Legal Matters

Website Disclaimer, Disclosure, Licensing, & Copyright information

Disclaimer

Users of this website do well to understand their responsibilities relative to information given here. Please give careful attention to the following statement:

All material provided at this website is for informative and education purposes only. Nothing here is in any way intended to substitute for consultation with a qualified professional provider of psychological, counseling, psychiatric, or medical services.

Non-professional Visitors to this site are urged to be thoughtful and careful about health care information they encounter, whatever its source. If they believe they have, or might have, a physical or mental condition in their life that is beyond their ability to manage competently, they are urged to seek and make use of qualified professional help.

Services Consumers should consult their qualified Professional Services Provider regarding the applicability of any ideas or suggestions found at this website with respect to their own symptoms, life situation, or mental health concerns.

Service Providers are responsible for determining the appropriateness of applying any ideas or suggestions found here to their work.

About accuracy - While all assertions made on this web site are reviewed for clarity, accuracy, reasonableness, and appropriateness, this review process necessarily involves human fallibility, and so errors will occur. I therefore cannot guarantee the informational accuracy of any assertions made here. I also cannot assume responsibility for information at any of the websites linked to this site.

Disclosure

This website is wholly owned, managed, and developed by Tom Cloyd, MS MA, a private practice psychotherapist, counselor, and consultant in Washington state, USA. No other parties have a management or financial stake in the content of this site.

Website content licensing and copyright

Summary

It is my intent that the content of this website be used for the welfare of others.

Normally, all material produced by someone is protected by international copyright law. The material at this website is so protected, unless otherwise licensed - which much of it is.

License covering my authored material at this website

All material here of which I am the author (and all such documents have clear attribution) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Attribution requested: Please state authorship, if any content is used intact, or source citation (including link) if content is adapted, edited, or cited. Use in a professional context is specifically allowed, under these terms. If you have any questions about use/reuse, contact me.

Copyright

I will very briefly review here copyright law and principles, since this confuses many people - a confusion too often encouraged by certain publishers. Material here which is authored by me or marked as in the public domain is governed by copyright law.

Basic law

According to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works [1], all original material published on this page and at this site is implicitly Copyright, whether specifically indicated as such or not. (The same is true for all material to which this site links.)

Fair use

Making copies for personal use is never a problem. This is known as fair use. Making copies for commercial use, or for use in a way that diminishes their commercial value to the copyright holder, always is illegal unless permission is given for use of the copyrighted item by the copyright owner or his/her agent.

Copyright restrictions do not last forever, however. But it is also true that in the United States, at least, the period of legal copyright extended to property covered by the law has repeated been extended, especially in recent years. When a copyright expires, the work previously covered enters the public domain.

It worth noting that the United States did not join the Berne Convention, originally adopted in 1886, until 1989. Significant changes in US copyright law were required to make this possible, but US content producers acquired significant new levels of international protection as a result of their country's becoming a member of Berne [2].

Notes

1.  Berne Convention For The Protection Of Literary And Artistic Works (Paris Text). (1971). Retrieved 2004-04-30, from http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/overview.html

2. United States Joins The Berne Copyright Convention. (1989). Retrieved  2004-04-30, from http://www.gesmer.com/publications/softcopy/7.php