Excellent!
EEC (Europe) is 70 years from the death of a known
author or 70 years from publication if the author is unknown
On 21/08/2015 18:19, tony duell wrote:
If you have some equipment surely it would reasonable to have the
manuals for it.
How the manuals are obtained is open to debate but not if you have the
right to own them.
I would agree (although doubtless lawyers wouldn't :-)).
A problem, though is when a service or technical manual was an optioanl
accessory, which
had to be paid for separately. In that case it is going to be very hard to
prove you had a right
to own it. And yet the manufacturers can no longer supply it, and you want to fix the
<whatever>.
A case in point. I have a 1980s colour graphics terminal here. The user manual
was supplied with it (and
I am pretty sure I have the original), the service manual was an option and I
am pretty sure the previous
owners never had it. But of course I need the schematics, etc to sort out an
EHT fault in it.
In this particular case there is no problem. It's a Tektronix and comes under
(AFAIK) the agreement
posted on bitsavers. And bitsavers had the 2 volumes of service manual
available. So I do not feel
there is anything wrong in this case. But for other manufacturers it could be a
problem.
-tony
