unethical and illegal behavior on the part of some

[David Boyce]

"Does this mean if a customer asks me what year her piano was made, I am not allowed to give her that information, and include some info about the piano, without first asking Larry?

I've got an idea. Why don't all of us call his office every time we want to share information with one of our customers. Maybe a hundred phone calls a day will let him ease off a little. 

Now, I agree that an electronically produced list of all the manufacturers and serial numbers is illegal. But just one name and number? Give me a break.

Wim"

Well exactly, Wim!  Well said. That letter threatens far more than it can deliver.  It sounds scary, but it wouldn't stand up at all. 

The only thing they own is their own TYPOGRAPHICAL ARRANGEMENT of the information they have collected. No matter how many years it took them to collect the information, they don't own the information.  

An electronically produced list is NOT illegal, unless it is a reproduced scan of the pages of Pierce.  If you sit and type it all out yourself as a list of numbers etc, in your own arrangement, without any of Pierce's editorial content, that is legal.

For the matter of that, I don't own a copy of Pierce. I get my information from The Musicians Piano Atlas, a UK publication I bought in the 1980s, now out of print.  It's very largely the same information as Pierce, but with more on English pianos, and of course in its own typographical arrangement.

The sad fact is that Pierce as a book really does face the possibility, for good or ill, of becoming obsolete because of the existence of the internet, and there is very little they can do about it.

David.
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