You, whoever you are, would really like to link to us, cite us in your paper, or make your own adaptations to something you’ve seen here.
Linking:
Honestly, we can’t stop you, so go ahead. If you tell us when you do it, we might link back. You can even deep link (i.e., link to pages besides the front page), but if that page moves later that’ll be a problem for you.
Citation
Fair use exists. We like fair use (our essays would be a lot less useful without it!). Like linking, we cannot (and don’t want to!) limit citations that comply with the standards of fair use as outlined in US copyright law. However, also like our linking policy, we like to know when it’s been done and would like a copy of whatever-it-is. Fair use, of course, doesn’t extend to copying whole documents.
Copying
These words, and the works they represent, are ours.
These words, and works, represent decades of scholarship, research, and work, both physical and spiritual.
If you are a for-real archiving, indexing, and searching site, like, oh, Google, The Internet Archive, and so on, you have our permission to do your job. We like the extra traffic and the backups we hope never to need.
Otherwise:
- Do not copy this site, or any portion thereof, without asking. This is not only copyright law, this is simple manners and respect. While we obviously can’t stop you from taking excerpts (that’s Fair Use, outlined above), telling us you did it gives us warm, fuzzy feelings, and we like those. Even if you don’t like us, or what we do, we still want to know; to a certain extent, there’s no such thing as bad press.
- “May I make a copy of this and post it on my site?”
We’d really rather you posted a link instead. This is a polite way of saying, “almost certainly not”.
- “May I print this out and…?” Please ask.
- Personal use: We can’t stop you.
- Kindred or ministerial use: Please ask.
- School assignment: Ask, but probably yes.
- Publication of any kind: Definitely ask, whether for profit or not. We reserve that right: it’s ours, you can’t have it!
- Don’t take credit if you didn’t do it. Don’t copy and paste from here to your own site without giving us credit.
- If you do, there will be consequences. Well, actually, the first consequence will be a polite e-mail to you, or other contact attempt if we can figure out who you are. Then a polite e-mail to your hosting or similar service provider if you’ve nicked it for your own website. We’re reasonable, and don’t like being rude when education about This Is Stealing and Stealing Is Wrong will suffice.
- If you have stolen from our material, and you don’t respond to courtesy and common sense, we reserve the right to deal with you by non-ordinary means. What do we call “non-ordinary means?” We have another whole site for that but, in brief: don’t steal. If you do, we’ll try to resolve the situation like adults, but if we can’t, we reserve the right to turn your life into a bad country and western song.
We don’t like making threats like this, especially magical ones. “Witch wars” are, in our experience, rather more reminiscient of high school than the participants want to admit. However, there are always those few jerks who make statements like this necessary. While said jerks aren’t likely to read lengthy notices like this, they can’t say we didn’t warn them…
— Lorrie and Diana