Posted by James Pepper on January 26, 2000 at 05:38:13 in 152.163.195.196 :
In Reply to: An open letter to all posted by Doug May on January 26, 2000 at 03:11:38:
There are a couple of facts of life here that have to be presented.
Copyrights will not be gotten around with, they will be enforced, therefore individual pictures found in certain books can not be put on the net. The fact that they have those pictures is why people will purchase their book, it is their selling point, so you are not going to find publishers willing to part with their material. If you can not afford it, that is just too bad!
Take Bruce's copies of the Harland and Wolff's plans. They cost a lot of money! Bruce can not reproduce them, you have to go to Harland and Wolff and have them make a copy for you. Or you can buy his set of plans, here on the main page, the ones that they redrew based on photographs and YEARS of research! It isn't his fault that he can not reproduce the Harland and Wolff plans, it is just how it is, the law!
You might say, well it is from a photograph made in 1910, but that photograph may be owned by one individual, or company, the only copy and they will protect it with licenses and copyright the copy of the image. Therefore we all have to be careful of just which picture is seen and transmitted. You can go to the Public Record Office in the UK and if you can find anything (an insider's joke), I think they just recently took off their copyrights to the Titanic stuff, due to the demand of the last few years. But that is the exception. I do not see why Dr. Ballard should share his findings with everyone with all of their detail, it cost a lot for him to do all of that, and he deserves to benefit as much from his work as he possibly can.
Also that special collections library is a private library, the building and its materials were given to the University for the education of the students, but the material belongs to them, the Trust, who owns it all!
I consider the librarians to be my friends, they trust me with those books, so I have access to things that most people do not have access. The association can write anything they want, but you just don't have that kind of "pull" and I would not push it! You can turn them off REAL FAST! A high-handed approach really never gets you "IN" with anyone. This type of information is gained through research and the developement of friendships over time, be happy that we can find what we can.
If you have been copying pictures out of books and scanning them into files to transmit over the internet, you have violated the copyright. What you do not know is that those pictures have digital watermarks in them and it is possible for publishers to find a picture on a website, analyse it and determine that you have violated their copyright. You can manipulate the picture and the digital information will still be present! You get to pay for all of the legal costs in a copyright infringement case and you loose big!
Try to find a copy of Engineering, look in major Universities, it was all copyrighted, doesn't the UK government keep registered copyrighted material somewhere? Go to the Library of congress in Washington, they have it there. Go to libraries and look for it yourself! Have you even tried to look in the Reader's guide for publications on Titanic in magazines at the time? Or go through old Newspapers on microfilm? This stuff is out there, when I post this type of information, I am giving you-all leads, to find even more information!
James Pepper