FTC screwee’s...

[Bosbefok]

FTC screwee’s - a search of past postings reveals bitterness bordering on assassination plots. So…to all the legal beagles out there (and other interested parties), herewith the poser; if you cannot locate, or are unable to sue, for whatever reason, the former proprietors of said institution in order to institute claims for alleged losses incurred due to…shall we say…inopportune termination of training arrangements paid for in advance, and the alleged failure of the institution to refund monies paid for training not received…not to mention alleged shortfalls in salary payments for staff at the time of the "implosion"…would the former proprietors of said institution be in a position to sue anyone for improper dissemination of copyrighted goods, namely…erm…(…cough cough…) the original (and last) FTC notes, in electronic format, for PPL, CPL, ATPL, and Instructors course notes?

In theory, if someone were to be in possession of said notes (390 MB) in electronic format…and if that someone were prepared to distribute the above mentioned, for free, in the interest of the distribution of aviation knowledge and safety in general, not to mention a PASSION for the game, would anyone be interested in acquiring said notes? One would need to bear in mind, of course, that said notes may be out of date by now, course-content may have altered in the interim and therefore these may be useful as a reference only. Would anyone be interested in hosting a FREE download service from which said notes may be downloaded? If it could be useful, it seems a pity that the information should become stale and wasted due to copyright held by a bunch of….drat…I intended to remain completely impartial, detached, professional…

[Bosbefok]

Bert - a "little" rand for some means the world of difference for others. Current course notes are pegged around 6K. Wind your neck in and don't be so condescending. If you have nothing constructive to offer - don't post

[African Tech Rep]

Might I suggest a File Sharing Programme like e-donkey.

Basically when you install it sets a folder within My Documents where you can put anything you wish to share – originally it’ll only be downloadable when your on-line but when person 2 downloads it can then be obtained by person 3 from you and person 1.
You’ll have to be careful how you name the file so it can be easily found by others.

OK – I know many stories about these programmes coming with spy / ad ware – personally I run Spybot and Ad Aware and didn’t see anything worrying post installation of e-donkey.

Just a suggestion – other ways I’m sure are possible.

You mention 390Mb total – assuming that there are fours files (one PPL, one CPL etc) you could signup for four of the 100Mb free sites advertised somewhere like http://www.freewebspace.net/ or [say] two of http://www.freewebtown.com/community/index.php

If the files are not Adobe it would be worth converting them firstly cause that’s what almost everyone in aviation uses now secondly cause a 10MB jpeg can become a less than 1Mb Adobe file.
I’ll happily convert them for you – and teach you FTP (using Ace FTP) to get them to me.

Thinking about it I’ve got a mate in Oz who has set up two sites for us and would probably be interested in setting up the download service you suggested – he’s in India on project right now but should be back next week – if you like PM with your e-mail and I’ll put you in touch.

[Gunship]

Fantatstic idea BOSBEFOK (love you name broer - which Bos made you befok ?) ;)

ATR has a great idea - it will be the best and quickest way - especially FTP and the Adobe Reader way. :ok:

Looking forward to it (as I still have two days left on Broadband in the UK) :ok:

[behindtheyoke]

Would be very carefull as you could still be breaching the copyright laws.

If abondoned ('Res nullius ' being the legal term) , it has to lie in the public domain for something like 30 years before it can be claimed by anyone according to SA common law.

Also do you know for absolute certain that the rights have not been sold to someone else?

At the end of the day, even though FTC as an organisation does not exist and therefore have no legal rights, the trustee or liquidator does still exist and he legally still 'holds' the rights even if the liquidation account has been wound up.

:eek: :ooh:

[African Tech Rep]

BTY
Agreed – it would depend slightly on how FTC closed – if they went into liquidation or just did a runner and their willingness to fight the case especially considering it sounds like they would then be locatable and hence could be sued themselves.
Are they likely to “chase” someone in Oz ? – I don’t know them so can’t say.
Could they prove who’s notes they were – if not they’d probably have to “fight” everyone who had a copy.

I am definitely NOT disagreeing with you – just hopefully giving Bosbefok some thoughts on which he base his decision – I’m pretty sure my mate in Oz would be happy to bookmark the notes so Bosbefok could study them easier and then post links on the net so Bosbefok could download them – just as he had recently done with some pictures so that I and the Owners can get an idea of the condition of some 738’s, the site used isn’t linked to any search engine and the pics will be deleted once the “interested” parties have downloaded them – unless he forgets.
We of course have to take care that no-one post the link on a site like this one – otherwise anyone could get at the pics – and we wouldn’t want that – would we ??

[ZS-NDV]

Whether the copyright is being baffled or not is one thing. Catching the culprit is another.

I would suggest hosting the files on a server somewhere far ( Any US state will do) and keeping the info on the actual person who posted them as nebulous as possible.

Legally speaking, the amont and lenght of red tape needed to attack anyone for breach of property rights on a web based platform is monstruous. Don't even worry about that. Look at how long it took the US music industry to close down Napster... And there you're talking about a US organization attacking a US based company.

Cheers,

Frenchy