These are the three most frequent questions we receive here at the Concord Homepage and Magazine:

1. I am writing a paper for school about [the American Revolution] [Thoreau] [Emerson] [some Concord-related topic] and want to know if I can use some information I found on your site in my paper.
2. Can I quote from an article I found on your site?
3. Can I use a photo/drawing I found on your site?

The person asking may be anywhere from elementary school age through college, including graduate students. Sometimes, it's a teacher who is asking if they can use this site as a reference for their students.

I want to thank each and every person who has asked me for permission -- it shows you really want to do the right thing. It means you are aware that both words and images are property and need to be respected. Bravo! There are many with less integrity than you and you can be proud of yourselves.

There are very simple answers to the above questions. But since we hear about this so often, it means to me there is considerable confusion on the subject....which I hope to dispel on this page.

I speak here as a publisher, author and artist; I am not an expert on copyright law. But you can consider the below at the very least to be my policy on citing or quoting from this site, as well as my answer if you were wondering if you had to ask to use photos or other images found here. I also hope it serves to help make you aware of the issues involved in copyright on the Web in general.

Using a Website as a Research Resource or Quoting Material from a Website
In almost every case, here is the fast and easy answer to the first two questions: "Yes. Use proper citation and quotation rules and add this Website to your bibliography." You already have to do this for every book, encyclopedia entry, article, or other resource consulted in the research of your paper. The exact same thing holds true of Websites: the identical rules that govern use of hardcopy sources are also true of electronic sources.

Simple, yes? Sure it is. And here are sites which will tell you how to properly cite and quote from Websites:

• The Modern Language Association (MLA) Style courtesy of Honolulu Community College
• Another presentation of the MLA Style from the University of Vermont

The only exception would be when reprinting a large part of or an entire article or book -- permission must be asked of the copyright holder. But, if you are following proper quotation rules, you wouldn't even consider doing such a thing without permission, now would you? Nope.

Using a Photo or Drawing from a Website
If you want to discuss or refer to a photo or other image on a Website, you can certainly do so without asking permission of the copyright holder. Again, proper citation must be made and inclusion in your bibliography is the right thing to do.

But what if you want to reuse the image? Download it to your hard drive, print it to include in your paper, or use it on your own Website? Now, this is a different subject altogether. Permission must be asked of the copyright holder for all of these things.

There is the idea that if you are not using the image for "commercial purposes" you can do whatever you want with it. If it's on the Web, it's in "public domain" and it's up for grabs. I think both these ideas are entirely wrong. An image is someone's property. Do you borrow someone's car without their permission, even if you only wanted to take it for a spin around the block? Of course not -- it would be considered theft if you did.

Regardless of your intentions: you should be asking (and getting) permission. If the copyright holder says you can use it, but have to give credit in a specific way, well then: that's just what you have to do. Here are some Websites specializing in copyright issues as well as words from artists on this subject:

• Look But Don't Steal
• 10 Myths About Copyright Explained
• Yahoo Resources on Copyright
• Web Artists Rights Protection

Bandwidth Theft
So, you want to include an image or sound file from this site on your site and don't want to ask or have been denied permission. True or false: you can get around this by simply making a link to the image or sound file, displaying it on your site but drawing it from my server.

False: this is called "Bandwidth Theft." You are STILL using the image without permission and to make matters worse, your visitors are accessing MY Internet account without my knowledge or approval. So instead of solving the original problem, this approach now doubles the offence. For more on bandwidth theft, see these links:

• Bandwidth and You
• Web Prestige

Text: ©2000 The Concord, MA Homepage
Schoolbus from Hoxie High School
All other images courtesy of ArtToday