From back when the country believed in railroads and the railroads still believed in themselves. Some steam also. 27 pages.

http://www.waidephoto.com/gallery.php?gid=52

Madame Queen, AT&SF 5000:

http://www.waidephoto.com/details.php?g ... d=&pid=923

Has anyone else noticed that this outfit is claiming ownership of copyrights that are most definitely not theirs ?

Last I checked, the marks of EMD and GE have been in continous use by their owners...

Dave

I think you are correct Dave, reminds me of the outfits that download the Jack Delano steam images from the National Archives web site, then print them and market them on eBay, claiming they own copyright.

MX (Obviously Not My Real Name)

The question that I have is what happened to the remainder of the publications they were pulled from - (most likely Railway Age and/or Railway Mechanical Engineer)?

Tom Cornillie

In the case of many reproduction outfits, they buy the magazines on an internet auction, cut them up so that they can copy the images on a flatbed scanner, throw away the printed content, and then sell the individual page ads on the internet auction after scanning them, to recover their original cost in purchasing the magazine.

While the internet and the internet auctions have been great tools for locating information and artifacts, they have also opened up an entire new business area for people who sell reproductions of things they seldom acquire the proper permission to reproduce. This preys on people who do not realize that in many cases they could purchase an original for less than the asking price for the reproductions.

If you go through the library of high resolution images the National Archives offers for free download, then go to the internet auctions, you will find almost all of them being offered as reproductions, often by outfits that openly claim that they own the copyright to this public property.

This becomes a major concern for the preservation community when there is thought of setting up electronic libraries and archives that would share technical information, manuals, maintenance instructions, and drawings between groups. Anyone who has unlimited access to such a shared library could easily turn it into a personal business operating on the internet auctions, taking advantage of people who do not know it is available elsewhere for free. Just something to think about.

MX (Obviously not My Real Name)

While it is irksome, I wouldn't necessarily define this as being a problem. Making information available for free helps students who have a need for large amounts of information, but do not have the means to pay for it. Speaking from my own experience, I have been willing to spend quite a bit scanning parts of books that I could not afford – or compiling complete documents posted page-by-page at the Library of Congress. Having something available for free in a convenient format is a tremendous bonus, as it allows me to devote reproduction time to writing and analysis

Others, however, may assign a higher value to their time, and find it quite economical to purchase a “free” document printed and/or bound. While this may be seen as profiteering, the seller is assuming the risk in maintaining the necessary resources to make this possible. In the end, information is reaching the widest audience possible – and I think that is the best possible outcome. Encouraging scholarship today is the best way to ensure that there will be a demand for these materials tomorrow.

Tom Cornillie

Yes, time is money. I am not going to broach the entire IP issue.
Yet, I am still amazed that this outfit claimed the copyrights as their own.

If memory serves me, a similar state of affairs ultimately brought the classic car 'repop' industry down to their knees when the Big 3 decided to re-claim their logos, tradenames, etc.

BTW, the 'Big Two' (EMD and GE) hold a fair amount of sway over current model locomotive production, as in licensing.

DPK

Yes, they are placing themselves on very shaky ground by making such a claim. Copyright holders are far less tolerant of those that seek to make money off their IP (intellectual property) - claiming such property as their own is an additional irritant.

Tom Cornillie

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology it only takes a couple mouse clicks to send the link to the appropriate managers at both companies.

MX

However, we should be careful not to raise ourselves on our own petard. While this particular firm/individual may be annoying - there are many other "good actors" who have devoted a tremenous amount of their own time and effort to make truly useful materials (like service and maintenance manuals) available to the world. The irksome ones will always be with us, but good actors are likely to pay heed to even the broadest cease and desisit requests.

Tom Cornillie