unethical and illegal behavior on the part of some

[Dean May]

>>Mr. Rudoff - who owns the server on which this list lives and kindly makes
it available for our use - has asked that this behavior cease. Regardless of
any legal technicalities, this is the only consideration that is relevant
here

 

This is true. So please stop calling other people unethical, because doing
so is passing judgment on them based on some nebulous standard that many
people disagree with. Andy has asked us to stop and that is all that
matters. 

Dean

Dean May             cell 812.239.3359 

PianoRebuilders.com   812.235.5272 

Terre Haute IN  47802

 

  _____  

From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf
Of Israel Stein
Sent: Friday, February 29, 2008 10:48 AM
To: pianotech at ptg.org
Subject: Re: unethical and illegal behavior on the part of some 

 

At 02:01 AM 2/29/2008, Gregor wrote:




I don´t know the US law, but in Germany that´s definetly illegal. A few
years ago a company decided to sell the local phonebooks on CD. Therefore
they paid people in India and China to type it from the printed books. The
printed books were sold by another company. That ended in a court decision
that this is illegal. I think the copyright law is similiar all over the
world, so I think it should be illegal in the USA, too.

 

Gregor


Yes.

It seems that US law at this point is out of whack with the norms and
standards accepted worldwide through international copyright treaties. Until
a fairly recent US Supreme Court decision, most US courts ruled as above,
where copyright protection was extended to the fruits of extensive research.
The Supreme Court, in its great wisdom, struck those decisions down. At this
point a bill has been pending in Congress for several years to make US law
conform to international standards, but to date it has not been acted on.

So, while such protection may be (and I stress "may be" because none of us
here are lawyers) unenforceable in US courts, it is essentially due to a
very narrow legal interpretation by one US court that is not accepted
worldwide. So at the very least, the practice of disseminating the material
publicly, and publishing it through electronic media on a widely accessible
e-mail list  (which constitute a permanent record accessible to a wide
public - and not a single communication to a single person, which is
perfectly fine) is unethical by international standards. 

And I suspect that US law will sooner or later be adjusted to conform with
International standards. It seems that databases generated in Europe have
general copyright protection on the underlying facts, and those generated in
the US do not. That puts US databases at a competitive disadvantage on the
international market - and sooner or later there will be sufficient pressure
from the information industry to fix that. 

All of this puts the PTG and Andy Rudoff in an awkward position, since the
Pierce Atlas is an important industry resource, and the PTG is not
interested in interfering with his ability to generate income from his
business. And by maintaining this mailing list which allows practicing piano
technicians to avoid the purchase of the directory by asking others to
extract facts from this directory and publicly publish them as a permanent
record (which is what posting on this list amounts to) they make the PTG and
Mr. Rudoff accessories to this ethically questionable behavior. 

Mr. Rudoff - who owns the server on which this list lives and kindly makes
it available for our use - has asked that this behavior cease. Regardless of
any legal technicalities, this is the only consideration that is relevant
here. So I suggest that any further questions regarding piano dates be
referred to the Pierce Piano Atlas or some other resource - and not answered
on this list. And I would not blame Mr. Rudoff if he unsubscribes persons
who ignore his request. 

Israel Stein 


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