Question

Topic: E-Marketing

Copyright Notice For Free Ebook Needs What?

Posted by totem on 6/17/2011 at 7:56 PM ET 125 Points
Hi! I am prepping an ebook to give away for free as a demonstration of our training content. I need to prepare a copyright notice and a footer for each page and am wondering how others structure this. Note that I want people to freely send this PDF or paper printout to others, but don't want them to just take parts of the content and use it as their own.

Our normal disclaimer on our training content is fairly stern and I feel it is in contradiction to the spirit of sharing:

© 2011 Copyright Acme, Inc. All rights reserved.
These materials may not be reproduced, republished, redistributed, or resold in any form without written permission from the author.

I am considering one copyright notice inside the cover with a footer on each page giving the title, source and a sentence about sharing it. And maybe a link back to the site if it fits.

Question: What have you been doing with this? What is your pragmatic advice? Thanks!
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 6/17/2011 at 8:22 PM Accepted
    If you want to share it, you might consider using a Creative Commons license instead: https://creativecommons.org/choose/
  • Posted by Gary Bloomer on 6/18/2011 at 8:37 AM Member
    Creative Commons OR your statement as outlined are both effective ways to control your content. But why not just lock the PDF so that content be viewed and saved but so that it cannot be copied or printed?
  • Posted by totem on 6/19/2011 at 9:12 PM Author
    I actually want people to print the worksheets and they may have legitimate purposes for copying the text so locking those file functions is not the solution.

    With all the social sharing and content marketing going on these days, I was surprised to not find any discussions of this topic.

    KSA has more of the spirit I am looking for. Here''s my draft (first line is a small heading):

    *Pass It On! (But Don’t Part It Out.)*
    Copyright © 2011 Acme, Inc.All rights reserved. These materials may not be republished or resold in any form without written permission from the author. But we encourage you to pass it on in its entirety. Do you know someone else who can benefit from this?


    I am familiar with licenses and actually read fine print, but I believe most people don''t. And as much as I appreciate CC licenses, I know that almost no one will know what it is or take the time to look it up.

    I wish to develop a more common language way to communicate these terms. The trick is to communicate in certain terms what is allowed and not, but also to maintain the friendly and cooperate spirit we would have in a real-life client-consultant interchange.

    Any further ideas? Keep ''em coming!
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