New BLM Manual

Not likely, copyright issues, as per Dennis Mouland.

Don't hold your breath for a digital version anytime soon.

Thanks guys. I figured that, as I had seen that here before. A digital one would have been nice, but a hard copy will be better.

Check out the last discussion on the New BLM Manual

[msg=56116]Link[/msg]

Actually there really are some indications that BLM might get permission soon from the Solicitor to release a digital 'free' version of the Manual.

Also the 'assertions' of copyright are questionable at best.

1) There are no statements in the printed manual which indicate a copyright.

2) There was some material included in appendices to some chapters which indicate that they came from copyrighted sources.

BUT BLM obtained releases of copyright from those authors.

If a digital version is not posted within the next month, I will see what I can do to track down and post some of that information and the text of the releases.

If anyone can point to any factual documentation or direct comment by Simpson or Wilson to the contrary, please do so.

I think the authors of the texts cited never intended their release to BLM to be used to KEEP the document proprietary, but in fact the opposite occurred. But I have not confirmed this directly with those authors. Check on that!

As I think I have stated before (perhaps on the old RPLS), the assertion of copyright seems to me like a bald faced attempt to allow the PLSSF and ACSM to profit from the sales,.what I referred to as a 'slush fund'. The profits of which may be used for the good, or not. There does not seem to be much transparency about the PLSSF, what they spend money on, or what their goals are, or barely even who they are.

Basically you have a government agency setting up a scheme to funnel money into the coffers of a pseudo non profit which is in the back pocket of one of the primary lobbyist organisations for the profession. One can imagine it as some kind of quid pro quo, or to put it more bluntly a payoff. But to tell the truth that is just how it appears to ME!

I question the authority of those involved to demand and accept intellectual rights on behalf of the government or 'you the citizens' for a government publication, license those 'intellectual rights' to ACSM or the PLSSF, and engage in many of these semi closed door transactions.

We also have a lot of opportunity for corruption in the process. Even if the PLSSF is semi-legit and eventually does spend some of these profits on 'scholarships' or 'research' on PLSS issues. They can channel those funds to their favorite advocates for their favorite people in their favorite institutions.

To me this is not in the best interest of a situation where the private sector and their professional societies should be providing checks and balances against the excesses and deficiencies of the public sector.

I have said this before. Those of us who were around in the 70's and 80's in BLM know that there were problems with BLM work in some areas. It was very much through the cooperative but adversarial advocacy of your societies like ACSM and NSPS that provided the pressure for improvement and change.

I find it ironic that today those very people who were critical of government and BLM Cadastral (and in many cases rightly so) have just rolled over now on this whole PLSSF thing which is to have such potential for corruption. And so with all that anti-government militancy we see everywhere, you probably didn't realize you had been took.

The assertion of copyright is almost certainly false.

The use of the profits made by ACSM and PLSSF is at BEST unclear, but certainly subject to question and as I said above almost certainly false. Unfortunately the questions about this should have been coming from ACSM itself, or the survey societies in the states? But it is pretty clear that they act like they have been bought off.

I despair of the state of the profession given how 20 years ago you were all in BLM's face, and now you roll over and want to be rubbed on your belly with the bucks. The truth and the profession be damned.

Well that's more than I really intended to say.

In the end there are hundreds if not thouseands of issues of 'a legitimate technical and legal nature' about the 2009 Manual which would have been better served by an advesarial process of the BLM in conversation with the private sector.

But there miraculously never was any society or private sector review of the 'thing'.

But this seems to me to have been very effectively neuteralized and bypassed. That process no longer seems to work. A great political success for the government, when it doesn't really deserve it.

If there is a public release of the Manual, it will have been due not so much to the pressure of the private sector, or the organizations that you all pay dues to to protect or assert your interests, but to a few behind the scenes who worry about where you are all going.

- jlw

If you are a CLSA member, they are now selling it at $55. $75 to non-members.