unethical and illegal behavior on the part of some

[Fenton Murray]

I think both sides need to take a deep breath here. Techs, lets not brag about what we can do with all the info in the PPA while Mr. Ashley has a fit about it. Show the man some respect. Mr. Ashley, I've bought probably 6 copies of your book over 30 years, same with a lot of other guys on this list. We're your market, the only thing that is going to happen as a result of this activity is your book will become even more well known in the industry, if that's possible. Let's take our lawyers off speed dial before one accidentally goes off and somebody gets shot. Man, I don't think it would do the reputation of your book and Mr. Pierce's legacy much good if you started suing the Piano Technicians.
Fenton (not my real name)
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Israel Stein 
  To: pianotech at ptg.org 
  Sent: Friday, February 29, 2008 7:48 AM
  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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