Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 08:21:49 -0400
Reply-To: Derek Drew <derekdrew@RCN.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Derek Drew <derekdrew@RCN.COM>
Subject: Re: protraining (now off line)
In-Reply-To: <002701c01f09$37c814c0$510debd0@p166>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
Don't assume the manuals lacked a copyright notices on them before I sent
them out. I am not saying they had one, I am just saying these notices
might have been accidentally deleted before I loaned them to you, Darrell.
Must be a mindset thing I have or a general attitude toward companies that
won't support the consumer properly with their own product.
In any case, I don't think we should get too excited about the copyright
implications of these things.
It is Ok with me if they get reposted all over the world.
The fact is, however, I think they should reside in the files section of
the list archives in addition to wherever else they may end up.
That's the logical resting place and I'd like to see them end up there if
our machine there can handle it.
I cannot tell you what behaviors I had to go through to get these things.
Actually I can.
It started in 1989 when I was in Maryland with a tour group after hours in
the Mid-Atlantic Volkswagen headquarters just outside of DC. This was the
DC Area Volkswagen club special meeting where the bigwigs from VW were
going to actually honor the "enthusiasts" and invite us to the big HQ
building. It was a very big building filled with spectacular Volkswagen
stuff. I felt like I was in heaven. It was after hours so, around 8pm, and
all the employees had gone home except us enthusiasts and the VW reps.
I was so blown away by this building and all possible contents there that
somehow I accidentally got separated from the group and got lost in the
building. Nobody was around, so I went from room to room turning on the
lights to find out where I was. I ended up in the training center where I
decided to take a rest in the seat behind the desk with all the internal
training manuals there. To pass the time I began reading through the
manuals one by one looking for Vanagon stuff since this was an interest of
mine. I noticed these training manuals, and since they had extras there,
brought one out to show to the group. I forgot to show everybody, including
the VW people there, because of the excitement while the group looked at a
diesel Rabbit or Golf or something. When I found the manual in my briefcase
the next day I decided not to send it back until I could make a copy for
personal reference. I felt justified in all these behaviors since at the
time all Vanagons had the hiccups due to the wiring harness/capacitor
problem, and I had replaced $4,000 of parts under warranty trying to fix
the problem. I felt VW had clearly let us down (there was no cure known yet
at that time) and that if there was technical information about the vehicle
it was my right to have it having spent $23,000 on a non-functioning vehicle.
Anyway, I'll have to see about rejoining the DC area VW club. Used to be a
very hot group.
Should I sent the original back to them now?
At 06:36 AM 9/15/00 -0500, you wrote:
>Hi Volks,
> As some of you know I finally got the protraining manuals scanned and
>my son Tom put them up on our web site about a month ago. Our web site is a
>low volume 100 meg per day max, so we were looking for some place to host
>them for the ultra heavy traffic of the list. Yesterday the 19 megabytes of
>protraining manuals provided 363 meg of download activity. The vw portion of
>our site is now off line.
> If there is someone out there who has bandwidth and space for the
>protraining manuals get in contact with Tom at. They are in jpg format.
>tboehler@nyx.net
> The protraining manuals provide additional service information for the
>86-91 vanagon. Many thanks to Derek Drew who loaned his copy of the
>manuals to me (for temporary off site backup of course) . I found no
>copyright statement anywhere on these manuals when I scanned them. They were
>described to me as manuals that vw used for internal training.
>
>Midwesty
>(Darrell)
_______________________________________________
Derek Drew New York, NY
CEO & Co-Founder
http://www.ConsumerSearch.com/
80 South Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10038
derekdrew@rcn.com
212-580-6486
Alternate numbers for the industrious phone caller that wants to try every
avenue: 917-848-6425 (cell); 202-966-7907 (Work), 212-580-4459 (Home),
202-966-0938 (Home), 978-359-8533 (fax [efax]), 212-269-3428 (Seaport
office), 212-269-3188 (Seaport main number).
