14 May 2014

"Hey, can I copy stuff from your blog?"

You bet.

Although the content of this blog — excluding quotes, extracts from government works, the contributions of guest columnists and so on — belongs to me, I have chosen to licence the contents of my blog for reuse and redistribution under a Creative Commons "Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike" licence. I believe that knowledge is meant to be shared, not hoarded or stashed away, and should be available to everyone with an interest.

Under the Creative Commons licence, which you'll find under the heading "Copyright and Licence to Reuse" in the right-hand column, you are free to:
1. share the content of my blog, including copying it and redistributing it however you like in whatever manner you like, and 
2. adapt the content of my blog by, for example, adding to, deleting from, remixing or otherwise transforming the content.
There's a catch, of course. Three of them. You:
3. must attribute me or my blog as the source of the material you've taken, provide a link to this blog if possible, and, if you've adapted the content in some way,
 make some effort to indicate the changes you've made, 
4. must not use use the material for commercial purposes, or for anything intended to make money for you or for someone else, and 
5. must share any adaptations you have made of the material on the same terms as this licence, and refrain from imposing any legal terms or technological measures intended to stop people from using the material as this licence allows.
The content of my wikibook, JP Boyd on Family Law, is provided on exactly the same terms.

Go ahead, copy this material, download it, print it out, cut-and-paste it as you like. It's here for the taking. Just please say where you got the material from, provide your work to others on the same terms and don't use my material for profit.