<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.6000.16608" name=GENERATOR> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>"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?<BR><BR>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. <BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>Wim"</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT><FONT color=#ff0000>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. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0000></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0000>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 <STRONG>don't own the information</STRONG>.  </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0000></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0000>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.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0000></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0000>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.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0000></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0000>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.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0000></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0000>David.</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>