Legality of Copying Magazine Articles?

[Anonymous]

Often modelers are looking for articles from old issues of magazines like MR, and they post their requests on e-mail lists or wherever. Just as often someone speaks up about the legality of photocopying or scanning articles.

Can someone at MR clear this up please?

If I want an older article is there a legal problem with someone making me a copy for my own personal use? I can see a problem with publishing the article on a web page or otherwise, but one copy for personal use is different. And I know that MR and other mags do offer back issues for sale, but often that is just too inconvenient and slow.

Thanks!

Bob B in Canada

[Anonymous]

I would e-mail somone at MR.

[Sperandeo]

Hi Bob,

First of all, every article and prototype drawing ever published in MR (or any other Kalmbach publication) is available legally from Kalmbach Publishing Co. If we still have the back issue we ask people to purchase that, and for out-of-print issues we offer a photocopying service for a nominal fee. E-mail [e-mail], or phone [phone]. You have to be able to tell us where to find the article you want, and you can look that up on the "Index of Magazines" section of this Web site.

The NMRA's Kalmbach Memorial Library in Chattanooga is also authorized to offer photocopies from our out-of-print magazines to NMRA members.

The copyright law allows purchasers of a magazine to make photocopies of any material in it for their own use, but they specifically do not have the right to distribute copies to others, whether or not they charge anything for them. So you can copy an article for your files or copy a plan to change its scale or make a template, and we're glad to have you put the material to good use. But if a friend or someone you correspond with on the Net needs a copy of something from MR, it's best that they come to us (or the NMRA library).

Happy New Year,

Andy