Freeinfosociety - opinions?

[Mark Hammer]

The "Free Information Society" has a huge repository of schematics and articles in the audio category.  In addition to the usual reams of Fender and Gibson amp schematics, a great many of them are either drawings, or projects, by many of the folks here.  I was just wondering whether people had any opinions about such a site, or dealings with the person or persons behind it.  Personally, I can see benefits and disadvantages, quite apart from any issues of copyright, disclosure, etc.

You can access it at: http://www.freeinfosociety.com/electronics/audio.html

[ExpAnonColin]

I know I may be a "radical" on this one... but...

I agree with them FOR THE MOST PART.  As long as the author really doesn't want the schem elsewhere on the net, for who cares what reason (like GGG and Geofex, for example) then I personally go the route of assuming that they actually want as many people to learn from their ideas/drawings as possible, and posting schems as such without consent of the author I moreso consider as "spreading the love".  However, taking someone else's work and pretending it's yours or doing so with no disclaimer is crazy.

-Colin

[casey]

It's cool...as long as they give credit to where credit is due....and dont claim it as their own like what colin said.

i think it's a great site, and hope it grows.

[phillip]

As long as he/she/they respect the request of the original contributors of the schematics/projects to not post schematics on other websites without specific written permission.

Right now I'm looking at JD Sleep's fOXX Tone Machine schematic on that site which very specifically has written at the bottom "Permission refused for posting/hosting this diagram from any site other than Guitar Effects Projects."  There are also several other of JD's schematics there...positive and negative ground Rangemaster and Ampeg Scrambler.

Phillip

[j0shua]

I think is a good alternative resource, and the author of that web site never change any author name..

i hope that site can be grow or the author build some effects to .... is cool to share for education ....

[Doug_H]

Basic netiquette dictates that their reference to a schematic should be a link to the original source instead of posting a copy, unless they have the author's permission.

Doug

[Paul Marossy]

Looks like an interesting site. However, he is posting some things from his website which are clearly against the wishes of GEOFEX (Isolated Splitter) and GGG (Improved EA Tremolo) to name a couple of the many that I noticed...

[Nasse]

I try to not use such sites

[ExpAnonColin]

Basic netiquette dictates that their reference to a schematic should be a link to the original source instead of posting a copy, unless they have the author's permission.

Doug

Good in practice and etiquette wise, but with a browse through Aron's (well, as it used to be) or the geofex schematic pages you'll find 50%+ broken links.  Many of the links go to pages hosting it unoriginally anyways.

-Colin

[Doug_H]

In any case, you should always try to get the author's permission before you post something that doesn't belong to you.

Doug

[Mark Hammer]

Looks like an interesting site. However, he is posting some things from his website which are clearly against the wishes of GEOFEX (Isolated Splitter) and GGG (Improved EA Tremolo) to name a couple of the many that I noticed...

Well, that's why I raised it.  On the one hand, one-stop shopping is a real convenience (though organization beyond mere alphabetization helps).  On the other hand, most "revolutions" tend to be somewhat unattached to protocol, and in this case that is true as well.

I suppose what concerns me most is that it is impossible for the webmaster/s to stay on top of updates and corrections to such a large quantity of schematics.  Obviously that's not going to happen with respect to a scan of a late 60's fender amp, where no changes will be forthcoming, but in the case of projects like Dean Hazelwanter's Holtek HT8255 delay, is the webmaster actually going to check up and see if anyone has found anything improvable or wrong with it?

The risk this poses, as I see it, is that large archives tend to become default search sites for people, and unless updates and corrections are diligently sought out, AND advertised at the site (or a potential update source linked to), people can be lured into building stuff which is assured to not work.  Then there is the other stuff like, oh I don't know, that schematic that RG redrew some 10 years ago, which accidentally got posted as an "MXR Hot Tubes", and is - despite repeated corrections - still listed on this archive as an MXR product despite the fact that MXR *never* made any such thing (E-H did). :roll:

As others have noted, giving proper credit is also an ongoing issue.

[Khas Evets]

I think they changed their 'about' page. When I first saw this site, they were babbling about how all copyrighted material should be in the public domain. I think there were a couple threads here about it, and that lack of respect and understanding of intellectual property was my main problem with the site.

Now they say that they'll remove anyone's copyrighted work if requested by the holder to do so. So if Geo, GGG and others don't like it, they can have it removed. Personally, I would like having just one repository of schematics, rather than trying to remember which of the 30 sites had a schematic I wanted.

[Doug_H]

I suppose what concerns me most is that it is impossible for the webmaster/s to stay on top of updates and corrections to such a large quantity of schematics.  

Thanks for mentioning this, Mark. I think this is almost a bigger problem than the "who gets credit?" issue. Someone posted an old amp mod schematic of mine on their site once. I had taken it off of my site a few years prior. It was an immature idea I had posted in my youthful enthusiasm of "look what I did!" when I first started learning about working on amps. The site manager politely obliged so no harm done.

It was basically an "unsupported mod" ( ) as far as I was concerned and I didn't want to waste my time with people asking for support and be bothered with constantly re-explaining the situation. Not that my mailbox was flooded or anything... Taking the "mailto" tag off of your site fixes that... haha! :lol:  Anyway... There is also the problem of fixes that don't get propogated up to the posted copy, as you mentioned.

