manual for brother XL721

C'mon, the .pdf version is only $8.00. It would probably cost more than that for someone to copy and mail it to you. And then there's the copyright issue...

Usually manuals are free from the manufacturer. I've never heard of paying for a manual. As to the copyright issue, that seems backwards. The purchase of the sewing machine should've included the manual. Since it's a used machine the manual got lost. Really, Brother should have all those manuals available for download. That they don't is a bit frustrating. I doubt that Brother would really mind if someone shared their PDF version. Even if Brother does mind, so what? As you say, it's just eight dollars, it's kinda un-enforcable.

That company probably has a deal with Brother, so that Brother doesn't have to deal with the hassle. However, the manual's supposed to be there, anyhow. It's not like I'm downloading a copyrighted movie, it's totally different. I'm just looking for a PDF or something which

Also, it's not for me.

-Thufir

If you bought the machine new, from a dealer, and the manual is missing, then go back to the dealer and ask them to get you a manual. If this is a used machine, and the manual has gone missing, you will need to purchase a replacement.

For older, long out of date machines (Such as the old black Singers) there are *some* free downloadable manuals available, but not for all - I had to purchase a good copy of the manual for my 1909 Jones Family CS machine. On the other hand, I will freely give email copies of the Singer 66 manual I scanned for a friend to other enthusiasts I know. If I had to send out a hard copy to a stranger, I'd need to be reimbursed for my time, the paper, and the postage. When I do basic sewing I charge £10 per hour. Had beading is £15 per hour. Teaching for the LEA as a sessional tutor is about £18 per hour. Which rate do you want to pay?

Really?

It almost certainly was included to the original owner.

Why? If you lost a manual or bought a used machine without one, why should they provide it free?

Do you steal the $.50 candy bars at the check out stand? Laws against shoplifting are "kinda un-enforcable..."

Different, how exactly??? "It's not like I'm stealing this (fill in the blank), it's totally different."

And that makes a difference how...???

BEI Design wrote: ...

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First, BEI Design, why did you e-mail me?

Anyhow, I dunno, why should any company provide a free manual? Yet, they do. Amazing. Someone really needs to look into the untapped market for all those free PDF manuals.

"24,600,000 English pages for PDF manual download," search results from Google. I don't see that any of the listed manuals cost money to download. In this case, the cost is for scanning in an old manual, by the way. The "principle" of a copyright is a total side-issue. Scanning the manual is the service.

Let's look at this from a bigger perspective. Why are those other manuals free for download? I can't think of a single thing I've purchased new in the past few years for which there isn't a free PDF manual to download; you could probably download a manual for a toaster. Why are all those manuals free?

It's a fair question, but narrowly phrased.

When I go to the Brother website and look for a fax machine, the FAX-1820C, there's a free manual for download. Why? That's a whole eight dollars, or whatever, that Brother is losing. They could charge for that PDF manual, but they don't. Most curious.

If Brother really wanted to limit distribution of their manuals, why give away this fax machines manual for free? This has almost nothing to do with copyrights, it's just a pain to scan in the manual, that's all.

-Thufir

So what? The one you want isn't available except by paying for it. Cough up or do without.

In this case, the cost is for scanning in an old manual, by

Not it isn't: it's theft if you take something that isn't yours.

And you don't believe in paying for a service?

It may seem odd to you, but photocopiers are not sewing machines. All sewing machine brands sell replacement copies of their current manuals, and some of their previous models. *Some* manufacturers make older manuals available to download for a small fee ($8 is a small fee, compared to the cost of a new manual for a new machine). A few have made manuals for machines more than 50 years old available free in various forms (there are a number available on the Singer site). Why should they do this at all? As long as we old machine looneys can keep our dinosaurs going, they have a diminishing chance of selling us a brand new machine! They do it as a service to old friends. Also, most sewing machine manuals are a lot more complex than fax manuals!

Maybe it makes no business sense to them? No manufacturer is in business to make sewing machines, fax machines, whatever... They are in business to make money. If something doesn't make money directly, they may do it as a service to further brand loyalty or for good will. They do not HAVE to do it at all. Fax manuals were probably prepared on a computer, and it costs them no time to scan them: the file is available at the click of a button. Old sewing machine manuals were type-set and printed, with no computer involved. It takes time to scan them, prepare them as a PDF file, and get them on a web site for downloading (I know, I've done it). There may be insufficient call for the particular machine machine manual for it to be worth the bother to them. For newer machines, there IS the copyright issue. In addition, why should they make replacement manuals available at all?

Fax machines got out of date far quicker than sewing machines. And it's a different business with different cultural mores. Get over it.

Maybe they figure that owners of computer peripherals are likely to have a computer and internet access, but that owners of sewing machines are distinctly less likely to have computers and internet access. At any rate, you can always go suggest it to them.

Sorry, my mistake, slip of the mouse pointer, I apologize.

And none of your subsequent argument invalidates my point: If Brother/Pfaff/Singer/Whomever wants to charge for a *replacement* copy of their manual, it is their absolute right to do so, and anyone making and/or selling illicit copies is a thief. Period.

And furthermore, anyone *soliciting* an illicit copy is encouraging theft.

'Nuff said.

Kate Dicey wrote: .=2E.

Well, it's not for me, so I'm more than glad to do without it.

.=2E.

Theft is theft, hmm.

"Hugo began to think about Les Mis=C3=A9rables as early as 1829. He observed the specific incident that triggers the novel's action on the streets of Paris in 1845. On a sunny but cold day, he saw an impoverished man being arrested for stealing a loaf of bread."

That's a very black and white perspective, I'd say there are shades of grey to everything, even the claim that everything has shades of grey.

