semi OT - homemadtools.net

[justanengineer]

The rather ironic part to me is that many who get upset by others sharing work they've publicly posted also support vintagemachinery.org and the other various manual ripoff sites.

[Rosco-P]

The rather ironic part to me is that many who get upset by others sharing work they've publicly posted also support vintagemachinery.org and the other various manual ripoff sites.

How is OWWM/VintageMachineryt a ripoff site? The host manufacturers history, brochures and manuals for free. You can find a manual for your old machine and download it for free, email others that own the same machine and get disassembly and repair information. Well worth throwing them a few bucks a year to help keep the site running.

[JohnAlex141r]

I've had this a few times:

1) my "freely posted blog stuff" ends up on sites with advertising. (they are making money off of the stuff I give away);

2) A supplier we all know supplies "stuff someone posted on the Internet" as part of one of their products - looking at their stuff at one of the shows - it is MY stuff, used by them to help support their business;

3) A certain world-wide company that is a familiar name to us here relating to 3D products, uses some of my open-source software. (I know, because I helped them port it over). Now, I was paid by SOMEONE ELSE to write this software, so I did not really mind, but, maybe they could have put a "thanks for the open source software" but, nope.

So, as I am currently in a state of zero income, I now sell my articles to magazines. Rather than others making a dime off of my contributions, I think that dime should go into my pocket to help defray MY expenses, not someone else's.

(oh well!)

[GEP]

I e-mailed the guy who runs it after I noticed my stuff going up there. He said they have an automated script or program that pulls stuff from various places and he seemed a very agreeable fellow. He offered to take down my stuff, but my only problem was that the photos were lacking descriptions of any kind. There was one set of photos I didn't want up there, only because it was an in-progress project I didn't want to let out of the bag yet. He took those photos down, I created a login to the site, and he transferred all my project photos to my account, and we updated all the descriptions. I personally don't have a problem with it but I completely understand those who do.

The site has a book with all types of plans, Hotrods, car restoration, air planes, tooling you name it. I don't remember if the book is sold or free. I am on the site, any one can join. There is a dividing head that just was in my e-mail yesterday, looks like a easy project.

[justanengineer]

How is OWWM/VintageMachineryt a ripoff site? The host manufacturers history, brochures and manuals for free. You can find a manual for your old machine and download it for free, email others that own the same machine and get disassembly and repair information. Well worth throwing them a few bucks a year to help keep the site running.

They're ripoff sites in that they ripoff others work and investment - they promote and host free sharing of copyrighted works that are otherwise easily obtainable new at a fairly reasonable cost from the copyright owner or used via one of the used manual dealers. You're welcome to donate but personally I'd rather support Clausing, Leblond, and others that own the material and pay folks to maintain and update it as necessary vs a website owner who ripped it. I figure if I can afford an expensive machine then a few bucks for a manual wont hurt too bad, my last parts and service manual from Clausing was $6.

Out of curiosity, would you support those sites more or less if they shared current Village Press periodicals?

[mklotz]

I've been on the site for a while now. It's a handy place to collect all my tool ideas that don't fit well into the model engine sites I also frequent.

They award prizes for various accomplishments. Win "tool of the week" once and you get a T-shirt. Subsequent wins garner $25 per win. So far I have a T-shirt (I don't wear them) and $100 in winnings. Other categories garner other monetary prizes.

Their E-book is free as far as I know. Lots of folks sign up just to get it.

They will help you to sell your plans. They assist in preparing a package from the plans you submit, then market it. You get some of the money and they get a cut. I don't know the numerics since I don't participate in that aspect of the site.

One of the problems with the plan thing is that there exist a lot of clueless gorms who need instruction to chew their food. I posted a dead simple idea to modify a key so that it could be detected in the dark...

http://www.homemadetools.net/forum/tactile-key-identifier-34046

So far, I've had thirteen requests for plans for this idea! I can't even imagine how someone could construct a plan for something this simple. I'm very sure that if I were to publish plans, none of the thirteen would buy them. They probably ask for plans on every thread they read.

