... Am I correct in thinking the following. There is nothing stopping people and in particular, members here, exchanging copies of the plans. What would be wrong is to reproduce the plan and sell it for profit. The plan of the Sea Nymph is over 50 yrs old, so would be out of copyright, unless it has been reapplied for (or whatever it is called). I have tons of plans and I would be happy to simply post them in some way. Plenty of other people have done that and I am very grateful to them.
umm... I think your copyright dates may be a bit behind the times.
Copyright periods used to be quite a short time, but during the 80s there was considerable pressure from the US film industry to make them 'forever'. On being told that that would not be acceptable, one US lobbyist famously said - "OK, how about forever minus one day?"
They are currently variable - I suspect that boat plans may come under 'artistic works', which would be 70 years (two generations) after the death of the creator. That date was chosen under strong US influence, to ensure that no items would come out of copyright until there was nobody left alive who could remember items coming out of copyright. I assume that, at that point, a law granting ownership rights of 'Intellectual Property' in perpetuity would be easier to pass.
If my reading of current UK law is accurate, these plans will never become available for public use in our lifetime, or that of our children. Our grandchildren may have a chance, unless the law is changed in the meantime...
The principle of copyright is a complex concept, and it is bound up with the concept of making a profit. I may be wrong here, but my reading is that you are correct that lending items or making them available for free in a library is protected under the concept of 'Fair Dealing'. That is why I went off on a rant earlier about the comparison with 'stealing' - a comparison which the supporters of 'Intellectual Property' tend to make, and one which is simply incorrect propaganda. This is also the reason why opponents of music 'file-sharing' on the net continually try to pretend that this is 'costing them money' - if a 'music pirate' would not have actually bought a copy of a song then passing a copy to him does not breach copyright...
For the above reasons I ensure that no money is exchanged when I pass data on old ships around. Incidentally, why pick 'House of Frog' as an example? It is indeed a superb site - professionally finished, and definitively researched, but we do have at least one small UK vintage
boat plan distribution site running on a shoe-string - modesty forbids me actually mentioning the name....
