Creative Commons License

As of March 19, 2016, Ask Leo! now licenses all published content, with some exceptions listed below, under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.a (CC-BY-NC-ND).

That means you are free to reuse Ask Leo! articles and content with the following restrictions:

  • BY: you must retain attribution to Ask Leo! – ideally including a clickable link to https://askleo.com when that makes sense.
  • NC: you may not use Ask Leo! content for commercial purposes, including but not limited to making the content available for a fee, or using it to promote other products, services or endeavors for which a fee is charged.
  • ND: you may not alter the content, or create works that are ‘derivatives’ of the content. Your use must be complete, and unchanged. (In practice this means complete articles, not including comments.)

Covered and excluded content

All content on askleo.com and related sites are covered by this Creative Commons license, with the following exceptions:

  • All books available for purchase in any location including the Ask Leo! store, on Amazon, and on Kindle, retain full copyright protection and may not be republished without explicit, prior, written consent.
  • All “bonus materials” made available to purchasers of Ask Leo! products retains full copyright protection.

Unauthorized republication of these materials continues to be in violation of applicable international copyright law.

Permitted use

Examples of permitted use include, but are not limited to:

  • Republishing an Ask Leo! article in a not-for-profit computer user’s group handout, newsletter, web site or flyer.
  • Republishing an Ask Leo! article for use in a public educational institution.
  • Republishing an Ask Leo! article in the newsletter of a not-for-profit senior center or similar support organization.
  • Emailing an article to a friend.

Disallowed use

Examples of use not permitted by this license include but are not limited to:

  • Re-posting an Ask Leo! article on a commercial web site.
  • Re-posting an Ask Leo! article in a computer help web site run by an entity that does not have formal non-profit status.
  • Republishing in a magazine or other publication that does not have formal non-profit status.

Those scenarios, and others, continue to be covered by applicable international copyright law.

In all those cases it is always acceptable to publish a link to the original material on the Ask Leo! web site. See also Additional terms below.

What this is NOT

This is not a release of copyright.

This is not public domain.

This is most certainly not a release to plagiarize or otherwise use Ask Leo! content for commercial purposes without prior agreement.

All content continues to be covered by international copyright law, with additional and specific terms under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC-ND) license.

Additional terms

If you have a scenario that’s not covered under the descriptions above, or which is clearly classified as commercial, and you would like to re-use Ask Leo! content, use the ask-a-question form to make contact, outlining the specific scenario you have in mind. I’m not at all averse to making case-by-case exceptions and possibly coming to a mutually beneficial arrangement.