[Doublej]

 

Two no no's.

First, replicating a patented design is unethical, regardless of whether or not you sell it.  However, unless you are selling the item it is highly unlikely that the patent holder is not going to sue you.

Looking at the patent and creating a derivative design that you feel would not violate the patent is perfectly ethical. It's done all the time.

Second, saying that it is OK to use information that is publishd is also illegal, unless the owner of the material gives you the right to reproduce the material without restriction. (Highly unlikely unless someone is trying to spread the word about something)

If you are in an online forum, you should either create a link to the material or obtain permission from the owner to post his work. If the source material is not available online. then you should obtain permission from the owner to provide the desired material in your work.

[JDUBS]

It is absolutely perfectly ethical to "copy" something for your own use.  Anyone that manufactures anything knows that this is potentially an issue.  

Typically (emphasis on this) the hassle / difficulty in DIY'ing something makes it a non-issue in terms of revenue drain on a company.

DIY away!!!

[Watson]

Second, saying that it is OK to use information that is publishd is also illegal, unless the owner of the material gives you the right to reproduce the material without restriction.

That's not true for schematics and circuit diagrams.  If someone publishes a schematic on the web, you are free to duplicate and emulate the circuit, regardless of whether that person gives you permission or not.  What you cannot do is copy the schematic artwork, PCB artwork, or images.

If someone posts images of the internals of a piece of gear, you may reverse engineer it and make duplicates, even for commercial use.  Some people may see this as unethical.  I'm not going to comment on that, except to say that intellectual property law for physical inventions and products has evolved over centuries to balance a variety of competing factors.  A manufacturer can assert trade secret status of a design, preventing copies, but in order to gain this protection for a physical product, the manufacturer needs to take physical steps to keep the design secret.  This may include potting the circuit board or rivetting the case shut.  Nearly all manufacturers of audio gear do not choose to take these steps, meaning that they cannot assert trade secret claims over individuals copying their designs.

The other route manufacturers can take to prevent duplicate designs is to apply for patents.  A patented device is protected from duplication pursuant to its claims, but no one is going to come after you for making a copy for personal use in your garage.  (In the US, incidentally, it is illegal to claim that a product is "patent pending" when an application to the USPTO has not been made, though there have been cases of smaller, high-end audio companies doing just that to scare off competitors.)

If you copy a product and release it for sale, you cannot make use of the company's trademarks in order to advertise or promote your product.

A great resource for understanding American intellectual property law is "Legal Aspects of Managing Technology" by Burgunder.  It's used as a textbook in many business schools and MBA programs, but it is very accessible to any interested reader, really.  You will be amazed by the variety of ways in which people have tried to take advantage of other people's intellectual property, and it is always interesting to see how the case law responded.

For instance, is it legal (or even ethical) for a fried chicken restaurant to hire away one of its competitor's employees and quiz him about their secret recipe?  The answer is not simple -- it actually depends on what ways the other company has tried to keep their recipe secret.  Believe it or not, having let the employee take home the recipe book at night to study in the past tips the balance towards the "thieving" competitor, because trade secret protection has not been carefully guarded, even if in this instance, the recipe theft does not occur with the recipe book in hand.

[tom1356]

You can get the guts of it here.
www.zotefoams.com/downloads/Zotefoams_05.pdf

[randytsuch]

Now we appear to be mixing two different things, what is legel versus what is ethical.  Granted, what is legal is easier to answer, you can interpret the laws involved.

What is ethical is based on your moral values, and everyone has different moral values.

I would be curious to know what the smaller companies, and mod places think of people copying their ideas for their own use.

Randy

[woodsyi]

I always thought that I shouldn't copy and paste information from a paid site but anything that is posted on free sites was open to such practice as long as I cited the source and it's not being used for commercial purpose.  The cut and paste section on the description of the Isolator is accessible on Stereo Times website archives.  

Not knowing exactly the wording of the pending patent, I guess I should say I am trying to make a damping device that will be placed between my cartridge and the headshell which, by itself, can't be a patentable idea.  From what I price for Dynamat Extreme, I think I can make a damping device for about $20.  It would even be cheaper per device if I made a bunch with the smallest sheet I have to buy but I only need one or two for my two TTs.  I am sure I can use the rest to damp something I have.  Surely this can't be the same as a $150 Isolator?  

There are many product that would end up costing more to DIY one than would be to just buy.  Or even if it may be cheaper, the learning curve is too steep to make the effort to make one for yourself.  Few items like this, seems to me, just begs someone to emulate for a fraction of the cost.  If it were priced $25, I would just buy it.  Is it ethical to charge $150?  Is someone being unethical if he uses a Pringle can cover filled with playdough as cable isolator because someone has a patent pending on a similarly shaped ceramic device for oodles of money?

[Watson]

Now we appear to be mixing two different things, what is legel versus what is ethical.  Granted, what is legal is easier to answer, you can interpret the laws involved.

Yes, it's important to make that distinction.  What is legal is not always ethical, and vice-versa.

The interesting thing about intellectual property is that it is (for the most part) a legal construct, so there is an inevitable interplay between legality and ethics.  e.g. If there is an easy legal way for someone to protect his rights, then the ethical range of responses if he chooses not to do so may be wider than if he didn't have any codified way to protect those rights to begin with.

My own personal view is that the current legal system for physical inventions and products is pretty good at striking a fair and basically ethical balance between the rights of inventors/vendors and the interests of competitors and the public.   (The rules for non-physical products are a different story, unfortunately, but the law has only had a half century to come to grips with new technology.  These things take time.)

