Need help getting replacement copy of lost menus
 

Hello all,
I was on the MRC diet from November 2012-April 2013 and done well and lost 30 lbs., but unfortunately my husband and I went on vacation and relapsed. I am now at a place to start again and am unable to locate all my paperwork and menus that I saved. I am assuming they got thrown away. Was wondering if any of you out there may have copies of the menus to email me.

I'm sure your center can help you out. we aren't allowed to share the copywrited menus.

Disclaimer: I'm not a copyright lawyer, just a writer interested in copyright issues. As such, this is simply my understanding of current copyright law. Laws can change and be interpreted differently, so I'm not advising any course of action or guaranteeing the accuracy of my statements. Do your own research to verify my information, if you're concerned.


There are exceptions to copyright laws for educational purposes that might apply here, so long as no one makes a financial profit for the copied materials.

Copyright law can be a bit tricky, but generally "private use" copies can be a gray area, but generally are considered protected unless mass printings and profit is involved. Thus it's probably legal to copy and give away a set of materials as long as no money or reimbursement changes hands and it isn't done in a large scale. It is a gray area though, both legally and ethically.


However, it perfectly and entirely legal (no gray area) to give originals copies away, so if anyone is willing to gift you with or sell their original materials (presumably because they don't want them any more) to you, they could do that.

It would have to go through snail mail though, so there would be some expense.

Also, ideas and information cannot be copyrighted only the way the information is presented, the specific written works, so if someone wanted to share the information, they would be free to do so, as long as they used their own/different words and visual format to do so.

That's the problem we run into on the MRC board is that if one or two people request and get the menus, then people who have never posted on this board come out of the woodwork and wants copies as well, and then it becomes a mass printing thing. I tried helping a few out in the past and it became a nightmare which I will never do again.

The other issue is that the ladies on here had to go into a MRC center and pay the center for the menus and counseling. Some members get rather upset at that fact that they had to pay, and yet others want the info for free.

Once you start sending out copies, how do you keep it from being done on a large scale?
You can't! That's why we shouldn't be doing that.

As I understand it, the legality doesn't concern how many copies are made in total - the crime occurs when a single person is making thousands of copies (and if you were sending thousands of copies you'd know it). So how you keep it from being done on a large scale is simple - don't make thousands of copies.

Thousands of people could make several copies and give them away, but one person can't make several thousand and give them away.

Whatever!