DMC Tech - Final Update (LONG)

["David Swingle" <dswingle@xxxx>]

I received the following from Wayne today. This should explain the current
status of DMCTech and the DMCNews tech section - separate efforts, each with
its own terms and conditions.

Should you feel the need to reply to this post PLEASE TRIM THE QUOTE.

Dave Swingle
========================================================================
>From Wayne:

Sorry this took so long to respond. It's a complex issue and I've been
incredibly overloaded the last week or so!) I won't recap anyone's
concerns, they're in the archives... where you can "easily" find them. ;)

SHORT ANSWER:

I am withdrawing my plan to offer a free, easy to use, organized and EDITED,
CONDENSED compilation of the tech material contained in the back issues of
the DML, to be located in a separate file on the DML or DMCNews website.
Hopefully we can do something else- free, reasonably easy to use, organized
but UNedited and UNcondensed as explained below. The other fears expressed
on the DML will, I trust, also be resolved by the statement below.

The rest of the DMCTech program will go forward as planned, accepting
material from original authors, which will be available on the DMCTech site
as the work progresses, and eventually, hopefully further edited and
compiled into a printed format. Authors will retain copyright of their
original work while granting use, re-use etc. as set forth on the DMCTech
website, so that the text can be used or modified as needed, unlike the DML.

LONG ANSWER:

THE OFFICIAL POSITION OF DMCNEWS-
"The Fine Print" at www.dmcnews.com reads IN PART: <<... the copyright for
EVERYTHING that ANYONE posts lies with them.....>> In other words, the DML
claims no copyright over material submitted.

ARE YOUR POSTS TO THE DML COPYRIGHTED BY YOU?
Based on prior experience of filing copyrights in the early '70's, I was
certain that they are not, unless a form and fee are filed with the US
gov't. and a copyright notice appears. And since the original writers
freely and publically gave their information, presumably for the good of the
DeLorean community, I didn't expect any objections. Seems I was wrong. I
was surprised to find, (especially since I believed them to be in the public
domain,) that a few people objected to posts being used in an edited,
condensed form without listing the author... though it means listing
hundreds of authors, multiplied by dozens or hundreds of places per author.
I know I myself ("deloreanernst") have probably posted a couple hundred
times. (Picture one of those research papers where the footnote section at
the bottom of each page consumes more acreage than the text above it.) And
each quote the subject of a permission request. Does ANYBODY actually want
to take on that project? Not me. I was trying to produce a carefully
edited, concise, tech manual type of resource, not a "look ma, I'm famous"
assemblage where the signature line was more extensive than some of quotes
used, and the text looks more like a list of contributors than a repair
manual.

Last week I decided to double check at the Library of Congress copyright
website and found that due to a change in the law in 1978, some form of
copyright protection is automatic for some items, so YES, so far as I can
see, DML posts CAN be considered copyrighted by their authors. So I'm
partially wrong on that one, too. Just for the record, procedures, methods
and unadorned facts CANNOT be copyrighted, although descriptions of them can
be. There's one I WAS right on!

If someone on the DML is serving a multiple life sentence and is ineligible
for parole for 99 years, maybe they'd like to undertake the task under those
conditions. Personally, I have a family, a church, a life, a business and a
very nice car :o) to spend my time on.

DAVE SWINGLE'S POSITION: Quoted from an e-mail:
<<My feeling is that any material that is ever posted on the DML (i.e.
anything in the archive) is fair game to clip and reproduce on the
(DML/DMCNews) web page WITHOUT further authorization. It's been done since
the beginning in the form of the un-organized chron archive ("backissues"),
and people are familiar with that. They post to the DML realizing that it
all goes there, forever. No one has EVER complained about that. That's why I
thought that the solution of using your efforts to compile the information
into a topically-organized form, and feeding it back to the dmcnews website,
was such an elegantly simple solution. No one could complain, since it is
the same information that is already there, on the same website. You have
just "mined" it out of the mess and reorganized it.>>

Dave went on to note that people seemed primarily to be reacting to the
editing and the DMCTech/Wayne Ernst copyright claim of EDITED material with
re-use in mind, so....

HERE'S WHAT CAN BE DONE: DMCNews Tech Digests.
Individual messages on the DML can be copied and gathered together in a
separate, parallel section, similar to the regular DML digest format of
delivery of daily messages. Not delivered, but deposited into the existing
DMCNews Tech section as a reference tool. With the author name intact, under
general headings to make the material easier to find. Trimmed of non-text
material, as some of the moderators do, but not rewritten, condensed, edited
or spell-checked. With NO COPYRIGHT CLAIMED by anyone other than the
original author, and no reuse or publication intended or permitted. That
shouldn't violate anyone's rights or pursuit of happiness. Readers could
find a pile of related posts without being online for two and a half hours.
It would be an unedited string of posts, basically like what you see when
you run an internet search, except coming up in one chunk by topic,
pre-selected but not edited, and not pulling in a lot of extraneous posts.
A needle in a smaller haystack. The original DML back issues would be
totally unaffected. This would be an altogether separate parallel file. The
DMCNews Tech Digests would be no more edited than any other post to the DML,
but later material could be appended as it comes in,something not done to a
regular DML digest. Make sense? For the truly anal among us, I'll even
promise to leave the topic headings intact. After all, why start a war of
words by changing a message title like "Re: (DML) I'm having a bad day" to
"Clutch keeps slipping" just because it's about a clutch that keeps
slipping? It'll be cruder, redundant and more time consuming than it would
otherwise need to be, but that seems to be the best we can expect with the
current constraints. As for other worries: I can't make it or anything else
disappear off the DML. And I can't "get rich" off of it. Not that I ever
expected to do any of those things...or could. Everybody satisfied? I hope?
I think I can line up a tech-oriented owner or two to work on this through
DMCTech, though the number of actual volunteers I have heard from is less
than a dozen, and it remains to be seen who can follow through on what.

WHAT ABOUT DMCTech?
If the thought of a new, ever expanding DeLorean Tech-reference-only web
presence, and a revised and edited, up-to-date DeLorean manual series,
(rather than a needle in a smaller haystack,) still appeals to you as it
does to me, and you'd like to be part of a team working to produce it
WITHOUT our hands tied by clashing egos, there's still DMCTech. As a result
of these new copyright considerations, what comes in original to DMCTech
will stay there, as a destination in itself, not posted to the DMCNews site.
Unless of course the writer opts to do so, which I certainly won't
discourage. It's still the writer's property, to do with as they please, as
the DMCTech policy has always clearly stated. And I don't think anyone need
concern themselves about DMCTech potentially rendering DMCNews obsolete
tech-wise. Any more than books are going to render CD's obsolete. Quite the
opposite, if I'm not careful. Half a dozen people out of well over a
thousand on the DML sneezed, and DMCTech caught pneumonia. Lumping in the
DMCTech site would also re-blur the lines about copyrightability since the
DMCTech policy is the exact OPPOSITE of the DML, to allow reuse, editing,
whatever needs to be done for usability. And it clearly says so, so
everyone knows it up front, and can respond- or not respond- appropriately.

Conclusion: In accordance with DML policy, I'm not "taking" or "claiming"
anything from the DML. And if you don't want to contribute anything to a
collaborative tech effort unless your name is in lights or you get rich...
don't send anything to DMCTech. Fair enough?

Wayne A. Ernst
DMCTech Group
vin 11174