Ford Factory Service manual CDs on Ebay?

The factory service manuals used by the dealer (the red discs - not the yellow discs) are time limited. A disc dated Jan2005 will not work now unless the copyright protection is defeated.

For those that care, all of these discs are marked with a variation on "not for resale".

For those with a high level of integrity (I'm not passing judgement, I'm stating fact) factory manuals are available at

real men use a laptop and www.inford .com

sl still uses cds eh

lmfao u go girl hurc ast

you and your lawyer have a good day

Just a quick search pulled up a number of hits. Item numbers: 7964681345,

5570633966, 7965853292 seem to be the actual Ford Service CD's (or copies). I have bought many of them for my own, and customer vehicles. They are the actual electronic versions of the service manuals printed by Helm. The reason they are so inexpensive on Ebay is because they are updated periodically and the old discs are tossed out (usually into a Technicians toolbox). There are a lot of the originals floating around and they are easily copied. Tom

Jim, Is it the DVDs that are time limited? I have CDs through 1992-2003 and they all work fine. They are originals right from my old dealer. I haven't seen any of the DVDs yet.

Yes, but just the red DVDs.... the yellow DVDs have no time limit on them.

I'm surprised that you don't realize that subscription costs for the on line manuals is rather steep... Add that if the 'net goes down, so do your shop manuals. SL does NOT use CDs, we use the DVDs and if inford is down, we still have our manuals. - man, you still can get anything accurate. Little wonder you lash out with the failure rate you are running.

FWIW, I have the DVDs loaded onto the hard drive on two of my laptops.... no need for DVDs, the internet or inford....

Okay, thanks. I'll try picking one up on Ebay.

Scott

Tom Adk> > I'd like to get a Ford Factory Service manual CD for my 2000

Explorer

manual

7964681345,

originals floating around

Well you can just set your computer clock back to before Janruary 2005.

Ed

Sometimes that works. But it depends on what the CD software does after it determines that the CD has expired. It may put a registry entry that prevents the software from ever working on that particular computer (unless you finjd the registry entry or reinstall the OS). If that is the case, unless you set the date back BEFORE you put the CD in, the CD will never work.

In addition, the CD software might read the time from an external clock over the internet, like the clock on a Ford computer. In that case, the CD will never work again.

Jeff

Well from personal experience, setting the clock back works, at least on Disc as new as Jan 2005.

Ed

You know, I would swear we had this discussion about 2 or 3 years ago. I think the discussion also went into copyright law.

Anyway, if setting the clock backwards works, then go for it.

Jeff

Maybe but two years ago there was not an expiration date built into the DVDs. I wonder who is liable in this situation - the people buying the discarded (sometimes they are brand new) DVDs or the people selling them or both? The people selling them on Ebay don't mention that they have a copywrite. I would guess that the Original Ford purchasing agreement includes some boiler plate text that the purchaser has to agree to that covers redistribution. What you buy off of Ebay is not a copy, it is the original. I noticed after I got my last DVD, that it is labeled, "Not For Resale." So am I a criminal for purchasing this item? As far as I know it is not "stolen" as such. It seems like if Ford wanted to stop this, they could go after Ebay directly. I am surprised that Helm isn't going after Ebay.

Ed

Personally, I think Ford should sell theDVDs cheap or give them out when they sell a car.

I suspect Ford could go after the people selling the DVDs. It depends on the wording of the contract between Ford and the orginal buyers.

I don't think they can go after Ebay, but if Ford asked Ebay to not allow the sales of Ford CDs that are breaking copyright law, then Ebay would comply.

My guess is that Ford doesn't think this is enough of a problem to try and stop it.

Jeff

It may be just a matter of time.... tit was only early last year last year when the time limit protection was added.