[sdiy] - Service Manual Project -

[Rainer Buchty]

On Mon, 21 May 2007, Mo Rosati wrote:

> Your right, the biggest concern is BANDWIDTH ( specifically the cost 
> of bandwidth ).

Nah, the biggest concern is *legal*.

You need to make sure for every file that the company or its current 
rightholder doesn't mind. There are companies which are basically out of 
synth business, but still require you to sign an NDA(!) for getting the 
service manual of their early 1980s gear -- thinking of Kawai here, for 
instance.

Other companies made arrangements with local "industrial copyists" such 
as Schaltungsdienst Lange in Germany which e.g. sells all the Yamaha 
manuals, or still sell all the old stuff by themselves (Roland).

With companies out of their former business (like Ensoniq, Emu) it still 
can be a limbo. It would be a shame if either your provider just deletes 
everything because some lawyer had a bad morning, or if you get into 
trouble for the very same reason. Not sure whether you want to go the 
way to acquire (a) an anonymous domain and (b) host everything on some 
far-out island which doesn't give a damn about IP concerns.

Just remember how Roland went after the MT32 emulator project because it 
was using their "copyrighted" set of waveform samples... So just because 
something is old, doesn't necessarily mean that the companies don't care 
anymore.

To Julian: copyright expires after 50-70 years, which is e.g. why the US 
faced the "Lex Disney" to prevent Mickey Mouse falling into public 
domain and why several older musicians start to complain as their late 
50s recordings also leave copyright protection.

Rainer