Work on TN installations come "the 18th"

[JohnW2]

That's why I didn't link to it directly. Best not tell anyone.

Well, "DCODE" (who appear to be a perfectly respectable organisation!) have put it on a publicly-accessible website, so any other considerations are presumably 'not our problem'!

No, it was late when I saw it.

Fair enough. As I said, I haven't had time to look at it yet, either (other than in relation to the one specific point).

Kind Regards, John

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Thanks. Very interesting - but that document surely should not be in the public domain, should it? ("Private Circulation - JPEL/64 Information Only" -

It says:

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as
permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 this publication may be reproduced, stored or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers​

so as we can tick most/all of the "research or private study, or criticism or review" boxes.....

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Well, "DCODE" (who appear to be a perfectly respectable organisation!) have put it on a publicly-accessible website, so any other considerations are presumably 'not our problem'!

As what their members do is explicitly outwith the scope of BS 7671, their interest in the document must be research.

 

[JohnW2]

It actually may be a pathetic attempt at 'security'. I cannot (obviously without being 'logged in') actually find a way of navigating to (or even becoming aware of the existence of) that document from the DCODE home page - but there clearly is no problem in getting to the document using its full url. Hence, maybe they think that keeping the document url 'secret' is a way of not making the document 'publicly available'.

The quoted comments relating to Copyright etc. are, of course, from the text of the document of which this is a draft, not wording relating directly to the draft.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Err...

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as
permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 this publication may be reproduced, stored or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers

 

[JohnW2]

Unless I'm missing it somewhere else, the "this publication" in the extract quoted is the publication (or will be, when it is published) of which the document we are looking at is a draft. The draft itself is not "this publication".

 

[DetlefSchmitz]

Interestingly, the mere act of making a document available to at least one other person constitutes the act of publication, which is the minimum requirement to be allowed to claim copyright. So in this case the copyright applies.

 

[JohnW2]

Interestingly, the mere act of making a document available to at least one other person constitutes the act of publication, which is the minimum requirement to be allowed to claim copyright. So in this case the copyright applies.

I don't think that anyone disputes that copyright applies, both to the underlying document and to the draft of it, nor that the usual 'exceptions' in relation to "research or private study, or criticism or review" probably/presumably also apply. The issue of publication only arose because BAS chose to embolden the words "this publication".

I'm not really sure what point BAS has been trying to make, but if anything is 'iffy' I would think it is the fact that DCODE have made the entire document (copyright to BSI/IET) available on-line, seemingly to anyone (like myself) who knows how to find it. However, I am certainly not a lawyer, least of all in relation to this very complex area of law.

Kind Regards, John

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Unless I'm missing it somewhere else, the "this publication" in the extract quoted is the publication (or will be, when it is published) of which the document we are looking at is a draft. The draft itself is not "this publication".

I2ANAL.

But I do have sufficient common sense to know that if a publication refers, in itself, to "this publication", then "this publication" means this publication.

if anything is 'iffy' I would think it is the fact that DCODE have made the entire document (copyright to BSI/IET) available on-line, seemingly to anyone (like myself) who knows how to find it.

Maybe they have made it available for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review.

 

[JohnW2]

Well, we definitely need a (specialist) lawyer, but I find it hard to believe that it is acceptable to make the entirety of a document available to the general public so that bits of it are available to anyone who wants those bits "for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review". I thought that, even in relation to such purposes, there was a 'fair use' restriction on what proportion of a document could be copied etc. (and that the 'limit' would fall far far short of the entirety of a 700+ page document!).

 

[DetlefSchmitz]

Look, they screwed up by invoking security through obscurity. Someone else screwed up by ignoring the requirement not to publish the link. These things happen. There's no need to make a federal case out of it. Nevertheless I expect to read pages more of pointless bickering.

 

[JohnW2]

Look, they screwed up by invoking security through obscurity. Someone else screwed up by ignoring the requirement not to publish the link.

Indeed - that seems to be the situation. Those are both things I've suggested, and I see no sense or point in the 'bickering', which is certainly of no interest to me.

If one assumes that the draft we have found is very close to what the final document will be, I presume that the authors will not be happy, since having a 'publicly accessible' digital copy of something close to a final version of an edition of BS7671 is presumably (commercially) not something they would want to exist! Maybe it won't remain 'accessible' for too long (but there's no telling how many people will have downloaded it in the meantime!)

 

[ban-all-sheds]

I wonder how many sales they would/will lose because of it?

 

[ban-all-sheds]

It'll come in handy for quoting.

 

[JohnW2]

I suppose everything depends upon how many people find (and download) it before (always assuming!) it gets taken down (and this very discussion ought to increase the number of 'finders' a bit!) - and, yes, it should be handy for both quoting and searching (and may even reduce sales a bit).