Hitman's Pontiac Trans Am Forum
Classifieds => Ebay Listings => Topic started by: Magnum on June 25, 2007, 11:25:21 AM
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What has me curious is the copyright......
ebay item # 300124552852
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Hmmmmmm....
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Sounds like a bunch of bunk. Brett has to pay yearly fees to GM to sell their manuals on CD and at this guys prices I doubt he is paying anything to GM. So he is selling copyrighted material and then saying that you can't copy it?
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8)
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Could someone show me where in the 1978 service manual is says the information is copyrighted? I sure can't find it. It's in the GM body manual....but I've looked in the service manual and I sure couldn't find it.
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Yeah, I keep working with GM to try and get these people shut down and it is a weekly battle to keep up with it. It sucks that I pay over $3000 to GM every year and these jokers post it for free. I don't even want to get rolling on this one.......
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Brett, I've looked and looked through that service manual and I can't find anywhere at all that the information is copyrighted. I did find the copyright notation in the body manual. Well, in 2053 you won't have to pay royalties for the 1978 manuals anymore. They could have at least provided you with the service of putting the pages on the CD.
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The seller says:
"this cd is encrypted for security purposes you can still print pages but cannot copy cd. i am the copyright owner to this auction ad and cd compilation all rights are reserved"
You think he's not telling the truth? He has a lot of feedback so I think he/she would have been caught by now.
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I'm not talking about the CD, I was referring to the hard copy manual for 1978. I think Brett is telling the truth...of course. He has an licensing agreement with GM. As far as the parts manual, the hard copy that I have does have copyright notation on each and every page. I think they forgot it on the 78 service manual though. The body manual is protected with a copyright notation too.
GM is tough. They really throw their weight around. In the 90's I worked for TRW. We had a long term contract to provide valves for GM. The contract was specific about the price, which was on a declining scale year after year. In other words, in order to make money on the contract, TRW would have to figure out how to cut costs to keep up with the price degradation. About half way through the contract, the CEO of GM came into the CEO of TRW's office with contract in hand. He tore it up and told the TRW CEO, now we have to renegotiate the contract....they did, at much lower prices. TRW's CEO had the choice of suing GM or renegotiating...he couldn't sue his largest customer.
You'd think that GM would want to inspire brand loyalty by being reasonable about these types of things. It probably cost more for GM to collect their miserable $3K per year from Brett than they spend dealing with the issue. It's really great advertising to see an old GM rolling down the road. You'd think they would try to nurture the owners of these cars.
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I looked and actually the 1978, 1979 and 1980 Service manuals do not have the copyright information in there. All others from 1977 and back and 1981 have them, but not 78, 79 or 80.
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That's interesting. Do you think it was just an oversight?
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Thanks! I didn't think I missed it. This might give you some sort of position when it comes time to renew your agreement with GM. Although it would take an attorney to ascertain if GM lost it's copyright protection by not putting the copyright notation somewhere in the manual. It might not make a difference.
I think they just missed it. They were more concerned about putting in language that protected them in case someone relied on the manual and got hurt. I spent quite a bit of my career doing contractual matters....so I catch things like that.
As I stated before, the 78 body manual is copyright protected as well as the parts manual that this post was initially about, so I wonder if this guy has a license agreement with GM. Probably not.
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Nobody has a license agreement with GM to sell these on CD except one other company which I can't name.
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Well, I won the auction on one of these....a whopping $5 plus $5 shipping. A screaming buy in my opinion!
And I completely missed Craig's point about the legend on the CD. I thought he was talking about Brett's CD's....not the parts manual CD. It will be interesting to see if there is some sort of licensing agreement number on the parts CD like Brett puts on his CD's.
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I once bought a boot-legged Mercedes cd on eBay an I never could get it to run, so last night I shelled out the $40 to Brett for his cd. It'll be interesting to see what you get ta78w72.
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I had a similar issue with a DVD. Paid more than I should have for an eBay auction, then was told it was out of stock and they'd send me the next cheaper version. After I told them to either send me what I paid for or refund my money they send me a bad computer burned copy of the cheaper version. Needless to say they are no longer selling on eBay.
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I got the parts manual today. It is the parts manual...it looks like a home made job to me. Here's what the label says:
"insert cd into drive
click my computer on dasttop
slest drive cd is in view abode reader 5.0 or highter
pontiac parts manual 1967-1981"
That's what it says EXACTLY!!!! What?????
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Who did you buy it off of?
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This guy
http://myworld.earthlink.ebay.com/ebaymotors/carstuff31/
He's got tons of this stuff for sale....mostly GM.
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yeah, that is one of the guys that I have marked.