[walleye]

Originally Posted by peabody

I tried to keep this in a PM but since you made it public I will respond.

I am sorry you took offence to my trying to offer my advice.

i did not take offence and i can't see how you arrived at that conclusion.

But you are incorrect since they did NOT just "make a copy". They converted the originals into .pdf files and they are not just "copies".

yes they did and they are exactly that, copies. as i said before, i am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice but please read the provided court decision. in short, they would have to ADD something ORIGINAL to the already existing public domain work for it to be a DERIVED WORK and thus benefit from copyright protection. 1:1 copy even from one media to another does not qualify. it's all there in plain language (well, almost):

[24] There is little doubt that many photographs, probably the overwhelming majority, reflect at least the modest amount of originality required for copyright protection. "Elements of originality . . . may include posing the subjects, lighting, angle, selection of film and camera, evoking the desired expression, and almost any other variant involved." But "slavish copying," although doubtless requiring technical skill and effort, does not qualify. As the Supreme Court indicated in Feist, "sweat of the brow" alone is not the "creative spark" which is the sine qua non of originality. [...]

[25] In this case, plaintiff by its own admission has labored to create "slavish copies" of public domain works of art. While it may be assumed that this required both skill and effort, there was no spark of originality -- indeed, the point of the exercise was to reproduce the underlying works with absolute fidelity. Copyright is not available in these circumstances.

My only concern was that Subsim may view distributing purchased items as improper. I am sorry I tried to help.

subsim can view distributing purchased items as improper but that does not make distributing purchased items improper or illegal which i think is what you imply.

Yes, you may redistribute the item if you received them as copies from the Federal Government, you did not.

see the previous discussion about derived works.

And you also even stated "with the exception of some sub ops monographs" which were the ones that were listed above.

i know for certain that ibiblio's monographs were also purchased from milspec manuals (they were the people who pointed me to them) and they are up on their website for free access. the reason they don't have the submarine monographs is lack of interest from their typical audience.

And I thank you for your offer.

you're welcome.

I will no longer offer any advise since you seem to be upset over this. It was not my intention.

Peabody

again, i don't understand how did you come to this conclusion. disagreement does not imply animosity or enmity, at least not for me.