I collect and repair old Tektronix oscilloscopes from 1950 - 1980. Tektronix published beautiful, detailed technical manuals and shipped the manuals with the oscilloscopes. They were, of course, paper manuals. The schematics contained a lot of fine detail that is easily lost in photocopies. There is demand for old manuals. For example, if a person happens to own an old classic piece of equipment and the old piece of equipment happens to stop working (quite likely), they will usually need the service manual to fix it, since fixing complex electronic devices without the schematic is much harder than fixing them with the schematic. Tektronix is no longer selling these old manuals.

Since there is demand, a little industry has emerged. People obtain a copy of the original paper manual, scan it, make a PDF, and sell the PDF online. The primary place for this is eBay, but they also sell them through their own websites. Typically the way it works is that they send you a CDROM with a PDF file on it. Sometimes they give you a code to download it from their website. I have paid for some manuals in PDF form when I couldn't find it for free. They mailed me the CDROMs promptly and the quality of the scans was excellent. (I much prefer DJVU to PDF, but that is a different topic.) I have not "liberated" the manuals that I paid for. It would be easy enough for me to just put the PDFs that I bought on the webpage. But before doing that, I'd like to understand the ethics of this scanning stuff.

The people who run the manual scanning business want to prevent the PDF file from being redistributed after they sell it. From a technical standpoint, they are in the same position as the record companies, who want to "sell" music to their customers, but want to maintain control of the music file after it is sold, specifically to prevent redistribution that circumvents their cash register. The three main techniques that are employed in this area are

  1. digital rights management technologies (DRM) that take away the discretionary ability of the customer to redistribute the music file,
  2. legal controls (fear of punishment), and
  3. appeals to ethics, morals, sympathy, integrity, whatever.
The effectiveness of these techniques varies. Although the record companies and the manual scanners have similar interests, it is not clear that they are standing on the same ethical ground. As content creators, the record companies and/or artists have the right to control how their intellectual property is used. Are the manual scanners content creators? The manual clearly says "Copyright Tektronix, 1967". So what right does a manual scanner have to assert any sort of control over the distribution of a PDF file of that manual? Nevertheless, scanning manuals is hard work, and the manual scanning businesses are somehow creating value. The digitalness of the manual is of value. The scanning people saw an opportunity to provide something of value to society, and they have created a business out of doing it, and are doing a good job of it. Of course they have bills to pay, like all of us. The issue is clearly not about physical property, and it seems pretty clear that they have no right to assert ownership/control over the intellectual property that is the essence of the value of the manual. So it seems to me like the only coherent position they can take is that they are owners of the digitalness of that representation of the manual. Does this make any sense?

Yesterday I went online to find a service manual that I need. It is not available on the free manual download sites. So I went on eBay and found that the manual was for sale as the paper original and as a PDF. The price was the same. So I decided to buy the original paper manual so I can scan it and distribute the PDF or DJVU file for free. The people who scan manuals have no more right scan the document and sell it than I have to scan the document and give it away. But still, it is likely that my action will lead to less revenue for them. I liken this to giving free haircuts. If I start giving free good haircuts to anybody who knocks on my door, my local barbershop will suffer. But what entitles the proprietors of the barbershop to their anticipated revenue? Are they a charity? I cannot figure out the ethics of the whole scanning situation. If anybody else can make sense of it, please help me out. Thanks.