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Just some thoughts on scanning magazines.  I found a guy in England that scans all kinds of stuff and sells it on DVD, so I got his DVDs for Model Railroader from 1934 to 2000.  I had also bought the Model Railroader "update" DVD which has 2010 to 2019, so I needed to scan 2001 thru 2009 myself. Well, the England guys stuff isn't as good a quality as I had hoped, and his "trademark" that is plastered on the first page of every months issue is a racy sexually suggestive photo of a woman. So I decided that I need to scan my entire collection of Model Railroaders myself for 2 reasons. First is that I want a good enough scan resolution that I can blow things up on the screen a little and see details, and also because I don't want all the stinking full page ads in the pdf files...and I don't need my wife wondering what I am looking at on the computer with some hot woman showing up every time you click on a magazine issue.  So experimenting with it I have found that the best trade off for quality vs file size ends up with each months issue being about 1 gigabyte in size, give or take a little depending on how many pages there were.

In the meantime, I also ordered the "official" DVD of the "every issue of Mainline Modeler".  I am very disappointed in the scan quality of that.  The page scans are much worse than the England guys scans. They don't even look good NOT blown up in size on the screen.  So I am unsure whether to ruin all my MM's to scan them or to just sell off the DVD on Ebay and forget that.

Oh, and I quickly discovered that using scissors to cut the pages so they will go through the sheet feeder is a real bummer.  Utility knife is better but not much.  So I got one of those paper cutters that has the blade come down pretty much straight onto whatever you are cutting(NOT the old school scissors type with the blade on the long arm that swings down) and it is slick.  It lops off the binding/staples no problem and cuts cleanly through the whole mag at once. You can cut 3 or 4 mags at a time with it but that causes some issues I didn't want to deal with.

The "official" 75 year Model Railroader collection still come up on Ebay every so often and goes for around $150. But from reading messages of people who have it, there are some issues with it for some people. But even if it worked just like the 10-19 "update" DVD does that I have, I do not like the interface of it. You can load it on your hard drive, but it is not like you can just click on an issue and read it. You have to click on a year and then that takes you to a screen that has the issues for that year that you can click on. After reading that issue, you can't go directly to the next one or anything, you have to start over again to get where you want to be, so it is not that handy. AND it has all the full page ads that you have to skip over while reading it too.

Last edited by oscaletrains
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@Allegheny posted:

Hello oscaletrains,

Sorry to learn of your issues with the official sources you used to acquire the CD's.  Can you let me know where you obtained them from as I'm was going to purchase a set from a historical society that was offering them from Mainline Modeler.  It's possible their offering is a better quality.

Yea, I got it from the C&O Historical Society.  As far as I know that is the only place you can get it.  I should just cut them and scan them too, but we shall see.

@VGN64 posted:

I have a complete set or two of Mainline Modeler that I would love to have on CD.  Perhaps that is my next job in life........



Well, it'd take LOT more CD's than it would DVD's. A CD only holds about 700meg and each month of what I am scanning is about 300meg more than that. But the MM didn't have near as many pages as the MR's did, to you could probably get each month on a CD I'd wager.  A DVD could hold 4 months worth of scanned MR's, and probably 6 months worth of MM's.  Frankly, just get a USB external drive for about $60 that will hold 2TB and you would be golden for about anything.  If you really wanted to splurge, get a external solid state drive SSD and it'd be fast and forever since you would not be writing and rewriting to it anyway, probably cost about $250 for a 2TB one.

You don't work for UP do you?  Copyright smopyright, no real difference than someone buying the out of print magazines off ebay.  Not to mention that it takes at least an hour per issue to cut the backs, weed out all the double sided ads, scan the pages, weed out all the single page ads, combine the pages into a pdf file, and file it in a folder on the computer. Not counting the costs for the paper cutter($400), the scanner and computer, the pdf software($200), dealing with the mess of papers afterward, and whatever else. The guy had 1934 to 2003 issues, so he had probably 1000 hours of his own time in it.  Not real concerned about it personally.

Um ... maybe you don't understand how the copyright law works.

From Wikipedia:  "In the United States, statutory damages are set out in 17 U.S.C. § 504 of the U.S. Code. The basic level of damages is between $750 and $30,000 per work, at the discretion of the court.  Plaintiffs who can show willful infringement may be entitled to damages up to $150,000 per work."

Ripping off a magazine's work product for several issues a year, for not just several years, but for decades, would seem to meet the standard for willful infringement, so if there are 12 issues per year at $150,000 per work, that would be $1.8 million for each year's worth of stolen work product, or $18 million for each decade's worth of stolen work product, with each sold DVD constituting a separate willful violation.  For anyone other than Jeff Bezos, that is worth a bit more than 1,000 hours worth of time.

But hey, don't take my word for it -- ask a lawyer who specializes in intellectual property law, and let me know what he says. 

David

There is a big difference, compared to buying an old magazine on eBay. The person selling scanned copies, can theoretically sell an unlimited amount of someone else’s work product.  Because he spent a few bucks to scan DOESNT make it ok somehow.  It’s like saying the bank robber should be able to keep the money and not get arrested because he paid for his ski mask and gun.     The trouble is it isn’t worth the original publishers time or money playing wack a mole with these thieves.   Rapido just posted something about this a few years ago after Big Dawg Resins / Pacific Northwest / CMR basically were using parts or shells and recasting in resin and selling.  They also did this to the Anthracite RHS Baby Face Baldwin shells and a few Athern/Atlas products.  They are still shamelessly selling someone else’s hard work because the manufactures don’t want to spend money on lawyers to stop them, and they justify themselves by saying locomotives are in the public domain.    That old magazine on eBay was originally purchased from the publisher, the copy you bought on eBay  was not.  

