Let me start this with a apology to all the people I'm about to piss off. This is all my opinion and is by no means has any legal fact or any citings for that matter. I would like to start by saying this was a fun read and not knowing the personal background of anyone here(god I love the internet), I would not follow any legal advice here without using your brain and doing some research. That does not mean ask your mom/dad/buddy/BFF/the guy at the bank. That means read a book / Internet research / talk to a lawyer.

Now lets talk about My rights as a consumer. Do I have any legal rights to the product I just bought? What about those books that were mentioned earlier? I'm suppose to have books in my machine as the owner and supposedly maintainer of that machine. Last I checked Bally was de-funked. How am I suppose to get replacements? Isn't keeping the books to a machine without owning the machine some sort of crime under copyright? Isn't that equivalent of keeping a copy of a cd or movie after you have sold or lost the original? Once a machine is sold as used, are all the copyrights still in place? What about replacing a part I actually have and own on the machine? Isn't changing a coil to a different wind to get more power an infringement? What if I have the 4 pieces of a broken plastic to a machine that's not being produced, the I tape them together and scan them to produce a waterslide to put on a new piece of plastic and put that on my machine? Is that copyright infringement even though I own the machine and all 4 parts of the plastic?

I throw all this out to maybe get some people thinking. Use a little common sense. The reason the NFL has the blurb at the end of the game about rebroadcast isn't to stop you from watching the game when you get home from work. hell its not even to stop you from watching the game with your buddy after work in you own home. Its to stop you from making a superbowl greatest hits DVD and selling it before they can! Or if you do it allows them to recoup the money from the DVDs you made. Its not illegal to tape a song of the radio and listen to it (Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 - ok I had to cite at least one right?) but its illegal to rip a CD to any kind of digital format. Its all about money.

I recently bought a Dungeons and Dragons machine. I'm working on getting it back to its former glory but I need parts. I bought the operators manual off the E-bay because I hated the split wiring diagrams on the pinball database. The parts manual got directly off pinball database. Now with Bally gone and the manuals out of print, is the money I paid for the manual that was suppose to be in the machine going to Bally? I think not! So who is actually the criminal here the guy trying to get the parts for the machine I own or the guy selling manuals for machines he doesn't own?

So now that my rant is almost done, lets ask the question. If its so damn important that the site got a S&D, why can't we know who and what so the rest of us have a better idea of what is being deemed "Copyrighted" and what is public domain.