Digital photo titled venice-beach-5

Copyright Notice

from Philip Greenspun; created 1993, updated January 2017

All the text, videos, and pictures on this Web server are copyright 1985-2017 Philip Greenspun. I allow re-use of photos (but not text), with hyperlinked credit, under a blanket license that I developed in 1993 when this site was launched. My license is similar in spirit to the Creative Commons idea, but they were not founded until 2001 and therefore their lawyer-drafted licenses were not available.

Non-commercial Web use of photos

On a personal home page or non-commercial Web service, please feel free to use my photographs with a hyperlinked credit on every page where one of my photos appears. Acceptable HTML is
photo courtesy <a href="http://philip.greenspun.com/">Philip Greenspun</a>
That way people know who took the picture and, if interested, can find out more about the photograph. There is no fee for usage.

Commercial Web use of photos

You may use my photos on a commercial site with the same hyperlinked credit, as noted above, but remember that most of the pictures of people on my pages are not model-released. Under U.S. law, advertising usage of photos (e.g., brochures, catalogs, print ads) is very different from editorial usage of photos (e.g., newspaper and magazine articles, books). You cannot use pictures in advertising (e.g., an on-line product brochure or anything else that is selling) without getting a model release from any person whose image is recognizable in the photo. You might also have problems if an image contains a recognizable physical property, e.g., Disneyland.

There is no fee for usage, but if you wish to compensate me, please make a tax-deductible charitable donation to Kids on Computers, an all-volunteer organization that sets up computer labs in Mexico, India, Nepal, and other far-flung corners of the globe. Because there are no paid American staff, one hundred percent of your donation will go to fund operations.

Printing of photos for personal use

If you want a copy of one of my pictures to stick on your fridge or use in a school project or cover a crack in your wall, then please feel free to print anything you like from my site. For the best quality reproduction, please see the high-res downloading instructions below. For the best quality you may wish to go to your local professional photo lab and have them make a print from the digital camera raw or Kodak PhotoCD files on this server. I recommmend Boston Photo and am happy to work with them to get you a print suitable for framing.

Use of photos and Web pages in print

You can use my photos at no charge in a printed brochure, newspaper, or magazine with a "Photo courtesy http://philip.greenspun.com" credit (note that the credit should be to my site, not my name). For reproductions of any size you probably want to reproduce from the original Kodak PhotoCD, a 2000x3000 pixel scan (300 dpi at 7x10"), or camera raw file. For a CD cover or DVD cover, please add a "Cover photo courtesy http://philip.greenspun.com" credit in the liner notes. Send a charitable donation (see above) if it goes platinum :-)

For any questions about for-profit print project, e.g., advertisement, magazine article, book, brochure, etc., please contact me via email. It will help if you include the full URL of the image on my server, e.g., /images/200209-los-angeles/cathedral-underground-2.

Basis for Paintings/Drawings

Artists are welcome to use these photos as a basis for a drawing or painting in exchange for a credit. If an image of the artwork is displayed on the Web, credit should be a hyperlink to http://philip.greenspun.com with a note "Partially based on a photo from http://philip.greenspun.com". Otherwise the same note can be used in a printed description of the work.

Text and Stories

Please feel free to redistribute via hardcopy or email for noncommercial purposes any of my writings, but please don't break up documents (except by chapter) and please attribute the source in such a way that someone can find the most up-to-date version on the Web.

Please do not copy any of my (text) content to a public Web server. Please link to my pages instead. I guarantee not to break any of your links. The problem with you putting my text on your server is that the search engines may be confused by seeing the duplicate content.

Old Stuff

Back in the 1990s, I kept a list of people who'd made charitable donations but this eventually became impractical.
philg@mit.edu