Is Boeing Concerned about ASB's getting to be Public Knowledge?
The Alert Service Bulletin that was put up on a web-site in 1999 about a Kapton wiring fire that had caused IFE-related in-seat fires on 747-400's was made subject of a Boeing Legal Team DMCA approach to my ISP (who then promptly killed the website).
DMCA = Digital Millenium Copyright Act
And of course the DMCA is now spreading internationally so the subject matter may soon come down, under a new national DMCA, yet again, from its new position.
Service Bulletins and Alert Service Bulletins are couched in specific terms whereas the AD's that they sometimes give rise to are couched in more harmlessly unalarming and innocuous terms.....but refer the reader back to the SB/ASB for actual implementation details. The reasoning is that some (in fact most) SB/ASB are non-mandatory and anyone reading them might ask embarrassing questions about just why that was.
In the case of the Kapton wiring pax-seat fires, the sensitivity was related to the fact that Kapton wiring was mentioned by name throughout as the cause and the ASB had it being replaced due to it having caused fire(s). That is a very very sensitive subject as far as Boeing, FAA, NTSB and theATA/airlines are concerned. Why? Because the official line is that Kapton is not a problem and has no events officially attributable to it and need not therefore be replaced. The same sensitivity was accorded Kapton by Airline Q when they sent out a MEMO instructing that all inventory-held stocks of Kapton wiring and its aromatic polyimide variants were to be destroyed.
If you really need to read up on ASB's or SB's just go to the dungeons of the Federal Repository and they are all there. You can read them, but if you try to copy or disseminate them or publish them, Mr Boeing has a whole team that will descend upon you like a ton of bricks. They closely husband their sensitive secrets.
DMCA action is unilateral. You have no right of appeal (and neither does the ISP).
No need to wonder any more about ASB/SB's.