Copyright and conditions of use.

• In order to protect ourselves from unscupulous people who attempt to make monetary gain from other people's work, and also from those who purchase the results of our work and then copy it so as to give it away thereby reducing the sales of our CDs, we need to place conditions of use upon our CDroms/pdf downloads. We have tried to make these such that the purchaser (or recipient if a gift) can use the CDs for their own personal use with little restriction.
• Copyright law:
  • Under UK copyright law (and in most other countries too), you would not be allowed to copy more than a very small part of a CD even for your own use (this applies to CDs from any UK source, and not just mine!!). As you may be wanting to print a single book or use the information in your family history notes etc., when you buy a CDrom/pdf download from us, you are granted a licence to allow you to copy for your own personal use as stated below.
• Why legal copyright exists on these CDs:
  • Whilst the books scanned are out of copyright, the image files on these CDroms/pdf downloads are our copyright, in much the same way as photographs would be.
• Agreement when you purchase:
  • By purchasing any of these CDroms/pdf downloads, you are agreeing to the conditions placed on the use of the files on these CDroms/pdf downloads and are granted a licence to use the files for your own personal use. If you want to use the CDroms/pdf downloads for anything else, please contact us first.
• Conditions of use:
  • You may use the files on these CDroms/pdf downloads for your own personal use for such things as printing a single book for your own use.
  • You may not copy the files on these CDroms/pdf downloads to other CDroms/pdf downloads or other media for onward transmission of the data (or in order to be able to sell the original), nor attempt to make monetary gain by the use of these files.
  • You are permitted to copy the CD in order to produce one backup of the data, but you must be in possession of both the original and the copy.
  • You may not use the files in such a way as to deprive or attempt to deprive us of income from future sales of these CDroms/pdf downloads - this includes such things as advertising "look-ups" on mailing lists and other parts of the Internet.
  • If you feel the conditions of use are unreasonable, please drop us a line explaining why and we will be happy to discuss it with you.

If you have any queries with respect to these CDroms/pdf downloads, please contact us.

And, "on the other side of the coin":

Wherever possible, we try to ensure that the books we scan are out of copyright. Copyright exists in an original work for 70 years after the death of the author. This means that if someone wrote a book in 1935 and then died the year after, then the book would be out of copyright in 2006. However if someone wrote a book at the age of (say) 29, and then died at the age of 99 then his book would be in copyright for 140 years in total. So, if the book he wrote was published in 1870, the book is still in copyright and will be until 2010 ! This means of course that in order to know that a book is in or out of copyright, you need to know the date of death of the author; if you've ever tried to find out the date of death of any of your ancestors, you will know how difficult it can be!

We have dates for the death of most of the authors of the books we publish on CDrom/pdf download, but by no means all. Some of the books that are in copyright we have the permission of the copyright owner to publish, and in the case of two of the books the authors are alive (Gerald Stratford and Roy Price).

Disclaimer:
In each case where we do not know the death date of the author, it is not for lack of trying. We have gone through "the Book Trust" and tried to contact the publishers (or their present owners). The Book Trust used to be very good at tracing the present owners of the publishers, but the publishers, with one or two exceptions, have proved a "brick wall". So, if you are the copyright owner of one or more of the books you see published on this site, please contact us and we will either remove the relevant CD/pdf download from sale or we can work out some agreement on royalties.

We have various books that we know are in copyright and would be interested in publishing, so if you are in the list below (or are the heir to the copyright of someone in the list), then please contact us.

• Charles Brunton Knight;
• Taylor Dyson M.A.;
• D.N.R. Lester; H.C.
• Craddock M.A.;