Scanning Instruction Manuals

I was thinking it would be interesting to scan the contents of instruction manuals for games and give them their own gallery, and it would be most useful for older titles where people might own the games but not the manuals for some reason (or it could just be interesting to look at, especially for old games where they give you a crazy story that you never actually see in the game). I wanted to check and see if this is allowed first though, or if it is looked down upon for some reason.

I wouldn't think there would be too much of an issue.  It would be a first for me to hear a negative response for uploading a manual of all things.  
 
Where are you mods?  Only you guys have bothered to know the answers hehehe.

While I don't think it's a bad idea at all, scanning and publishing manuals is of somewhat questionable legality, so I don't think us mods are likely to come to a decision without hearing something from the staff re their philosophies on this sort of content (whether they want to deal with removal requests, the legal issues etc.). 
 
I have a slight recollection that we might have dealt with a suggestion like this before, but can't remember or find the conclusion we came to - maybe another mod might have some idea what was decided back then.

" While I don't think it's a bad idea at all, scanning and publishing manuals is of somewhat questionable legality, "

I think it would be pretty awesome having that sort of thing on Giant Bomb, especially for older games. However I concur with TheBeast that possible issues with legality mean that we should hear the staff's opinions before uploading any.
 
It may be useful to PM some of the staff members (specifically Jeff, since he usually lays down the wiki law), and direct them to this thread asking for some input.

It's not allowed, copyright violation
 
 " Game manuals are protected by copyright, and normally cannot be legally distributed online. The exception to this rule are translations of foreign-language (specifically Japanese) manuals for import gamers, which are very useful to the import gamer and have met with no known objections from copyright holders so far."
 http://www.gamefaqs.com/features/help/entry.html?cat=27

Not gonna bother repeating what everyone else in here is going to say since we all already know. But that aside, I like the idea. There's loads of abandon ware titles with manuals that come in pdf format so that's a step up.

" @Not_Rage: Someone should at least contact the staff before we believe any of the garbage written on GameFAQs. "

OK, I PMed Jeff about this thread; we'll see what he says about the matter!

" While I don't think it's a bad idea at all, scanning and publishing manuals is of somewhat questionable legality, so I don't think us mods are likely to come to a decision without hearing something from the staff re their philosophies on this sort of content (whether they want to deal with removal requests, the legal issues etc.).  I have a slight recollection that we might have dealt with a suggestion like this before, but can't remember or find the conclusion we came to - maybe another mod might have some idea what was decided back then. "

I find it impossible to believe that someone would pull a cease-and-desist on Giant Bomb for putting up manual scans, especially for games that you cannot buy at retail anymore.  And things like Konami's NES manual debacles need to be preserved!

Having a page of a manual may be covered under fair use, but reproducing the manual in its entirety would be copyright infringement. Since there is partial moderation involved with submissions, I'm not sure whether the site would be protected under the safe harbor provisions.

Pretty sure it's illegal for the entire manual to be scanned page by page and uploaded to the site.
 
A few choice extracts may fall under fair use laws but scanning the entire thing would likely be considered copyright infringement. Even if the game and/or manual itself is extremely old I imagine the law(s) involved do still apply.
 
Until the Staff weigh in on the subject with a final answer I'd suggest everyone assume it is not allowed on the site.

I know that VG Museum has scans of quite a few manual covers, but just because someone else is doing it doesn't make it legal.

" Pretty sure it's illegal for the entire manual to be scanned page by page and uploaded to the site.  A few choice extracts may fall under fair use laws but scanning the entire thing would likely be considered copyright infringement. Even if the game and/or manual itself is extremely old I imagine the law(s) involved do still apply.  Until the Staff weigh in on the subject with a final answer I'd suggest everyone assume it is not allowed on the site. "

Even if you may not like Gamefaqs, that doesn't mean their lying about copyright laws.
 
Anyways, in a very old Bomb Should Have a Face, Jeff agreed that you shouldn't upload manuals since it's illegal. I think that's the closest to the staff chiming in on this issue.

That would be copyright infringement....but who cares I'm sure there are already plenty of other copyright infringements on this site.

Worth mentioning that sites already exist for this purpose, and the quality is pretty good overall.  Also you can get official manual PDFs direct from the source more and more these days, check out the GFWL marketplace for several that publishers have provided. No idea if they've given permission to redistribute them, but hey you can ask permission. That's how it's supposed to work.

Speaking as an IP creator, and longtime student of copyright law (I Am Not A Lawyer Yet), the thing to remember is that there are no copyright police. A person or company must choose to enforce their intellectual property, which is why they hire lawyers to send out cease and desist letters.  Scanning a 48 page game manual is no different legally than scanning a 400 page strategy guide or a 200 page magazine.  They are copyrighted works and will remain so for decades, grace periods are a myth.  The fact that you can't buy a Zelda game manual or the game from Amazon is irrelevant, but Nintendo might choose to look the other way if they see no appreciable loss in a fan repository of manuals or music or magazine scans.  Until they come knocking, there's no problem, and many such repositories exist out in the open because stomping on people's hearts is counterproductive to happy customers. Remember NOA used to have a lawyer running the place.
  
Back in the day, I know of and worked at video game rental stores that did receive actual cease and desists from Nintendo, Sega, etc. because they were photocopying manuals verbatim for providing to customers renting those games. They could not stop rental stores from costing them money through rentals, so they targeted photocopying protected IP of the manuals as the only thing against the law, to say "we have our eyes on you", and those laws have not changed since the 80s and 90s.  Companies like Blockbuster and Rogers Video re-wrote instructions into a page or two for their game rentals in order to avoid this, and because original manuals always got damaged/stolen.