unethical and illegal behavior on the part of some

[david at piano.plus.com]

I too agree with the thought that a professional tuner/technician should
buy his or her own copy of Pierce, or whatever similar publication covers
one's own country best. (The Musician's Piano Atlas was better for the
UK).

It's professional, it's organised, it's decent. The tuner should carry it
and have it available to look up in the customer's home.

As a legal point, though, Pierce is on shaky ground, copyright-wise.

David Porrit, you say:
"There’s really nothing to discuss here.  The owner of a “copyright” is
the only one who has the “right” to “copy” the material.  You can use the
information, you can read from it, you can make decisions on the
information but you CAN NOT copy it.

The end".

Yes, but the point at issue here is that Pierce DOES NOT OWN THE FACTS in
his book. All Pierce owns is his *tabulated arrangement* of the facts.

It is therefore certainly illegal to make photocopies or scanned copies of
the book's pages (individual copies of small amounts are permitted for
certain purposes).

But it is NOT illegal to take the facts in the book and type them up in
some other format - no matter how much "sweat of the brow" Pierce lavished
on collecting the facts together in his book.

Thus, if some philanthropic person were to type up a list of piano numbers
and years of manufacture in his own format, and put it on the internet,
with or without reference to Pierce or to either of the other piano number
books of which I am aware, Pierce would be on very shaky ground trying to
make a case that he held copyright in the *information*.

The precedent that "sweat of the brow" in compiling information is
irrelevant to copyright, comes from no less a court than the US Supreme
Court (see my previous comments re. the Feist case).

Best,

David.