There may be a lot of different reasons that people may decide not to post their previous work, as evidenced by the broken links at Aron's site mentioned before.  And although the system's not perfect, a little netiquette goes a long way in helping author's retain some control over what work of their's gets publicly posted. It's just a matter of respect.

Doug

[davebungo]

I for one have found the site really useful in the past.  As far as I'm concerned, if I post a schematic on the web, I had better expect it to be copied and distributed (if it's any good).  In fact, I'd be quite honoured as long as it had the original credits etc (as most people have pointed out).

If I want to keep a schematic to myself I will not post it - simple as that.  (Not that I'm admitting that I have any good schematics).  I think the ethos of this site appears to be to share and share alike and if stuff gets copied then so be it but most of us are aware of the common sense rules about not selling someone else's design for profit etc.

I think it is good in a way that this subject comes up repeatedly, it's annoying at times but necessary and for the good of everyone here I think (just like any newby question).

[puretube]

I kinda like Doug`s standpoints  

[mikeb]

Someone should mirror the entire website at another url, except change some text to make it seem as though THEY are responsible for the hard work ... see if the original people like it!

Mike

[phillip]

Someone should mirror the entire website at another url, except change some text to make it seem as though THEY are responsible for the hard work ... see if the original people like it!

Mike

And link to the images on their server instead of uploading them all to another server

Phillip

[Peter Snowberg]

Follow that with a Googlebomb of the 'new' site.

[Doug_H]

I for one have found the site really useful in the past.  As far as I'm concerned, if I post a schematic on the web, I had better expect it to be copied and distributed (if it's any good).  

Copied- Yes. Distributed- Yes. Posted- errr... I'll have to disagree...

But practically speaking, you are correct. Once it's posted, you basically lose control of it.

I love one-stop shopping as much as anyone. So, IMO if you are going to set up an internet archive you should first obtain permission where possible from the authors who are providing the archive content. And if you are going to be hosting schematics or software, you should provide some sort of revision control or maintenance for the material, so that fixes, mods, etc can be incorporated properly.  This is "engineering documentation 101" kind of stuff. And if you are going to host a schematic archive you are basically in the engineering documentation business- you need to understand that first.

AFAIC, the "free info" agenda is just a thinly-veiled disguise for not doing their homework. I'm always suspicious of revolutions that are based on other people's effort while the "revolutionaries" follow the path of least resistance....

For my part, I think I've beat this horse sufficiently to death...

Doug

[R.G.]

I'm a bit late to the party - my motherboard quit recognizing my disk drives yesterday and I had to spend the day making sure my backups were OK. Today I get to rebuild my machine with a new motherboard.

But...

There is something fundamental here. IMHO, you can pretty much divide responses to things like FIS into four classes:
1) Information creators, who largely don't agree with having their creations splattered about without their permission or credit.
2) Information consumers, who think more free stuff is better; the logical conclusion to that train of thought is the idea that all information "ought to be free". These people are largely not information creators as a result of inexperience, skills, or lack of motivation. Info consumers typically want what they want when they want it, and there is enough free stuff available that they get accustomed to getting their way. This becomes their model for how it "ought to be".
3) Exceptions; folks who are genuinely unconcerned if their creations are appropriated under someone else's name, modified under someone else's name, or other malfeasance, and who are satisfied with having given something to someone else. Note that the same person can alternate between 1 and 3 at times, or be a 1 or 3 depending on the topic. However, 1s and 3s tend NOT to be 4s.
4) Thieves; these are people who make an active effort to grab other stuff and aggrandize themselves by displaying it, either semi-benignly by being willingly naive or uninformed about information ownership, or maliciously by trying to make the info seem like it was their own.

I'm pretty happy with categories 1 through 3, 2's being a bit irritating if they refuse to learn either about information rights or develop their own skills and start contributing.  

If you're a 2 and this irritates you, think for a moment what you would have done in the 1970s when if you wanted information you would have had to travel to a library and dig it out, read scholarly journals, reverse engineer pedals without a neat little how-to guide in front of you. You're living in an information paradise. Don't complain that no one is polishing the gold streets often enough. I don't know why I say that. You will anyway.

But I really don't like the thieves. I thought I had pointed out all of my stuff on FIS and got it removed. Apparently I missed some. I'll go back through the place, exhaustively this time.

In academia and professional work of many kinds, people who act like 4s lose their jobs; some of them lose their jobs on the rumor that they were acting like a 4.

Have any of you looked at the frequency of new articles being posted on GEO? Did you think they got further between because I didn't have anything new to say? Hmm... not much new at AMZ for a long time now. Why is that?

The reason that there are copyright laws is exactly that: if there is no way to prevent information theft, no one creates information for public consumption except the odd 3. Copyright law is intended to *encourage* creation by protecting the 1s so they will create. (N.B. Originally it was intended to allow such property to pass into the public domain after the creator died, but the real heavyweight copyright owners like Disney have now strongarmed Congress into making that something like 90 years so they don't have Mickey Mouse in the public domain, but that's yet a different perversion. But I digress.) If there is no information protection, there is no information available except from the 3s.

If you think this is harsh, create something, and post it for other people to relabel as their work. Then tell us how you feel. A few of you will genuinely be 3's and will be fine with it. But I know how many of you who are 2's becoming 1's will feel.

Now I have to go get a motherboard.