Bernie Hutchins, Electronotes, Copyrights

[jhaible]

Thank you Sean, for collecting these quotes.

>From all information I have seen so far, B.H. would _not_ have
the law on his side. I would not fight him, nevertheless.
If he doesn't want his drawings displayed, do him the favor.
Not in order to avoid some damage of your own, but rather
to prevent B.H. from doing further damage to _his_ reputation.
This all is such a sad story. It all had a very bad start,
an acknowledged senior of electronic music design
running into scans of EN drawings as a (then) newbie on the 
web.
My personal dream would have been that he joined us on
synth-diy. I think that this mailing list is a worthy 
continuation of what EN used to be in the "analogue days".
But well.
It's hard to show him that we are not his enemy, when he
"hacks" into pages that aren't even linked to our homepages.
What next ? Publishing password protected zip files on
free servers ? Only joking - but you get the idea.
I think we are perfectly within the law when we publish 
non-copyrighted material like most of the original EN
stuff. And even if we were not, there would be ways to do it 
unpunished. Ignoring that means closing ones (his) eyes
for the facts.

Maybe the person (Du weißt wen ich meine) who recently
complained about another vastly delayed EN order (prepaid !)
should raise his voice a little louder in order to refocus
B.H.'s attention to his business. No, I wouldn't be glad to
see a "BAD TRADER: B.H. ?" thread on Analogue Heaven
either (with B.H. not abbreviated, but with the question mark
in place ...), but this whole affair reminds me of the title
of my favorite Gentle Giant album: IN A GLASS HOUSE.

There is another wise proverb about doing good things to your
enemy and thererby collecting burning coals on his head.
I'd retract the published circuits, in exactly that sense.

Just my opinion - hope this will offend no one.

JH.


----------
> Von: Sean Costello <costello at seanet.com>
> An: Romeo Fahl <8brain at spiritone.com>
> Cc: synth-diy at mailhost.bpa.nl
> Betreff: Re: Bernie Hutchins, Electronotes, Copyrights
> Datum: Donnerstag, 25. Februar 1999 20:57
> 
> Romeo Fahl wrote:
> 
> > I have some schematics on my webserver, in a directory that I've never
> > included on any webpage, some of which are from Electronotes.  I have
not
> > found any copyright notices in Electronotes, save for the Musical
Engineer's
> > Handbook.  This morning I received a message from Bernard Hutchins
which
> > I've included below.  Do I, indeed have to remove the images from my
site?
> 
> Hey Romeo:
> 
> Depends on when the images are from, and where you obtained them from. 
> Most of the Electronotes newsletters had no copyright on them. 
> Automatic copyrighting of printed material started to take place in 1979
> or so; before then, if it didn't have a copyright notice, it wasn't
> copyrighted.  Now, some of the Electronotes stuff does have explicit
> copyrights - the Musical Engineer's Handbook and the Preferred Circuit
> Collection are two that come to mind.  However, the vast majority of the
> newsletters do not have copyright markings on them, and are thus NOT
> COPYRIGHTED.  Bernie Hutchins himself addresses this in Electronotes #95
> (November 1978), p. 20:
> 
> [begin quote]
> 
> Q: I see that most of your material is not copyrighted.  Why is this?
> 
> A: Do you see our material being copied _any_more_than_ the material of
> others who do have a copyright?  Did you ever see anyone look for a
> copyright notice before making a copy? Most people assume that it is
> there, and yet it makes absolutely no difference to them as to whether
> or not they make a copy, or two or there [sic], etc. So, you see,
> nothing would be changed if we had the copyright notice there.  That's
> why it's not there.  There is no way to protect printed material as long
> as we are going to also have copy machines available. In the same way
> that it does not matter to those who do not ask permission to copy, it
> does not seem to matter whether the copyright notices is there or not to
> those who do ask permission.  We have a good number of requests to use
> our material, and are always happy to reply in the affirmative to those
> with the courtesy to ask.
> 
> [end quote]
> 
> It is obvious from this that the majority of information, drawings, etc.
> in Electronotes are therefore NOT under copyright.  As far as ownership
> of the circuits themselves, Bernie Hutchins explains in the next
> paragraph:
> 
> [begin quote]
> 
> Q: Do you patent your circuits, or are they covered by any sort of
> protection?
> 
> A: We have no patents or any legal claim on any of our circuits.  They
> are for the individual use and edification of our readers.  The only
> claim we have would be the usual practices of being given credit for
> ideas that our readers may want to pass on further.  We would hate to
> see one of our circuits published elsewhere without being given credit
> as the source.  This is just a matter of common courtesy and fair play.
> 
> [end quote]
> 
> I hope this information is of assistance.
> 
> Sean Costello (who obtained the above information from a complete set of
> Electronotes purchased from Bernie Hutchins)
>