Toshiba Pursues Copyright Claim Against Laptop Manual Site

An anonymous reader writes "I'm sure most Slashdot readers have had occasion to suffer through a hardware manufacturer's terrible website in search of product documentation. It's often hidden away in submenus of submenus, and if your product is more than a couple years old, you probably have to wade through broken links. One guy has been helping to change that; he runs a site called Tim's Laptop Service Manuals, where he collects by hand materials from many different companies and hosts them together in one spot. Now Toshiba has become aware of his project, and helpfully forced him to remove all of their manuals under a copyright claim."

Comments

Toshiba to Customers: Drop dead.

[skywire]

But I'm sure we'll now see a flood of posts from the clueless about how Toshiba "has to defend their patent or lose it".

Re:Toshiba to Customers: Drop dead.

[fatphil]

Nah, nah, nah - "May your laptop drop dead" + "and please buy another one from us when it does" - totally different from "drop dead", you're *so* cynical.

(But regarding your body text, I'm sure there will be some clueless parroting of "information wants to be free" too.)

I'm curious - could individuals host single pages, under the Fair Use doctrine? If you have enough individuals doing that, ones who don't forbid an aggregator from reframing their content (whilst hosting none itsef), ...

(And this could be the true use for "Anonymous", not their braindead LOIC DDoS attempts.)

Re:Toshiba to Customers: Drop dead.

[war4peace]

But... you obviously didn't.

Thanks, Toshiba (crosses off purchase list)

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand copyright law, and that what this guy is doing is pretty clearly in violation of it, however:
1) the manuals are useless unless you have already bought Toshiba products, so people downloading the manuals are mostly likely your paying customers anyway
2) support is an important aspect of my purchasing decisions, and having easy access to technical manuals makes a big difference, especially for laptops, where getting into them to replace parts or fix things is particularly tricky
3) if people need to resort to a 3rd-party website to get the manual, then you need to fix YOUR site
4) why not get together with other laptop computer manufacturers and SUPPORT the guy in his efforts, rather than discouraging him?

Re:Thanks, Toshiba (crosses off purchase list)

[sjames]

I'm not so sure I want to buy anything from a company that considers repairs to be a profit center. Too much conflict of interest.

Re:shame

[similar_name]

I'm not sure he was making money from it. From the looks of his site he doesn't even have ads*. In any event, I'm okay with copyright (I may think it's too long right now but the idea is valid IMO). In this case though, I think Toshiba would be wiser to let him do what it does. They could create a license for their manuals that allow this type of thing if they're really worried about defending copyright. And freedom to choose, means that people can choose not to buy Toshiba because of this. Since companies exist to make money, boycotting them when you disagree with a policy is one of the best ways to influence their behavior.

*He does have a donate button. I don't think that means his site rises to the level of a commercial enterprise but I wouldn't defend that position if you disagree. But I would still think it in the interest of Toshiba's customers (and Toshiba) to let him do this.

Re:Vote with your wallet

[Stirling Newberry]

It is actions like this, as well as who is paid, that has turned many people against copyright as an abusive and indefensible theft of the commons.