copyright and POHs

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Pre-takeoff checklist
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david
I've got a Cessna POH from the 70s (pdf I found online) that has no copyright message on the title page. Am I able to print and distribute copies legally? My understanding is that it's old enough that the copyright message was required to establish copyright and without it, it is public domain. Is there a way to confirm this?

If it matters, this would be part of a ground school I'm being paid to teach and there would be a small fee ($5-$10) to cover the time and cost of having them printed and bound.

Yes, I know no one's likely to care or come after me if it happens to be illegal. That's not the question. My question is whether it's legal for me to do this.
 
If it was published before 1977 without a copyright notice, you are correct, there is no copyright. There are some exceptions to you being able to freely copy it, but I can't see how they would apply here. You could always ask Cessna for permission. Also even if it were protected by copyright, if you're just using instructional excerpts (like performance tables) you may qualify under the fair use doctrine.
 
I don't know the answer, but...

esscoaircraft.com is a good place to look for manuals, I've bought several from them in the past. Prices can be pretty good depending on the model, and they worry about legalities for you.
 
Why have it printed and bound. Save a tree and email it to people or let them download it from the source and then the copyright violation (if any) won't be yours. You could print out a few performance charts under fair use if you need to.
 
dmspilot said:
Why have it printed and bound. Save a tree and email it to people or let them download it from the source and then the copyright violation (if any) won't be yours. You could print out a few performance charts under fair use if you need to.
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This was my thought. Circulate a PDF (OCR'd and Bookmarked), don't charge for it, you're not going to raise anyone's ire if you're doing it that way.
 
Here's a terrific table regarding "Copyright Term and the Public Domain":

http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

Copyright_Public_Domain.jpg
 
The online PDF has no copyright notice, did someone white it out prior to scanning?
 
bradg33 said:
This was my thought. Circulate a PDF (OCR'd and Bookmarked), don't charge for it, you're not going to raise anyone's ire if you're doing it that way.
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Is the bolded part correct? I ask because it seems like I could distribute music or movies that way (without charging for it); I'm pretty sure people had to cough up money to the recording studios for sharing music they bought in that fashion..
 
Cap'n Jack said:
Is the bolded part correct? I ask because it seems like I could distribute music or movies that way (without charging for it); I'm pretty sure people had to cough up money to the recording studios for sharing music they bought in that fashion..
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No, it's completely wrong. Neither charging nor attribution has any bearing on legality. It might come into play when damages are assessed.
 
If you are using it in a small ground school, I think the worst that could possibly happen is a cease and desist. But, unless you are planning on using it on a wide scale or have someone use it while operating an airplane, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. ;)
I would make sure you mark them for "classroom use only" or something to that effect. Just so some knucklehead doesn't use that as is only checklist and it not be the same as the one he was supposed to use! :mad2::mad2:
 
We ran into this a lot in grad-school when the professors wanted to use a lot of current articles from academic journals and the business press. Their solution was to point out the source and send us to make our own copies.

That did not shift the blame to us, but eliminated blame altogether because that falls within fair use of the material.
 
Stevel said:
That did not shift the blame to us, but eliminated blame altogether because that falls within fair use of the material.
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It's not rising to the level of fair use. They just avoided making a copy at all.
In fact, it's not even clear that the student needed to make a copy. Teachers tell students to go read passages in a book all the time without having to worry about copyrights.
 
Matthew said:
The online PDF has no copyright notice, did someone white it out prior to scanning?
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While unlikely, this is a good point. To be conservative, you should make sure that the PDF you found online matches the POH in your aircraft, and that the aircraft-specific POH was published 1977 or earlier and does not have a copyright notice anywhere in it.

As some indication of Cessna's diligence in including a copyright notice from that era, I Have a PDF copy of a POH for a Cessna 172N and the title page says "Copyright (C) 1977."
 
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Matthew said:
I just looked at the essco site:

1975 172M manual, $12

http://www.esscoaircraft.com/p-3878-cessna-172m-skyhawk-1975-owners-manual.aspx
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That seems like a reasonable price and it would work, except that it pre-dates the GAMA standardized format that modern POHs use. I'm looking for a 172 manual that follows that format (so 1976(?) or later). It doesn't seem they have any 172 manuals at a comparable cost in that time frame. I'll look through the site and see if I can a suitable substitute.

Matthew said:
The online PDF has no copyright notice, did someone white it out prior to scanning?
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Good point. I'm told some of the Cessna manuals at that time were released without a copyright notice. But since I don't have the original this pdf was made from, I have no way of knowing if someone removed the notice from this one.

It's looking like I might be better not bothering with this. I guess I could just print the performance and W/B charts and tell people to google the rest.
 
\__[Ô]__/;1888011 said:
That seems like a reasonable price and it would work, except that it pre-dates the GAMA standardized format that modern POHs use. I'm looking for a 172 manual that follows that format (so 1976(?) or later). It doesn't seem they have any 172 manuals at a comparable cost in that time frame. I'll look through the site and see if I can a suitable substitute.
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Good catch.

I took a classroom ground school at a community college. The W&B and performsnce tables in a Cessna manual and a Piper manual are different. I am pretty sure we used copies of just those tables.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
Is the bolded part correct? I ask because it seems like I could distribute music or movies that way (without charging for it); I'm pretty sure people had to cough up money to the recording studios for sharing music they bought in that fashion..
Click to expand...

It's not correct in the sense that it makes it "legal," but in a practical sense, in this particular context where nobody really cares anyway, it's much less likely to get negative attention.

Notice I did not say that not charging makes it "ok," only that it's not likely to raise anyone's ire. When applied to other types of media, the analysis would be different (in some cases, like music, much different).
 
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