Re: MCABase missing a few ADFs

Hi!

Watch out, there's a soap box in sight! :-)

See that's kind of the problem nowadays...pages
link so much to each other and are so interdependent,
and as people lose interest their sites go away, and
the information could be (and has been) lost forever.

I put a note at the top encouraging others to
copy and mirror.

As have I. However, many people haven't taken this step, and then it's
a grey area. You may never know what has happened to the author, and if
the work was copyrighted, you could get in trouble for making a copy,
possibly even if you were doing so just for preservation's sake.

I have no problem with *anyone* making a copy of almost anything on any
of my web pages, for this very reason. (They must, however, provide
attribution and (if possible) a link back to the original work. I also
forbid anyone to charge for access other than to cover connect time,
media or printing expense, or use any of the info I've created for
illegal/dishonest/distasteful practices.)

Preservation is important...though I intend to be running MCA hardware,
advocating it for the top-quality hardware it (usually) is and
broadening the horizons of what can be done with it, I can't say what
will happen tomorrow. Situations change...people move on and web pages
disappear, sometimes forever.

I'd like to think that if my pages were to disappear, that someone
would think them important enough to warrant preservation. In fact, I'd
be honored.

The one great archive that seems to be well known is the Internet
Archive. It's not perfect, and it too could disappear at any time
without warning.

But some people don't think that way, and that is unfortunate. You
posted recently about a Cyrix CPU in a model 70...and once upon a time,
there was a truly great site chock-full of both official and anecdotal
information concerning the Model 70 with a Cyrix CPU. The guy who ran
it *was* a pretty nice guy. He didn't live too far from me...we met a
few times and discussed our PS/2s, as well as some other 'vintage
computers'. As for the site, I really liked the style of writing and
information provided. It was a *great* resource.

Anyway, the site disappeared and I really didn't know why until I
asked. Someone had mirrored it, and it didn't sit well with him. So he
pulled it all away and told me that it'd (in summary) never be back. I
went and fixed the links that I'd made on my own site and pointed them
to the Internet Archive.

Days later, I got one of the few "nastygrams" I've ever received. I was
told of my lack of respect, referred to in many nasty ways and then it
was suggested that I do something that I won't repeat.

I was stunned. (I like to think I'm reasonable, approachable and easy
to get along with. I've had my share of screwups--some big--but I do
try.) Naturally, I pulled the link very shortly thereafter. I also
reported the abusive message to his ISP, and wrote a firm--but
polite--reply to him. I never heard back, and probably never will. I
didn't think that a show of disrespect was displayed because I'd made
some effort to keep things from fading into oblivion.

But all the while I kept thinking...you know, you could have asked me
to pull the link and I would have. Nicely.

I've been in at least one other scrape with another group. They more or
less dropped off the face of the earth, and I copied one of their
articles relevant to MCA. A few months later, I got an e-mail message
from them that really got my back up. I didn't react well to it, to say
the least, even though they were probably *right* in the eyes of
copyright law.

But what galled me the most was that I feel they lied about several
things, didn't come to me first with their problems *first*, and
wouldn't answer any questions about the *right* way to use their works,
if there was one.

If it weren't for people that would misuse them, I believe there should
be strong laws in place to protect those who are merely trying to
preserve information and protect it from being lost forever. If memory
serves, a copyright in the US is valid for 95 years after the author
dies or no longer exists. I suppose this works well for many things,
but computers, hardware, software and the related documentation isn't
one of them. Anyone who's doing this properly knows that it's a
never-ending, potentially thankless and difficult job to pick up the
pieces of computer companies, the products they produced, supporting
information for their products and people who have written articles
about them and that it doesn't pay well, if at all.

To have that person be going along nicely and suddenly get slapped in
the face (or worse) for providing what is a public service to rightful
owners of long obsolete or forgotten hardware/software/documents or
interested parties in question isn't just out of line--it's *wrong*.

And to anyone who thinks that you can make any information you ever
posted to the 'net and made publicly available disappear completely,
you are kidding yourself. Sometimes you can get lucky, but for
everything else, you'd better be willing to live with and accept that
it will be out there for a long time to come.

There, now I'll get off my soapbox.

William the Opinionated (about that one thing, at least)

.

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