In general, the site is good as a source of ideas but poor in terms of the sort of information interchange one finds here. A lot of people sign up every day and you never hear from them again.

Like most things, it has a good side and a bad side.

[Rosco-P]

They're ripoff sites in that they ripoff others work and investment - they promote and host free sharing of copyrighted works that are otherwise easily obtainable new at a fairly reasonable cost from the copyright owner or used via one of the used manual dealers. You're welcome to donate but personally I'd rather support Clausing, Leblond, and others that own the material and pay folks to maintain and update it as necessary vs a website owner who ripped it. I figure if I can afford an expensive machine then a few bucks for a manual wont hurt too bad, my last parts and service manual from Clausing was $6.

Out of curiosity, would you support those sites more or less if they shared current Village Press periodicals?

I don't what other sites you're referring too, but in the case of Vintage Machinery, it would make no difference to me. I wouldn't read the magazine(s) just because they are free.

Does it make it okay that "O.W." scans, reprints and sells manuals, just because they are an advertiser here? I don't think so.

[fixerdave]

The guy is selling a value-added service, and doing a decent job of it too. This is what the web is all about.

The "plans" are a great example... sure, you could go out and redirect traffic from his site to yours and put plans up for sale. Or, you could sign up, put the plans up on his site, and give him a cut. He's offering a service. Your choice if you want to pay him or do it yourself. And, let's be honest here... if you were into setting up a website and selling plans, you probably wouldn't have posted your ideas on a forum for free, now would you? You did give your ideas away in the first place. At least now you have an easy way to profit from them if you want. The guy created something extra, value added, that even the idea creators can use if they want.

The first thing I do when I'm looking for ideas is a Google search and switch to the Images tab. Google is linking to all those pictures (cached copies actually)... they are selling advertising while doing so... wouldn't it be nice if Google sorted them by category too? They don't, so somebody else did. This is what the web is all about.

David...

[GEP]

I've been on the site for a while now. It's a handy place to collect all my tool ideas that don't fit well into the model engine sites I also frequent.

They award prizes for various accomplishments. Win "tool of the week" once and you get a T-shirt. Subsequent wins garner $25 per win. So far I have a T-shirt (I don't wear them) and $100 in winnings. Other categories garner other monetary prizes.

Their E-book is free as far as I know. Lots of folks sign up just to get it.

They will help you to sell your plans. They assist in preparing a package from the plans you submit, then market it. You get some of the money and they get a cut. I don't know the numerics since I don't participate in that aspect of the site.

One of the problems with the plan thing is that there exist a lot of clueless gorms who need instruction to chew their food. I posted a dead simple idea to modify a key so that it could be detected in the dark...

http://www.homemadetools.net/forum/tactile-key-identifier-34046

So far, I've had thirteen requests for plans for this idea! I can't even imagine how someone could construct a plan for something this simple. I'm very sure that if I were to publish plans, none of the thirteen would buy them. They probably ask for plans on every thread they read.

In general, the site is good as a source of ideas but poor in terms of the sort of information interchange one finds here. A lot of people sign up every day and you never hear from them again.

Like most things, it has a good side and a bad side.

You could cut the key the same for the front and back door.

[GEP]

If one posts a idea or question you will find it on google seconds later. If you don't want to have your ideas free to the world, don't put them out there.Some sites copy free plans and sell them. I fund HF coupons on e-bay for sale, i let the seller know and she got mad.

[John Stevenson]

All to true.

Post it unprotected to the internet - if it is reasonably possible - and you have pretty well posted to the public domain.

I'd be very surprised if some (many?) here have not committed the same "sin/s".

"Let he who is without sin .......... "

Well at least nothing of yours will be on there.

[Mcgyver]

If one posts a idea or question you will find it on google seconds later. If you don't want to have your ideas free to the world, don't put them out there.Some sites copy free plans and sell them. I fund HF coupons on e-bay for sale, i let the seller know and she got mad.

sure, but it was specifically photographs not ideas that I mentioned and there are copyright laws that I would have thought applicable.......because someone on ebay is behaving like a scoundrel shouldn't be a green light for anything goes. I wasn't in a rage, just kind of thought it not 100% above board.