No, I don't equate a pdf file to a loaf of bread. The claim that "theft is theft," is, well, a bit much, though. Also, IANAL, but I'm not so sure that copyright infringement is theft, legally. Could be wrong.

I pay for service all the time. I, personally, would share the pdf manual, if I had it, and not shed a tear for the lost income for the company/entrepeneur whose business model includes scanning in out of date manuals, nor their employees, which might include someone I know.

I'm not sure if your position comes from empathy for those people, or what. For such a strong stance, I'm assuming that.

.=2E.

Yes. But cars are even more complex, and there are free manuals for cars for free download. I think complexity is an arbitrary distinction, I'm sure there are some very simple manuals to download and some complex ones.

I'm all for you looneys. In many ways it's good for the environment, humankind, and it's a good hobbey. I just think that this has really nothing to do with theft and more to do with inconvenience.

.=2E.

Exactly. That doesn't equate copying an old manual to stealing a top secret formula, though. Intellectual property laws vary from country to country.

available

Sure, I agree with those facts.

What do you mean by "there IS the copyright issue?"

What about cars? Cars have manuals for download and they last a long time.

I don't see that this business is different from any other. As you said, if there was profit in then Brother would give it away. Since there's no profit, of course there's a charge for the service. Even herbal tea companies make money. Ben and Jerry's icecream "sold out" long ago to those evil "corporate" types.

It's an example of copyright run a bit amok, not moral dilemna.

-Thufir

It is still theft. But maybe the punishment for a starving man stealing might not be so severe, or maybe it would be waived.

My HS journalism teacher used to tell us all the time:

"If white is good and black is bad, We all are either grey or plaid." -- William Kepner, circa 1970

But it's true. It's just that some thefts are not as serious as others.

Someone speeding to get a seriously injured person to the ER is still speeding and breaking the law, but they probably won't get a ticket for it.

It's theft of intellectual property. If you go read up on it, you will find out.

Melinda Meahan - take out TRASH to reply wrote: ...

Alright, fair enough.

...

In a sense, yes.

No doubt it does violate the law, you say it's theft, to copy this manual. "On the other hand, I will freely give email copies of the Singer 66 manual I scanned for a friend to other enthusiasts I know. If I had to send out a hard copy to a stranger, I'd need to be reimbursed for my time, the paper, and the postage," so Kate Dicey doesn't see this as some sort of moral or legal issue, but one of practicality.

The intent of this copyright has nothing to do with consumers but with competitors. A seachange in how copyrights work is on the horizon. Of course, there's the piracy issue. There's also open source software, which is often referred to as "copyleft" material. The very existence of a service such as this, scanning in copyrighted material and then e-mailing the file, seems anachronistic given the technology today.

Framing this within the technicalities of theft strikes me as overblown. I'm of the belief that the users right to the manual trumps this concern over theft. It's not that Brother and the company which scans in these documents don't have rights but that the individuals rights trump the corporate in this situation. If the manual was something that Brother invested alot into, perhaps to get money from printing them or to increase the value of the sewing machine, then I might see a moral element here. It's about *why* the manual is copyrighted, not that it is.

-Thufir

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote:

Not at all: the 66 manual is WELL out of copyright, and already freely available on the net. SINGER give it away! I scanned mine to preserve a copy (it's almost 100 years old and rather yelloed and tatty) and provide one for a friens WHO HAD A COPY in less good condition than mine and no access to a scanner or the internet at the time. Like anyone, I do things for friends that stangers have to pay for. Today I'm altering some jacket sleeves for a neighbour and very old friend: she gets that as a freebie, whereas I'd be charging between £20 and £40 as a pay job to a stranger who rang me after finding my ad in Yellow Pages. 'Reimbursement for paper and postage' comes no-where near covering the costs of me feeding the thing through the scanner anfd nannying the printing, when I charge between £10 (simple straight seams) and £30 (teaching complex sewing processes or English Lit to university entrance leverl)an hour for my time. I bought a scanned copy of the Jones Family CS manual from a fellow enthusiast because I could find it no other way: it's a nicely bound, well scanned, hi-res printed facsimile copy of the original, and well worth what I paid for it: she made no profit out of the deal, and at the price and level of presentation, I doubt she covered her costs fully. But I'm well pleased with my manual and she has kept a fellow ancient sewing machine enthusiast sewing on this dear little old lady of a machine.

So if you are stupid enough to lose the manual, you 'deserve' a new one free? Try running that under the noses of the machine makers and see how well it trots...

Kate Dicey wrote: ...

I didn't know that.

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It's not that the user is entitled to having the company provide the manual, or any support, years later and after the machine has been re-sold; I don't think anyone would put that forward.

Where we part ways is probably over the intent of the copyright law. Absolutely, competitors shouldn't infringe on each others manuals. Where's the harm in distributing a copy of a manual for a machine that's no longer in production? I apply that question to fax machines, sewing machines, cars, anything that needs a manual.

The difference between your machine and my friends machine is one of degree in that yours is older. I'd go further and suggest manuals would be better released under something like the GNU GPL which'd allow that kind of distribution. I'm not for more laws to fix bad laws, but alternately the copyright laws could be changed.

In this case, a manual for a sewing machine/fax/car, there's no intrinsic value to the manual. Why is photocopying the manual theft when the manual itself has no value? If there's a value inherent to the manual I'm not seeing it. The copyright laws paint with too broad a brush.

I never really considered it, but I suppose all the PDF manuals I've ever downloaded are probably coprighted, meaning it's illegal for me to distribute them. I can't think why I would, though, since they're free and if someone asked for the manual I'd probably just point them to the download. If this particular machine had been made recently the manual would be free; if not, I can't imagine why not.

-Thufir