Debbie's Photos of Poland

Copyright Information

All images and other material on this website are copyrighted under United States and international law.1

Automatic Nonexclusive Limited License:  Any person may use, on a nonexclusive basis, up to five (5) images from this website without obtaining further permission from the owner or webmaster of this site provided that all of the following requirements are met in full, but subject to the termination provisions set out below:

  1. You must NOT directly link to the photos on this site.  That is, when your web page serves the image, it must read it from YOUR web server not from OUR server.  That means you have to place a copy of the image file on your server.

  2. You must provide a clear and obvious attribution of the source of the photos both by name and by providing a link to our site.  The attribution must appear on every page upon which one or more of the images appear and must be placed in a way that anyone viewing the image is likely to see the attribution.  One attribution may be used for all the images on a page, but if there are photos from more than one source on the page the attribution must make clear which of the photos came from our site.

  3. You may not use photos from this site which this site attributes (usually by the phrase "Photo by [name]") to any person.  For example, you may not use the picture of Czersk because it is attributed to Jim Presenkowski (open Czersk page in new window), but you can use my picture of Grady (if you comply with all of these instructions) because it has no attribution (open Grady page in new window).

  4. You may not modify the images you obtain from this site in any way except to enlarge or reduce their size proportionately to their original size.  Prohibited modifications are not limited to those which change the appearance of such image, but modifications of the code or data which make up the computer file which contains the image and modification of any comments or other text contained or embedded in such code or data are also prohibited. 

  5. You may not use any photo in any way, or in connection with anything, which is critical, condemnatory, or defamatory of any person, place, thing, or circumstance shown in the photo or which tends to put any person, place, thing, or circumstance shown in the photo in a false, misleading, or negative light.

  6. You may not use any photo from this site in connection with the revelation or publication of the name, identity, or personal facts of any person shown in such photo if such revelation or publication extends beyond the degree such person's name, identity, or personal facts are revealed upon this site, but this restriction does not apply if the person making the revelation or publication is the person shown in the photo.

Termination:  The Automatic Nonexclusive Limited License granted above may be revoked at any time, with or without cause, as follows:

  1. In addition to the following means and causes of termination, the owner of this website reserves the right to revoke the Automatic Nonexclusive Limited License by giving notice to any or all persons using photos from this site under that license.2

  2. The Automatic Nonexclusive Limited License shall expire and terminate as to any photo which no longer publicly appears on this website.

Additional permissions:  If you want to use these pictures in some other way drop me an email at the email address listed on the top page.  We can probably work something out.

Footnotes:

  1. To be very, very blunt, this means that I have the right to sue you for copyright infringement if you use anything from this site without my permission or if you go beyond the terms and conditions of any permission that I give you.  There's a lot of nonsense on the Web about loopholes in the copyright law, but don't believe it.  Try one of these, instead: (a)  do a Google search on these three terms, with spaces in between and no angle brackets or other punctuation: <copyright myths registration>, and/or (b) take a look at this article.  Those sources will give you a much more comprehensive knowledge about this difficult subject than I can give you here, but here's a few things you ought to know:
    1. Fair use:  Don't think that just because you think that a particular use is "fair" that it's going to fall into the fair use exception to the copyright law.  "Fair use" doesn't have much to do with any ordinary idea of what might or might not be fair.  It's really a legal term which has a very specific meaning and it only allows a few limited kinds of use.  Trying to use the fair use exception on the basis of what you think it means, rather on what it really means, is very stupid indeed.  A few misconceptions:
      1. Just giving credit to the copyright owner isn't enough to create fair use, but failure to give credit may kill any chance to claim fair use.
      2. The question of how much of a work can be used as fair use is hard to figure out, but one thing is clear: using all of a work isn't fair use.  It is never fair use to use a photograph from a collection of photographs by arguing that it's just a small part of the collection.  The courts have held that a photograph is a complete work just by itself, even if it is included in a collection of photographs.
      3. It's not up to the copyright owner to prove that his rights are fair, it's up to the user to prove that his use comes within the legal definition of fair use.  A court will frequently consider the use of intentionally-ignorant or clearly bogus claims of fair use to be an indicator that the use was not a fair use and/or that the user wasn't acting in good faith; either way, the user will be going into court with two or three strikes against him.
      4. Just modifying a copyrighted work doesn't create a new work in which the original owner has no rights or a work which can be copyrighted by the person who modified the work; if it's done without the original owner's permission it's just another form of copyright infringement.  (This isn't really a fair use issue, though it is convenient to include it here; it is a "derivative works" issue.)  For example, making a photograph, painting, or drawing of a photograph without permission is copyright infringement.
    2. Copyright is automatic:  Stuff does not have to be registered with any governmental agency to be copyrighted:  Everything is automatically copyrighted as soon as it is created.
    3. Public domain/copyright marks/failure to defend:  Works don't enter the public domain (and the copyright owner doesn't lose the right to sue for infringement) just because the owner makes the works available to the public without a copyright mark or without registering them or just because the copyright owner doesn't sue to make a known infringer stop violating the owner's copyright.  Copyright registration and the use of copyright marks can give the owner some additional rights and benefits, but the failure to use them does not take away the owner's right to enforce the copyright. 
  2. This means, among other things, that all users' rights under the Automatic Nonexclusive Limited License are subject to the following limitations:
    1. I can say that particular individuals or groups cannot use anything from this website even though the rest of the world has the right to do so.
    2. I don't have to have a good reason, or any reason at all, for excluding anyone.
    3. I can take away the right to use stuff from this website even after a person or group has begun using it and even if the loss of the right to use the stuff is going to cause them harm in some way.
    4. I won't be legally liable to anyone if I do any of those things.