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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
New subject titles and [was] 1851 Bowditch at StarPath
From: Jared Sherman
Date: 2003 Jan 29, 19:29 -0500
From: Jared Sherman
Date: 2003 Jan 29, 19:29 -0500
William- You are using MS Outlook for an email client. I assume you are clicking REPLY to reply to messages. When you do that you should see TO: FROM: and SUBJECT: at the top of the reply, just delete/change the old subject and enter a new one. I tired to download the new 2002 Bowditch from NIMA and mentioned that here some weeks ago. NIMA feels that their audience is the military and they put up the new Bowditch in about 50 files "because our people don't have the bandwidth to download it all in one file". They also locked several of the PDF files to prevent people from altering the content, prevent merging them into one large file, etc. And they have the peculiar idea that because the NIMA logo is printed in several chapters that will prevent others from reprinting and selling the material. As a civilian and not a lawyer, I can only say "Gee whiz!" because the front page of Bowditch actually says it is copyright to the US government and no copyright applies. Logo or otherwise. Well...suffice to say that there are commercial products which cheaply and readily crack the PDF password encryption and allow the entire document to be unlocked. I expect to reassemble the 50(?) pieces of Bowditch 2002 and have a fully unlocked version to read "Real Soon Now". Similarly, your 1851 Bowditch probably could have been unlocked. Since that is the private work product based on a copyright-free publication (the rights to the 1851 surely have expired!) I have no idea of the legality, I only note that locking a PDF is like locking a screen door. It will only prevent "casual" distribution. I have no idea if unlocking it in order to print your own copy would be a violation of anything or not...as long as you did it all yourself. I wonder if Starpath have considered making the 1851 edition available as a "book on demand" that can be printed on demand for customers, so at least they can be rewarded for their commedable effort at making the edition available. This is all very reminiscent of the way that old world NAVIGATORS kept their one-of-a-kind charts and sailing directions locked in a chest, which not even the captain might be allowed to see.