Re: bitsavers.org and Symbolics documents

On 13 Mar 2009, at 20:52, Miles Nordin wrote:

> Are you asking if it's a violation of copyright to photograph the
> spines of your books on the bookshelf?

Obviously, he was asking if it was in breach of copyright to post the  
contents.  I'm not quite sure what you were trying to say, if  
anything, but you don't seem to have addressed the actual question at  
all.  Which is a shame, as it's an interesting problem - not just for  
Symbolics materials, but for old-and-no-longer-commercially-valuable  
material in general.

I've often thought that it would be reasonable if the maximum penalty  
for a violation of copyright was bounded by the possibly commercial  
value, which here would, I guess, be zero or very close to that.  But  
that actually doesn't work very well, because it would mean that if  
someone stole (for instance) copies of my collection of photographs,  
which clearly have no commercial value at all, I would have no  
recourse, when they *do* have great value to me and (on privacy  
grounds) I don't want them spewed all over the net.

Copyright is a complicated issue, and there are no glib solutions.

--tim