Well at least nothing of yours will be on there.

yeah but just wait until there is a site that collects google search links and watch him soar.

[sid pileski]

Well at least nothing of yours will be on there.

That's funny John. I was thinking the same thing.
Haha

[PStechPaul]

There are several ways of looking at such things. If you use a link to an image or other content on someone's public website, you are only providing an address that clearly contains their information, so it does not seem like that is a copyright violation or "stealing" someone's content. However, some claim that this causes additional expense to the owner of the website because of increased traffic, which may result in added fees. This is sometimes known as "hot-linking" and can be discouraged by identifying the source of the traffic and redirecting to an image declaring "No Hotlinking!" or other warning.

OTOH, copying the content and hosting it on your own server seems more like stealing, but at least it does not result in possible expense to the owner of the content. Also, when you use your browser to view content, it actually downloads it to your computer, so you will have a copy that resides in RAM as well as a cache on the hard disk. If you were to make this content publicly available, and especially if you charged money for it, there would likely be a valid case for copyright infringement.

[Paul Alciatore]

I first visited that site a couple of years ago and sighed up for the daily(?) e-mails. I usually look through them to see what others are doing.

Some clarification about what they are doing. First, as a general rule, they do not seem to post any actual plans where you can just download them for free. That is not literally true and I have more on that below. Most of their posts just contain a photo of something that was posted in another site. They do not copy any of the discussion or plans from those sites; just a photo so you can see what was done. Yes, I know that many times a single photo is enough to actually copy the item. But that is for something that is fairly simple. Let's face it, many, many items are copied after a company sees a single copy of the item. No rocket science there.

They do have discussion about the posts, but that seems to be by the members, just like here. Many times the person who posted the idea elsewhere joins that discussion and talks about it, again just like here. In all cases, they post the link to the original site where you can see the actual discussion on that item and any plans that may or may not have been posted there. That seems to be their general modus operandi.

As for copyright, very few web posts ever claim copyright. I defy you to find any claims of copyright on this board. I am sure that Village Press does have some rights there, but I doubt that any of the individual members of the forum have any claim on copyright when they never even claim it with the proper notice to the reader, much less going through the actual, legal steps needed. So, like it or not, for the most part, anything you post here is probably considered to be in the public domain.

They do sell plans. I have been in contact with Jon there for about two weeks now trying to get one of my projects (Quick Change Tool Post) on sale there. I have done an update and revision of the previous version and it should be available for purchase very soon. All in all, I have put at least a week of work into that revision and my proof reader (wife) also put in several hours. We have not gotten down to prices yet, but if I remember correctly, they pay the author 60% of the sale price. That seems more than fair to me. So, on a $10 plan they are only making $4. Jon has said that this is a fairly new project for them and they are still working out the details. Oh, and if you look you will see that some of the plans are even free. I would think that the free ones are with the prior consent of the author. I am retired and on a fixed income so I am looking for additional sources of income. I would prefer ones that are as "hands free" as possible. Perhaps ones that could even continue if I were incapacitated or deceased: my family could also use the income. This seems like a nice opportunity to me so I jumped in with both feet. I plan to send more real plans for them to sell.

What I am hoping to have sold there is a real set of plans. It contains proper, dimensioned drawings for each part. It contains assembly drawings that show how those parts are put together. It contains photos of the construction process and drawings that show how some of the more difficult steps were accomplished. And it contains extensive text instructions on how to actually make it. All together; between the original project, writing the original article, previous additions to the project, prior revisions to the article, and the present revision; I must have over a month of work in it. I suspect that the word "plans" is being used in a fairly loose sense here. A single photo does not a "plan" make. It takes time and effort.

The site owner or at least administrator is, indeed Jon. I have found him to be a very reasonable person and the other comments above seem to support that conclusion. I hesitate to post his e-mail here without his permission, but you can contact him through the site. If you have an issue with the site, I suggest that you do contact him.