Thanks for that one Loopy

There are also details for a few other Amiga books on that site.
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The list of Amiga Reference Books has been updated.

I discovered a copy of "Amiga Gamer's Guide" by Bruce Smith Books the other day in a discount store and had to grab it. In the back is a detailed list of many of the other BS books they released for the Amiga, so I used this to update the existing lists on the Wiki, and to correct a few errors and missing bits of information.

A couple of the ISBN's were also wrong, and the corrected ones now find the book references on Amazon.
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I like the fact that you are only going to archive books that you have received permission to from the copyright holder to release.

Are any of the book scans in need of rework, e.g. image only PDF's, badly squinted PDF's, as I would be willing to rework them in OpenOffice and produce ODT's and PDF's for you. This wouldn't be a priority project for me, but would get done over the long term.

Over the next year I will be developing (for the AMOS manuals project) an OpenOffice writer plugin to extract the styles to css and content to DocBook XML. Then to convert to PHP/CSS/XML web pages. So once that's finished for the AMOS manuals project I could then use it to produce HTML versions of the manuals that are in your archive for this site.

What do you think?
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Sound like a great idea. To date I've had problems contacting most publishers and writers to gain the permissions. I either can't locate them or they are very slow to reply. One that has replied and said he is OK for classicamiga to do so is Bruce Smith, so we can use his books in the archive.

I've thinking that because it is so hard to contact people to gain permission, to instead approach it the other way and add all the books, but with a statement saying that we are doing this to aid the community and hope all original publishers and writers of the works will offer us their blessing, permission and full support for the project, but if anyone has an objection to their work being hosted here we will remove it. Do you think that would be fair?
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I know how difficult it is to get permission, I tried to get permission to reproduce and distribute the craft manual and software. Unfortunately I have had no response . The projects I'm working on can't risk distributing unauthorised copyright material as it might result in losing permission for the AMOS manuals.

Most other Amiga manual archive sites have not had any 'cease and desist' letters, at least to my knowledge, I think this is primarily because the communities are small and the sites/forums are non-profit. As long as you research shows the book is out of print in any medium, I doubt you'll have many problems. It might help to show that your preference is to distribute books with permission by publishing the communications with Bruce Smith books, assuming they are OK with that. It would also be advisable to be very quick in responding to requests to remove books. The impression I get is that sites that respond quickly and work within the system tend to be given a bit more leniency, others like MegaUpload and Google get their rear ends kicked.

Having your statement as a header to the book section is a good idea, clearly showing you are willing to cooperate with the copyright system. Also you might want to have two sections authorised books and other books, or simply make it clear on the book details page that they have been authorised for redistribution, that is for books that have been authorised.
Just for a heads up, I'll only rework authorised books. This is simply because I don't want to put in the hundreds of hours of work necessary only to have the books removed and the work wasted.

Some of what I've said is obvious, just my take on it.
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Would you be interested in trying to help us gain authorisation for books? I don't really have the time at the moment to pursue any new ones so it would be a great help.
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I might pick up a book here and there and try to track down copyright holders, time permitting. This can get quite complex due to the age of these books as the copyright may have reverted back to the authors, in this case the publishers permission means nothing. I can't do anything Jan/Feb as I sat on my back side for three weeks over Christmas and new year and am doing catchup on my own projects which are going to get really time consuming, e.g. disassembling/reassembling AMOS Pro.
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I think thats spot on Dave DLH seems to have no problems with posting books online it's worth a shop..


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@Harrison
asymetrix has scanned the "Amiga Game Maker's Manual, 1992, Stephen Hill" and provided a link to download it over at UltimateAmiga. I was wondering if you have Stephen Hill's contact details so I can get permission to add the manual to UltimateAmiga's download section. I think you have permission to add it to your site, if not I'll request that too.
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Good news folks.

While endeavoring to track down the AMOS Book Authors I decided to contact Aaron Fothergill the Author of the AMOS TOME extension for belated permission to distribute the AMOS TOME extension software and manual and the AMOS Club Newsletters, I also asked permission to reverse engineer AMOS TOME for inclusion in AMOS development environments.

Here the response :

Big thanks from the community go to Aaron.

[Edit] Oops, can't forget to thank asymetrix for creating the PDF and HTML version of the manuals, so big thanks to asymetrix.

- - - Updated - - -

More Good news.

Managed to find Phil South Author of Mastering Amiga AMOS and he has given permission to convert his book to PDF etc and redistribute it.

Please note that when I'm asking for permission to redistribute I am asking permission for Amiga related sites not just Ultimate Amiga where the project is based.

I'll now add that book to the project todo list.

On behalf off the community more big thanks go to Phil South.

[Edit] Found Jason Holburn on YouTube thanks to peter on AmiBay and verified by one of Hungry Horace's video posts of the book. Sent a message, fingers crossed I get a reply, although he may be away on a dive.
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