous. It's fairly easy to assemble and link a separate addendum pointing out such errors without touching the original document. I don't intent to pester IBM into releasing documentation into the public domain. That would be a dishonoring of the effort to create documentation in the first place. At least to me.
Aside from that, IBM could easily counter such altered documentations to pop up in the internet by not deleting older documentation from their own servers! We're talking about less than 20GB! Space is just not an issue nowadays! But apparently it's cumbersome to have moved documentation from the old Library Server to the new source.
If you'd search for IBM documentation with Google and results show IBM as source and some other sites, which source would you choose? I'd choose IBM, because I can be sure that documentation is original from them. I bet, most other people would do so, too.
ERGO ...
1. To allow Patrick Schindler to publish without permission is unacceptable.
That is comprehensible and I follow (and adhere to) that argument.
2. To vet Patrick Schindler's republication request for permission would cost money.
I question that claim. People are employed anyways and get the same salary, regardless if they handle my case or not. I know I'm unimportant and the primary IBM goal is making money. It's a question of queueing and priority. From experience I know that there are times where there is much work to do and times where there is less work to do, in each and every company. All I ask is to be heard and some dignity.
Even beggars deserve dignity, and I ask no money but permission to do something for the benefit of many more people than just myself. I and some friends have invested considerable work to manually extract metadata from nearly 5000 PDF documents and provided a web crawler friendly presentation. I ask not a single cent for that service and from feedback mails I learned that service was well-received. Because I have filled gap IBM left open.
3. IBM doesn't see the business case to spend the money.
Yes, because business cases do not consider indirect effects. See my comments to Javier Sanchez.
:wq! PoC
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