Omron Product News No.387 — keep or delete?

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I got mixed up trying to figure out what the deal is with the dead links to the Omron website. I thought that Omron Product News No.387 was at the end of the dead link, but no, that link is still alive.

Having uploaded it and gone to all the trouble to transcribe the first few lines, should I leave it there, or delete it? I don't know what licensing rationale applies to material that is still available from its source.

[wiki]File:Omron Product News No.387.pdf[/wiki]

Note that the URL cited is wrong, and the date is also wrong, as Google Translate stuffs up Showa dates. I wondered if Sandy had given me the wrong date in his old age, but no, Google Translate mistranslates Showa to Gregorian dates.

The actual information at the end of that dead link (the date that B3G production terminated) is sadly not in any written document, and only exists in search results on the Omron website, which is a nuisance as there's nothing physical to archive.

Actually no, I found it in Sandy's translation, although he did write "March" when he meant "February" (2月) — it's at the end of page 2.

[002]

I would say just keep it. PDFs hosted on websites are particularly volatile resources because the Wayback Machine doesn't usually keep them. Topre do it a lot too with their product announcements and shit which is really annoying.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

The Omron PDF in question came off my PC, before I realised that it's still on the Omron website. I already archive documents locally, but I don't feel comfortable putting currently-available documents from active businesses on the wiki, as I don't know what legal rights I have for doing so. With the old catalogue pages for B3G and B3G-S, it's a bit different as they were obtained from the bowels of Omron (Omron Europe can't get hold of anything like that) but even so, they're still materials effectively copyrighted to Omron.

The problem with the B3G/B3G-S catalogue pages is that I only got the tiniest fragment of information out of Omron via Quest Components. I did get the name of one of the catalogues, but I don't know which one the name was from. Trying to get licensing terms may have been possible, but normally people don't even understand what I'm talking about!

Sometimes, I do get express permission to publish material, as I have done from Cherry USA (not Cherry UK: Robin was paranoid), Marquardt, Monterey, Printec-DS, Electro-Mech and likely others I can't recall off-hand.

Often, though, the documents are from a company who's still trading: Honeywell, SMK, Omron, Alps etc. That's why we're not allowed to post that [wiki]1994 Alps catalogue[/wiki]: Alps actually forbade it being posted online (since someone actually asked Alps).

I don't understand copyright law, and I am really not comfortable at all with posting any material belonging to active businesses where we've not received authorisation, and even less so when they're still available from the business in question.

If someone else posts such files, it's the sort of thing I'll happily turn a blind eye to, but it always makes me uncomfortable when I can't cite suitable usage terms.

[snuci]

How about two links. One to the "Vendor Link" or Omron's website's copy of the document in this case and an "Archive Link" to a local DT copy. This way, you are attributing the original document to the manufacturer and a second link to an archived copy in case the original link stops working (or when it stops working).

[Daniel Beardsmore]

The lack availability of something for public consumption doesn't remove its copyright protection. Some of the material I've posted from Cherry and Marquardt is specifically private, but this far down the line they don't consider this to matter any more. Not Cherry USA anyway, but Robin from (what was) Cherry UK refused to let me have any details of anything (no matter how old), and Alps were also very protective of that catalogue (possibly due to details of products still on the market). Ericsson are also paranoid: when I finally got hold of a human being, the RMD 973 series switches—despite their great age—are still classified. I don't know that the person I spoke to knows if they ever existed: I'm not allowed to know anything about anything.

[seebart]

Keep it please.