Hi, this is my first post, i'm from Spain and i'm a computer forensic. Excuse my english, I'll try my best.
A company hired me to make a technical report of a software that they bought few months ago, comparing it to the old software they used. The thing is, that the new software is not working, as they had uninstalled the application and they can't have it anymore, and the only thing that I can see is the user manual of the aplication. This user manual documents have copyright, will I be infringing the law?
Thanks
It depends on what you intend doing with the manual?
If you make a copy (hard or electornic) then you will be in breach of copyright.
If you read the manual and make a report based on how the software should have worked I think you'll be OK as long as you restrict yourself to description of what the manual claims - you should not make long quotations from the manual as that is essentially copying it.
Please note, I am not a lawyer so these comments are based on experience and should not be used as part of any legal defence.
HTH
On a side note, have you contacted the company to request a demo of the software? That would certainly help make your review more relevant.
It depends on what you intend doing with the manual?
If you make a copy (hard or electornic) then you will be in breach of copyright.
If you read the manual and make a report based on how the software should have worked I think you'll be OK as long as you restrict yourself to description of what the manual claims - you should not make long quotations from the manual as that is essentially copying it.
That's not strictly true, assuming that the company has paid for the software, even if the license for the software has expired, printing out a copy of something that they have already paid for is unlikely to be a breach of copyright. Even taking a copy is unlikely to be so I would imagine. It largely depends the model of licensing that was used for the distribution - so you'd need to actually look at the small print of the license.
In the UK at least, copyright is an automatic thing on anything created by an individual - you can then choose how to apply this - e.g. the GPL or CreativeCommons licensing - these don't undermine the concept of copyright, but do allow for duplication and use.
Quotations from something are legitimate so long as you attribute your source, otherwise most academics would be in court 😉
Unless you are abusing the license ( e.g. reinstalling with faked information to examine it ) there is unlikely to be any issue with what you want to do.