semi OT - homemadtools.net

[J Tiers]

Home made tools the owner's name is Jon. I am not 100% positive but i think he is also the owner of the Atlas/Craftsman Yahoo forum. I can find out more info if you like.

As "Jon" gives his location in Colorado, and the A/C "Jon" (who I know slightly) is in St Louis, I doubt it.

I am not quite clear on how these folks are working it all, but it would appear they are indeed taking ideas from all over and selling plans, without the originator having anything to do with it. Possibly "legal", but perhaps not completely "ethical"..... Although I suppose there is a "value added", since if there were not plans originally, they have created and are selling a completely different original version of plans, and copyright etc is not applicable. In that case they have essentially taken only the idea.

But, as I say, I am not at all clear as to just what their deal is.

[IdahoJim]

I like the site, Jon. I won Tool of the Week, a year or so ago, for a sliproll I built. I've sent the endplate plans to a couple dozen members since then, at their request, and no charge....glad to be able to help. I think the idea of helping members to sell their plans is great. I sell plans, on EBay, for the prospecting equipment I design and build...have for several years. I should probably take advantage of your site to do that, too.
Jim

[homemadetools]

Hey guys - I'm the "Jon" guy who founded HomemadeTools.net.

Thanks guys for not going forum lawyer crazy. In a nutshell the deal is that we post a reduced-size version of images that links to the original source and credits the original builder, so it acts as a 'reference' to the original post, and not an 'infringement'. A person also writes our tool descriptions manually. Someone already brought this up, but if you go to Google, Bing, Pinterest, or a bunch of other sites, you can find your pics there too (example link on Google Images of HSM pics: here). We're the only ones who fully credit every builder and website, and link directly to every tool post, 3 times per tool.

Regarding OWWM, there's a demarcation point in copyright law for pre-1978 works, such that copyright status can more easily expire for a work, even if the original publishing entity is still intact. There are a lot of exclusions for this, but so much of OWWM's stuff is so old that its copyright status has expired.

I know from forum experience that the best practice is to formally ask first. Most of our builders have no contact email, and we would have to register on a forum and PM them for permission, which seems sneaky and I think would anger a lot of forum members and admins.

We instantly remove any tools that anyone doesn't want listed. This is really rare, but our most recent one was from a patent holder who believed his patented tool design was being posted in forums. Someone found his patent, made a tool based on it, posted the tool on the forum, we found the tool and linked to it, and the patent holder wanted everything deleted on all the sites it was posted!

The plans stuff has been discussed here; it's an experimental and new method for builders to draft and sell plans for their builds. Since it involves commerce, it's probably not appropriate for me to discuss it on another forum, but it's 100% aboveboard and you can ask me any questions you want about it on our forum.

[Rosco-P]

Interesting, I wasnt aware anyone did that here. I've checked out a few of the advertiser's sites over the years out of curiosity but never noticed any manual dealers in the banners up top. Granted, I'm an old iron buying cheap SOB and rarely buy lower end tooling so most of the advertisers dont catch my attention too often.

To answer your question, if theyre ripping others' material then no its not ok. I have no qualms against folks sharing literature from uber-rare defunct manufacturers, but knowingly ripping companies that are still employing folks is quite another matter.

OWWM, yes for old out of print manuals.

The aforementioned O.W., I believe advertises in the print magazine and has occasionally posted here only as a shill for his own reprints.

[oldtiffie]

Now after all the grizzling and complaining thus far(or is there more to come?) that has not and it seems will not achieve anything of substance - why do it?

Or do you just like complaining about things that you can't (won't?) do anything about - like getting off your butt - just for the sake of it?

Me? - I just shrug my shoulders and get on with life as best I can - works too - mostly.

http://www.devilles.co.uk/Word4.htm

[justanengineer]

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.

Interesting, I wasnt aware anyone did that here. I've checked out a few of the advertiser's sites over the years out of curiosity but never noticed any manual dealers in the banners up top. Granted, I'm an old iron buying cheap SOB and rarely buy lower end tooling so most of the advertisers dont catch my attention too often.

To answer your question, if theyre ripping others' material then no its not ok. I have no qualms against folks sharing literature from uber-rare defunct manufacturers, but knowingly ripping companies that are still employing folks is quite another matter.

[loose nut]

I don't have a dog in this fight, but it seems to me there is an issue here with intellectual property. I may be wrong but the material created is the property of the creator under various copyright laws, etc...

Pete

Intellectual property has about as much validity on the web as privacy does, it just doesn't exist anymore.

[JRouche]

I think it was a couple years back he actually contacted me and asked if he could use some tool of mine on his site. I said go ahead. Kinda sh!ty I think that he is not even asking now. That would just be common courtesy IMO.. JR

[The Artful Bodger]

Yikes! He even has one of my ideas on there, such a good idea I had completely forgotten about it!

[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.

[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.

[sid pileski]

Well at least nothing of yours will be on there.

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

[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.

[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.

[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.