In reply to starbug:
> Not sure on the legalities of copying and posting either bouldering guide up on the web though?
It's an interesting one. Legally it's copyright infringement.
Forgetting about the legal side I think from an ethical perspective if it's out of print and you can only rarely buy second hand copies it's hard to see how you're depriving the author of any income if he's not going to get any income from the transaction even if you do find one second hand. I guess the main argument would be that if I upload a scanned version people might not be inclined to purchase the new guide cause hey, free version that has most of the problems.
When I was after one a couple of years ago I posted in a few places and emailed Simon as well. I asked if I could just buy a copy from him direct or paypal him the cash in exchange for a pdf of the few areas i was interested in climbing since I figure he must have pdfs from the original printing. I don't think he got back to me other than to say he had no copies available and a new one was in the works. I ended up finding someone who would loan me a copy and scanned it and just using the scanned version on my mobile when I needed it.
Post edited at 22:33