All of the work on these pages has been freed by copyleft. Unless otherwise noted, you are free to copy and distribute any of the works on this website, and to make and distribute derivative works based on them. You can feature it on your web page; you can print it in your newsletter. If you want, you can hang a copy on a bar wall and use it as dart-board.

What’s the catch? Nothing, really. All that the license requires you to do is to be honest, and to keep it free. (That’s free as in free speech, not as in free lunch. You can make commercial use of these works — although if you plan to, there are some points of etiquette that you ought to follow. No matter what use you make of these works, however, they have to be kept free, in the sense that anyone who owns a copy can make free use of them under the terms of the copyleft.)

To find out more about the legal details and etiquette for using this content, read on—or contact me to ask. (If you are curious, you can also read a bit about why this site is copylefted.) Thanks for taking the time to look over this page, and I hope you enjoy my little liberated corner of the semantic web!

Copying and Distribution of the Original Works

You’re free to copy and redistribute the copylefted work — either by itself, or as part of a larger collection of works. All you have to do is (1) be honest - by clearly crediting me as the author, and only redistributing accurate copies of the original - and (2) keep it free - by distributing the copy under the same copyleft license, and including either a copy of the license, or a reference to its URL (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0/legalcode).

You don’t have to copyleft your whole newsletter to reprint a single article of mine in it (although copylefting your whole newsletter is certainly worthwhile on its own merits). You only have to distribute the copy of my work under the copyleft terms. You’re also free to distribute abridged, translated, or otherwise edited copies of my works — but these count as derivative works, not copies of the original.

Derivative Works

You’re also free to make and distribute derivative works from the copylefted work (such as abridged or edited copies of original works, stories about characters introduced in the original works, etc.). All you have to do is (1) be honest — by clearly identifying your work as a derivative work, and clearly crediting me as the author of the original work on which it was based — and (2) keep it free — by distributing your derivative work as free content under the terms of the same copyleft license under which the original work was distributed.

The Legal Details

For the purpose of international and national copyright laws, the original works hosted on Rad Geek People’s Daily are copyright © 1996-2007 by Charles Johnson, and are hereby made available for copying, redistribution, and the creation of derivative works under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0 License.

This license covers all original works by Charles Johnson hosted on the radgeek.com web space, unless otherwise noted. Many of these works include pictures and quotations held in copyright by other people; the original text or picture then belongs to its original creator, but I hold copyright to the original works within which these quotations and pictures are used transformatively under principles of fair use. Those original works, like all other original works on this website, are available under the Creative Commons license.

This website also publishes original works contributed by third parties, in forms such as (but not necessarily limited to) public comments posted to the website. The original authors retain copyright on the original works they contribute, but by posting their work to this website those authors have also consented to make the works they post available under the the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0 License. I (Charles Johnson) take no responsibility for the content of comments contributed by authors, although I reserve the right to moderate discussion and delete any contributions that I see fit.

These works also include many links to pages outside of the radgeek.com web space, but linking to outside documents constitutes neither republication, nor any claim of copyright in them, nor any accepting any responsibility for their contents. (This entails, by the way, that the documents that I make external links to may or may not be available under copyleft; since I don’t hold the copyrights to them, that is entirely up to the authors of those external documents.)

You may want to consult the Creative Commons Deed for these webpages for further details. The exact legal language for the license can be found in the Creative Commons Legal Code for Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0.

Using Your Freedom Considerately

I’ve freed these webpages because I believe in the free exchange of information. You don’t need to ask my permission to make use of the information on my pages under the terms of the license. But I do hope that you’ll respect the work that has gone into them by following a bit of etiquette when you do.

These are points of etiquette rather than law; under the terms of the copyleft I can’t make you do anything except clearly credit me for my work and free any copies or derivative works under the copyleft. But while ignoring my wishes may not be illegal, it is awfully rude. Consideration is good for both you and me:

1. You don’t need to ask permission before you redistribute my work or creative derivative works based on them, but I would love to hear from you about how you are making use of them. If you drop me a line, I may very well give your product some free publicity.

2. Under the terms of the license, you have to credit me as the author of the work. I would appreciate it if, when you did so, you also included information for finding my other writings and contacting me. This could be a link back to my website (URL: http://radgeek.com/) and / or a link to my contact page (URL: http://radgeek.com/contact) for online works. In print this could be the URL of my website (URL: http://radgeek.com) and my public e-mail address (feedback@radgeek.com).

3. If you intend to put any of the free content on these pages to commercial use, or use it in materials that you make money by distributing, you really ought to make a small monetary contribution to support the work that went into producing the content you use. You can also contact me for more information. Making a contribution is not only considerate, but also helpful to you and me. It helps me produce higher-quality content on a more regular basis. It helps you by (1) giving me a reason to help publicize your work, and (2) giving you access to additional benefits that will help your work in the future.

Finally, note that although these points of etiquette are optional, following the specific terms of the copyleft is not. Thanks, and enjoy!

Why this site is copylefted

As I’ve written elsewhere, I don’t believe that there are any such things as intellectual property rights. If you want to know why I believe this, or what exactly it entails, I don’t have a detailed answer on hand. Fortunately, Roderick Long does (thank goodness for the free exchange of information!). You might think that makes it a bit odd for me to place the work on this website under a restrictive licensing scheme that makes use of international copyright law.

Well no, it’s not. The terms of the license allow for free copying, distribution, and creation of derivative works. They require only that I am given credit for my authorship, and that any derivative work is also released under a copyleft license. But the first condition only requires you not to commit fraud (by passing off my work as someone else’s, or someone else’s work as mine). And it’s certainly within my rights to demand that, even without an appeal to intellectual property. The second condition requires that derivative works or reproductions of the original work also be freed from the restrictions of traditional copyright law. Since traditional copyright law constitutes a violation of rights, it follows that enforcing a copyleft to prevent traditional copyright restrictions from being applied is like using a gun to stop an attempted mugging—a defensive, rather than an aggressive use of force. The genius of copyleft is that it reverses copyright from within, turning the illegitimate power of the State against itself. (Note that since I take the restrictions imposed by the copyleft license to be protections of legitimate rights, I reserve the right to pursue legal action against anyone who violates the terms of the license.)

Thanks for respecting the work I’ve done to create these pages. If you have any questions or comments, don’t hesitate to contact me.