Electronic Texts
Terms and Conditions of Use

   Copyright Status    Public Domain Texts    Proprietary Texts    Maps and Illustrations

Heritage History uses public domain sources for our library, but our website and Classical Libraries also contain a considerable amount of original material. Although our mission is to promote and disseminate classical works of juvenile history, we also seek to prevent abuse of public domain material and to protect our proprietary material. Please read the following conditions carefully in order to determine the status of each resource on the Heritage History website and to learn under what conditions, if any, it can be reproduced.

Before stating the restrictions on usage of the Heritage History texts, we propose to explain in plain English the copyright status of the public domain material on the Heritage History website and Compact Libraries.

First of all, the year 1923 is a particularly important date in U.S. copyright law. Until 1998, American copyright laws provided that 75 years after first publication, any book copyrighted in the United States became the property of the "public domain" and could be republished without the permission of the copyright holder. In 1998, however, all U.S. copyrights were automatically extended for another 20 years, (meaning no more books will enter the public domain until 2018). However, at the time the new law was passed, everything published before 1923 was already in the public domain. This explains the seemingly arbitrary date of 1923 as the cut-off for the material used by most electronic libraries.

When a book is in the public domain its text as well as its images can be reproduced without paying a royalty to the author. Is there a catch? Yes, of course. It is relatively easy to take a public domain text and make modifications in such a way that the revised text can be re-copyrighted. For example, if one adds annotations, abridges, modernizes spelling and punctuation, adds a preface, or presents the text in a proprietary format, the new work can be copyrighted. Likewise, when a copyright-free illustration is scanned and converted to JPEG or GIF format, the new image is then copyrightable.

What does all this mean for users of Heritage History resources? It means that although we have used copyright-free material as a basis for the books in our library, the material we have presented on the Heritage History website and libraries is under copyright protection and cannot be redistributed without the permission of Heritage History. Although the complete text of every book in the Heritage Library is available to read online, we discourage copying text from the website. We offer very inexpensive versions of each of the Public Domain texts at the Heritage Store and request that you purchase these books rather than copy texts from the website.

All of the texts in the Heritage History library that were derived from public domain sources have been converted to three different formats (PDF, MOBI, EPUB), which can be reproduced by persons who adhere to the restrictions Heritage History places on their usage. All public domain texts have the name of the original author and the date of the original copyright clearly indicated. Heritage History does permit individuals to copy EPUB, MOBI, or PDF files for personal or educational use. All such texts, however, must be used according to the restrictions indicated in the following Terms of Usage notification, included in each Electronic Text produced by Heritage History.

This text was produced and distributed by Heritage History, an organization dedicated to the preservation of classical juvenile history books, and to the promotion of the works of traditional history authors.

The books which Heritage History republishes are in the public domain and are no longer protected by the original copyright. They may therefore be reproduced within the United States without paying a royalty to the author.

The text and pictures used to produce this version of the work, however, are the property of Heritage History and are licensed to individual users with some restrictions. These restrictions are imposed for the purpose of protecting the integrity of the work itself, for preventing plagiarism, and for helping to insure that compromised or incomplete versions of the work are not widely distributed.

In order to preserve information regarding the origin of this text, a copyright by the author and a Heritage History distribution date are included with the text. We request all electronic and printed versions of this text include these markings and that users adhere to the following restrictions.

1. This text may be reproduced for personal or educational purposes as long as the original copyright and Heritage History release date are faithfully reproduced.
    
2. You may not alter this text or try to pass off all or any part of it as your own work.
    
3. You may not distribute copies of this text for commercial purposes unless you have the prior written consent of Heritage History.
    
4. This text is intended to be a faithful and complete copy of the original document. However, typos, omissions, and other errors may have occurred during preparation, and Heritage History does not guarantee a perfectly reliable reproduction.

Permission to use Heritage History documents or images for commercial purposes, or more information about our collection of traditional history resources can be obtained by contacting us at Infodesk@heritage-history.com.

We believe that our policy of defining limited rights of reproduction serves the purpose of encouraging the dissemination of Heritage History texts based on public domain sources, while at the same time discouraging abuses, plagiarism, and commercial theft of Heritage History property.

All of the public domain material on the Heritage History website and in our Compact Libraries are associated with particular books. All other content—including study resources, book and series summaries, navigation aids, war and battle information, character pages, era summaries, and general information files—is original content, and Heritage History does not grant any rights of reproduction. Most Heritage History original material is presented in HTML format, and includes the following copyright.

Files on the Heritage History Compact Libraries are organized by format type. All of the files in the Compact Library "pdf", "mobi", and "epub" folders are derived from public domain texts, but most other files are proprietary Heritage History texts. Heritage History wishes to maintain this system as proprietary, and therefore we forbid redistributing any of our original content, even for personal or educational use. Likewise, all of the material on the Heritage History website, other than those files specifically associated with a particular book, are proprietary files and cannot be reproduced under any circumstances. Please respect these restrictions.

Many of the books included in Heritage History's Compact Libraries contain high quality images. Classical juvenile history books were often lavishly illustrated, and each Compact Library contains an "images" folder, in which several hundred of the best illustrations in each collection are listed. Likewise, a "maps" folder exists which contains high resolution historical maps.

Heritage History permits the use of maps and images from its Compact Libraries only for personal and educational use. They can be freely used by students or instructors in slide-shows, power-point presentations, projects, reports, or videos, as long as they are employed for personal or educational purposes and are not distributed or used for commercial purposes. Under certain conditions Heritage History will allow use of these images for commercial or public purposes, but only with prior written permission for each specific use, and sometimes after the payment of a small fee.

Heritage History frequently receives requests for use of our maps and images. Although we do not allow images to be copied and posted on other websites, we do allow Heritage History images to be sourced by other web pages. Attribution is appreciated, but as long as images are sourced directly from our website, no additional attribution is required. The images that we have made available on our website and compact libraries are relatively low resolution due to both space and performance considerations. They are adequate for internet use but are not suitable for professional reproduction. We do have high resolution (300 bpi), versions of most of our images, but they are only available on special request.

If you have any further questions about the usage of Heritage Histories text and images, or if you would like to use our images for commercial or public purposes, we can be contacted at Infodesk@heritage-history.com.