O/T- Copyright Laws

I recently bought a valve grinding machine. The gentleman I bought it from also threw in a "manual and parts list" that he had purchased off of ebay. This is nothing more than some photocopys of the original manual stapled together.

I looked on ebay to see if I could find an original manual for the valve grinder, but all that's currently listed are more photocopies that someone just ran off from the originals.

Is this legal? The thought crossed my mind of making some copies of other various original manuals that I have(specifically IH/Farmall tech-related) and listing them for sale on ebay too.

What's the copyright law on this kind of thing? I know that IH doesn't publish these manuals or offer them for sale anymore(referring here to shop manuals that were never intended to be released to the general public anyway).

If this is in violation of some law, how is me making copies of my manuals and offering them for sale any different than selling the manual itself?

Any thoughts, advice, or actual real-world experience pertaining to this would be appreciated!

The copyright law is actually intended to prevent what you are talking about, taking another person’s work, making a copy and selling it for profit and still have the original. The difference is that if you make a copy and sell it, you have both the profit and the original for your own use. If you make a copy and sell the original, you are still in violation of the law because again you have the profit and have a copy for your own use. If you sell the original without making a copy you are legal because you have the profit from selling the manual, but you no longer are able to benefit from it’s information.

Basically copyrights are to prevent more than one person from using the material in two different physical locations at the same instant. To confuse matter more, I have heard that you are entitled to make an archival copy for you own personal use, but can not use multiple copies at the same time. For example, if you are working in the shop and don’t want to get the original shop manual greasy, you can make a copy to use in the shop as long as you destroy it when you are done. Again I have heard this is legal, but I wouldn’t want to stake my life on it. Best idea is to not do what you are thinking about unless you get sound legal council first.

Basically, copyrighted works published between 1923 and 1963 (such as original IH manuals) which were not renewed are now in the public domain and anybody can reproduce them for any reason, including profit. But you have to determine, through the Library of Congress Copyright Office, whether in fact the copyrights were renewed in order to be safe.