service manuals, legal issues

[Smile]

I would like to ask about legal issues concerning hosting and sharing service manuals?

There seems to be many sites without any problems selling these but I wonder do they have a license or what? Some manuals state that they are for inside use and some state nothing, then again I've seem canon manuals without any information how should they be used.

 

[ghwellsjr]

If the material is copyrighted, you should ask the owner of the copyright. Maybe they will be happy to let their manuals be distributed freely.

 

[websnail]

If you look carefully you'll find that most of these sites are based in Eastern Europe or countries where the copyright law is a little "loose" to say the least.

Some years back I queried manuals4u.com about why their Canon manuals regularly disappeared from the site navigation and apparently it was because Canon were active legally and would send out cease and desist letters to the site owners as well as a few others. Other printer manufactures don't bother for whatever reason..

Personally I'd avoid hosting them commercially (ie: for profit) and be careful about wide distribution as a general rule..

 

[Smile]

Thanks for your input, It's just I wanted to host some manuals as additional data users can download, some of them are hard to find. It seems canon has not only bad gear service worldwide (thats my personal experience), but thinks that a user whose printer broke down can't know how to open the damn thing.

Like you say most sites are located in eastern countries maybe its because it is common to include full manual with electronic goods. Only in westerns world there seems to be dual manual system to make even the knowledgeable user to pay for even opening the damn thing!

 

[websnail]

Thanks for your input, It's just I wanted to host some manuals as additional data users can download, some of them are hard to find. It seems canon has not only bad gear service worldwide (thats my personal experience), but thinks that a user whose printer broke down can't know how to open the damn thing.

Well there's probably liability issues at stake as well as a few other genuine concerns about people doing something that would/could cause damage to the end-user and/or the printer itself.

Like you say most sites are located in eastern countries maybe its because it is common to include full manual with electronic goods. Only in westerns world there seems to be dual manual system to make even the knowledgeable user to pay for even opening the damn thing!

Nah.. The primary reason for the things being available in countries where the copyright law is loose is because it's hard to take them to court and get the injunction required. Some of the rumours I've heard regarding why SSC dropped off the map would seem to bear that out (but that's a different story).

In essence, the companies will be looking to protect themselves against consumers suing for things like waste ink ruining their carpet because they used a service manual to take the printer apart and it leaked... but also looking to protect the relationship with their service departments and engineers who pay heavily for these resources and associated tools, jigs, etc... for servicing purposes.

I can see all sides of the argument but frankly if I want to self-service and there's no good reason not to then I don't expect someone to claim I'm too stupid if I'm happy to accept the responsibility for my own actions. Unfortunately when you get someone successfully suing McDonalds for "making [them] fat" you have to see why they don't think we can be responsible... Too many idiots, not enough common-sense.