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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."
They used to. It started to get a bit less reliable somewhere around the 3000 series. At this point they're yet another PC manufacturer short on ideas with a legal department that considers customer hostility a good thing. It seems a common problem when a company grows enough to hire administrative people who aren't involved with the products.
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?
Copyright and patents are two vastly different beasts.
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.)
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Oh, I dunno about that. I think they're thinking that a) if you can't find the manual, you'll be forced to upgrade sooner (and, incumbant advantage here: if you have a Toshiba, you're probably more likely to pick Toshiba again), and b) by removing the old documentation, they're probably hoping their competition will have a harder time using old documentation against them (e.g., documented limitations, workarounds, whatever). By not being forced to upgrade, they're losing money. By allowing their competition more time to put out laptops better than Toshiba's old laptops and being able to quote their past failures, they're losing money to their competitors.
Either that, or they have a fresh-outta-school lawyer who has not learned that his job involves "marketing".
My daughter got a Toshiba laptop as a graduation gift from her grandparents, and a few months into her ownership the keyboard died completely. Toshiba would not allow the device to be returned for repair/replacement under their warranty without first paying a phone "technician" $49 for a "repair consultation". The "tech" was a completely clueless English-as-a-second-language phone center guy. They offered to "refund" the $49 if their phone service did not help (hint - their phone procedures were useless with a broken keyboard). They then offered a $29 box to use to send them the laptop for repair/replacement. This company is pure garbage - they want $78 to replace a laptop keyboard that probably costs $5 or less.
Ah yes, Toshiba and their wonderful legacy support.
The company that dropped all their support info down the memory hole without warning, when they exited the digital camera business back in 2004. All the manuals, software, firmware, and FAQs simply disappeared their site. I discovered this when I had to upgrade the firmware in one of my old cameras to address SD card compatibility issues (at the time it was already technologically obsolete in many ways, but had excellent quality optics). Only place that still had the firmware was a 3rd-party driver site with the flashing procedure instructions written in Chinese. Fortunately, the firmware itself turned out to be in English.
Toshiba eventually re-entered the camera business, but any information from their earlier generation of cameras is gone. If you want any downloads or manuals, Toshiba re-directs you to a third party telephone support service that charges $19.95 for assistance. Actually, that fee might be behind the removal of their laptop manuals as well -- whatever outsourced agency Toshiba dumped their legacy support info to, wants to be paid for that info.
I am not trying to excuse Toshiba, but if you have had to deal with the general, clueless "public" with computer support, you might have a better understanding of why they (and other companies) are doing that.
I would guess that even more than 90% of all calls to support have nothing to do with a hardware problem. They are typically:
* MS-Windows brokenness
* MS-Windows virii and malware
* Broken third-party software and drivers
* Broken third-party hardware (chargers, cables, drives)
* Users that don't understand how basic stuff works (connecting WiFi, booting, burning discs, copying files)
* Users who have hosed their machines by doing stupid stuff
That, unfortunately, means a HUGE expense to computer manufacturers, and those costs were traditionally plowed right back into the sticker price of everything they sold. In a fiercely competitive industry, companies are looking for ways to cut their prices as much as possible. Support is the first target. (And the second seems to be machine quality).
The people like the Slashdot crowd are now forced to pay the price for the changed ecosystem- we have to put up with stupid front-line "support" levels that are not support, and pay stupid fees that to try and filter out the bad apples. The assumption is that every caller to a support center is an idiot.
There are times I wish that computer professionals could carry some type of "license" that would allow them to skip the normal channels and jump directly to support people that really are support.
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.
Of course a hungry man will eat a beast.
Oh, you meant hungry man-eating beasts!
Now do all of you see the importance of writing correctly?
1- It is not clueless to say they have to defend their patent or lose it. That's how it works. You lose patent and trademark protection if you don't try to defend any infringement you know about.
Try again. Trademark works that way since trademark is basically perpetual. Patent protection doesn't work that way, though it should, since it'd take care of a lot of submarine patents and patent trolls who wait until a product is big to sue. So yeah, still clueless.
2- This isn't about patent, it is about copyright. They are different.
On this we agree. But again, at the same time, copyright still doesn't get affected by attempts of enforcement. Only trademark does.
3- You can hate the current copyright laws, but that doesn't mean someone who acknowledges them is clueless.
The irony in that statement is hilarious given the above.
4- Don't buy products from manufacturers who play this game. Do your research before purchasing.
Noble gesture. Not sure it'll make even a dent in their bottom line, but noble nonetheless and something I try to do myself.