[Doublej]

"I always thought that I shouldn't copy and paste information from a paid site but anything that is posted on free sites was open to such practice as long as I cited the source and it's not being used for commercial purpose. "

I don' think this is true. Take a look at the copyright and trademark section of the terms and condidtions on the Enjoy The Music website. They claim you can't make their content available witout their written consent.

ttp://www.enjoythemusic.com/disclaimer.htm

However I could not find a terms of use sectoin of the StereoTimes website. I  couldn't find a copyright either except for on the front page. So I don't know what that means.

Regarding trade secrets/copyright I remembering Intel losing a case because they shipped a bunch of chips without a copyright mark on them. Somebody did something with the code and that the ruling was because their was no copyright mark on the chips Intel couldn't claim a violation.

[TheChairGuy]

Now introducing, The Plast-i-Lator

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=33028.0

Hey, I see by looking at this old topic that 'skrivis' had already discovered its virtues, too.  I will share the bounty of profits that come from marketing it, then 

One half of zero is how much, again? 

[Zero One]

Well here is my first post on this forum and I hope it can be of some use.  I not going to go into the ethical Q but I can give some feedback on the isolator issue. 

I have not used "the isolator" and frankly I feel it is outrageously expensive, but I have made my own and I can tell you how that went and you can all try it if you like.

I made mine out of very thin double sided foam tape, which I would say cost Oh about 1 cent for the amount used.

Does it work, well despite howls of protests I have had on one forum where I mentioned it the answer is that it absolutely does work.

What does it do?  Basically it reduces surface noise, which lowers the noise floor and hence allows for more low level detail and in addition it allows better rendition of high frequency information, which can improve staging.

How does it work?  Well and this is just my reasoning so I could be wrong, I think it is like adding suspension to a Car (know of any without such a feature).  The suspension allows the tyres to remain in proper contact with the road so that when you go around corners it doesn't bouce off line and of course it rides nicer in a straight line as well.  Now on an LP the sound information is in the groove wall, think of those as little corners and the rough road surface is the rubbish in the bottom of the grooves.  Obviously the stylus should read the walls not the floor of the groove.

The rubbish/imperfections in the floor of the wall will tend to cause the stylus to kick upwards, ruining its contact with the sidewalls and hence the sound.  The isolator controls the upward motion as it compresses, but it is laterally stiff so it does not effect sideways or for/aft tracking.

I think it also has some effect on damping the micro vibrations that normally transmit into the arm and then reflect back into the system..basically it gets released as heat in the air within the foam.

The trick I feel would be that the isolator would need to match the unsprung weight or the cart and arm....so in theory (mine anyway) a one size fits all won't work as good as it could, just the same as heavy suspension on a small car won't work.

So how did I implement mine?  Cut a piece of foam that fits then entire underside of the headshell, it has to but up against the edges of the shell to give stiffness laterally, then run a bead of bluetac around the perimeter of the headshellinside face.  Stick the cart to the tape and then bluetac athin bead around the perimeter of the cart (very thin).

Plug in and of you go.

Well its not quite that simple as cart alignment is an issue, as you have probably gathered I don't use any screws at all....so you will need to work out the alignment first and then mark the headshell so you can line up the cart when you stick it.  This isn't easy but it is possible, mine worked fine.

Another issue already mentioned is the VTA, three options here, 1 use the VTA adjsutment if the TT has it (Most don't), 2. use a low bodied cart that is normally used with a spacer and omit the spacer (which is what I did) 3. make a headshell that has the cart holding face higher above the line of the tonearm than normal (which is what I will do so I can fit a better cart).

Will it come unstuck? Maybe enventually but mine has held firm for a couple of months now.

Now tweaking the mount!

As I said the mount should probably be matched to the cart, although I have not tried this yet, I imagine that punching lots of little holes in the mount with a pin will soften it somewhat, making small cuts around the perimeter of the cart where it mounts to the foam would also soften it as the area performing the damping would thus be reduced.

Of course there are many thicknesses of foam tape available so there are options there also.

There you go, you may think this all sound a bit silly and it does run against common wisdom of cart mounting, but it will cost almost nothing but a bit of time to try.

One final note: I imagine the results will be somewhat dependent on the stylus type used, cheap carts with spherical stylii are the ones most likely to benefit most as they track the worst to start with.

I hope this has helped.

PS:  I reckon this is substantially different from the commercial cart isolator so I'm not too worried about the ethics, but I really feel people who rip of other folks products without credit and sell then are pretty poor even if what they are doing is legal!

[TheChairGuy]

Welcome to The Vinyl Circle, Zero One 

Gents, if you're not familiar with Zero One's tweek range...check it out here: http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=29618.10

His tweeking makes my tweek attempts akin to a giggling 16 year old girl at a Justin Timberlake concert 

[bluesky]

Hi Guys

I just had to chime in on this one.  I was speaking to a chap from a well known company who supplies dampening material about this very thing.

The reply was that many customers used some of his company's thin dampening material between the cartridge and tonearm with good results and had been doing so for some time, well before the Isolator came onto the market.  Perhaps the thin metal sheets were an additional new idea but certainly the use of dampening material between cartidge and tonearm was nothing new!

Given this information the question of ethics seems a moot point, it appears to me that a number of people had thought about this dampening technique and implemented it with nary a thought about patents and such.

Bluesky