VHTRC Web Site

Copying and Use Policy

(Downloading photos for personal use.)

The VHTRC web site is a volunteer effort in behalf of a non-profit running club. "Ownership" and legalisms are not big deals to us. Etiquette, ethics, and intellectual honesty are. For these reasons, we ask that you not copy anything from the VHTRC web site without complying with the policy on this page. If you have a question about this policy, please contact Anstr Davidson at anstr@vhtrc.org

The short version of our policy is:

  • You may use anything you want on your own computer as long as it cannot be seen on the Internet. Otherwise:
  • Don't use anything without permission and if you are in doubt, please ask.

The VHTRC does not claim ownership of the facts on the site. So you are free to report who won our races, the scheduled dates of our events, and similar information. You need to do this in your own words, however. Don't copy text from our site. Also, you should cite us as the source of any facts you use. Thus, a good journalist would say, "The VHTRC reported today that Anstr Davidson won the MMT 100 mile run in record time."

What you should not take without permission are the words that we use to say things and the pictures and images on the site.

Here are our policies on granting permission to use items from the VHTRC web site:

  1. We will generally not grant permission for a commercial web site to use most items from the VHTRC web site. Commercial sites are free to link to any page on our site. (See suggestions on linking below.)
  2. The point of the web is not to replicate data in two places. You should link to our results and are free to do so. We will, however, generally permit non-commercial sites to list race results from the VHTRC web site on their sites if they attribute the results to us and provide a link back to a place to obtain more information.
  3. The policy on whether we are likely to grant permission to use photos or images varies. Generally, we will not allow commercial sites to use photos or images from our site. If the photo came from another source, we will be glad to connect you with that source to see if you can obtain permission to use it directly. We will usually grant permission to non-commercial sites to use photos on condition that they be attributed and that use of the photo on another site will not cause confusion.
  4. Downloading photos for personal use: You need not ask permission to copy stuff from our site for use on your personal computer as long as it is only available to a user of your computer. So you may, for example, use any picture as your "wallpaper" or keep the VHTRC address book on your local hard drive.

Suggestion on linking. While not required, there are points of etiquette for linking to Web pages. You should let your visitors know where you are sending them. If you make a link to a subordinate page in a site that may not indicate what site it is or that was clearly not meant to be an entry page, then you should also have a link to an entry page. Thus, a link might look like this:

"The results of the race are on the running club Web site." (The first link would be to the results themselves and the second would be to the home page of the site.)

This policy is only necessary for a very few people. We regret the need to have it. Remember the golden rule, ask first!

If you have any comments on this policy, feel free to write Anstr Davidson about it. Also, if you want to seek permission under this policy, write Anstr. He is at: anstr@vhtrc.org.

Here are a couple of links to sites that talk about copyright law and intellectual property on the web.

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