I never heard of any of those people. I also have no idea why they would want to copy something in resin that you can already purchase in styrene unless what they are copying is no longer available to purchase and the original manufacturer has no intentions of ever producing it again.

What I do know is that the digital scans that the guy is selling on Ebay turned out to not meet my needs, so I am doing it myself. And actually, come to think of it, I already owned hard copies of what I bought from the guy digitally, so he didn't break the law anyway.

Last edited by oscaletrains

Well....I can tell you, just in case you haven't heard already or read it on this forum, OGR is very familiar with copyright infringement.  Several ex-members stepped over the bounds of the law and it cost a lot of money!  We covered for those folks but we will no longer do so.  If you break copyright law on our forum, not only will yourmembership be terminate, but you will find yourself having to consult an attorney if we are taken to court because of your illegal act.  This forum is not exempt from fair use laws because we sell advertising here as well as having a direct link to our web store.  Just recently, we had to dismiss a long time and prolific poster that had several long running threads because he repeatedly posted copyrighted pictures...even after several stern conversations with him.  If you see copyrighted material or even think it is copyrighted and the poster has not indicated that he/she has written permission or owns the material, please alert us.  You will remain anonymous.

Thanks

Last edited by OGR CEO-PUBLISHER

...Copyright smopyright, no real difference than someone buying the out of print magazines off ebay.  Not to mention that it takes at least an hour per issue to cut the backs, weed out all the double sided ads, scan the pages, weed out all the single page ads, combine the pages into a pdf file, and file it in a folder on the computer. Not counting the costs for the paper cutter($400), the scanner and computer, the pdf software($200), dealing with the mess of papers afterward, and whatever else. The guy had 1934 to 2003 issues, so he had probably 1000 hours of his own time in it.  Not real concerned about it personally.

It takes a lot of time and effort to breach a wall and break into a bank. So I guess it's okay to do that, right? You are discussing violating Federal laws. What part of "violating the law" do you not understand?

When you signed up to post on this Forum, you agreed to certain rules. Abide by them.

I never heard of any of those people. I also have no idea why they would want to copy something in resin that you can already purchase in styrene unless what they are copying is no longer available to purchase and the original manufacturer has no intentions of ever producing it again.

What I do know is that the digital scans that the guy is selling on Ebay turned out to not meet my needs, so I am doing it myself. And actually, come to think of it, I already owned hard copies of what I bought from the guy digitally, so he didn't break the law anyway.

Boy oh Boy, YOU have no idea what you are talking about when it come to your last sentence.  This guy IS breaking the law and by the way, technically ... since one knows what he is doing, by purchasing his stolen product, one can be charge with theft by receiving!

Last edited by OGR CEO-PUBLISHER

Boy oh Boy, YOU have no idea what you are talking about when it come to your last sentence.  This guy IS breaking the law and by the way, technically ... since one knows what he is doing, by purchasing his stolen product, one can be charge with theft by receiving!

Just a little correction there Arnold - receiving illegally made copies cannot give rise to liability for receiving stolen property.  (The Supreme Court held so in 1985, Dowling v. United States). Intellectual property and tangible property are not the same entity in the eyes of the law.

In fact, the act of purchasing a pirated copy is not itself copyright infringement, since only the person who made or sold the illegal copy is violating the right of reproduction or distribution. However, reselling the illegal copy would violate the right of distribution.

All of course tangential to the point at hand.

Last edited by Professor Chaos

Just a little correction there Arnold - receiving illegally made copies cannot give rise to liability for receiving stolen property.  (The Supreme Court held so in 1985, Dowling v. United States). Intellectual property and tangible property are not the same entity in the eyes of the law.

In fact, the act of purchasing a pirated copy is not itself copyright infringement, since only the person who made or sold the illegal copy is violating the right of reproduction or distribution. However, reselling the illegal copy would violate the right of distribution.

All of course tangential to the point at hand.

Well...hold it there "Chaos"....you didn't read my statement carefully.  I SAID, if one KNOWINGLY purchases stolen product then one can be charged with theft by receiving....totally different than what you are talking about.        

Last edited by OGR CEO-PUBLISHER
@richs09 posted:

Alan Arnold - I think I've asked you this question before, but not sure I saw an answer.  I guess its a two-part question:  1) Is posting a link on this site to a copyrighted picture on another site (e.g. railpictures.net) permitted?  2) what about pictures taken from Wikimedia or Wikipedia where there seems to be  a fair use statement in place?

It is fine to post a link to copyrighted material here on this forum.  A fair use statement on another site does not mean you can post copyrighted material from that site to this one since our site is not a fair use site...so no, do not post pictures from Wikimedia or Wikipedia here.

I am going to close this discussion because we have made our policy clear not only here in this thread but in our TOS and in previous threads concerning copyrighted material.  Make sure that you either own the material you are posting and make sure you state you are the owner OR get permission from the owner to post copyrighted material on our site AND state that you have permission.  We have adopted a no tolerance policy when we become aware that someone has posted copyrighted material that does not meet the guidelines in our TOS.

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