Copying USConstitution.net Files – The U.S. Constitution Online – USConstitution.net

Apr 23, 2024

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Copying USConstitution.net Files

Because many of the files at this site are HTML copies of important
documents in United States history, direct copying of some of the files to
other Web sites is permitted. There are a few steps that Webmasters must take
before copying any of the files, however. Please read the steps carefully and
only copy the files if you can abide by these rules.

First and foremost, I do not own the copyright on the Constitution,
Declaration of Independence, nor the Articles of Confederation, nor any of the
historical documents contained on this site.
However, I do own the copyright to the HTML-enhanced copies of
these documents contained in this site. Each page has a copyright notice to
that effect on the bottom of the page. In other words, I own the page.

There is no restriction on linking to HTML and text files on this site. If
you wish to link to any file, you may do so. If you cannot abide by the copying
rules, I suggest sticking to links, or grab the Plain Text
Version I have made available, and mark it up with HTML yourself.

Note that because of the size of image files, linking to images stored on
this site is prevented with server-side commands. If you attempt to link to an
image on this site, you will only see a blank image.

I grant the ability of any Webmaster to copy some of the files on this site
for their own use, with some restrictions. Only the files listed may be
copied. Any file not listed may be used only with the express permission of
the Webmaster.

The following files may be copied:

cp_const.html – The text of the Constitution
cp_declar.html – The Declaration of Independence
cp_articles.html – The Articles of Confederation

The files copied may not be altered except in the following
ways:

The names of the files may be changed.
Background colors or images, font faces and colors, and trivial decoration
(such as ul list bullet markers) may be added or changed as needed or
desired

In particular, the following must be retained:

The copyright notice
The contact link

Any of the images found on the USConstitution.net
Banners Page can be copied and used freely.

Any of the historical documents contained on the Historical Documents Page may be copied by using only
the text of the document. Several have comments at the beginning which may not
be used without permission.

If you have any questions about these rules, please contact the Webmaster.

To summarize:

Linking to any page on this site is expressly permitted and
encouraged.
Pages may not be copied from this site without the express permission of
the Webmaster. The sole exceptions are a small list of files referred to
above.
Historical documents found on this site may be copied freely, but
accompanying commentary is copyrighted and may not be used without
permission.
Linking to any image on this site is forbidden and steps have been taken
on the server to prevent it.

As noted above, direct linking to any image on the site is forbidden. If you
do so, you will see, instead, a graphic which reminds you not to steal
bandwidth. This step is necessary to ensure that our bandwidth is not exceeded
by unauthorized links to our images.

If you wish to link to an image, you do so indirectly by linking instead to a
special file I have created for each image. For example, if an image is named
“cpage1.jpg”, you can link to a special file called “i_cpage1.html”. This will
allow your users to see the image with no background or other adornment. Each
such page includes a link to the images page.

Example code: <a
href=”http://www.usconstitution.net/i_cpage1.html”>Click here to see page 1
of the Constitution!</a>

The following sites are using the files from this site. You can visit them
to see how they have conformed to the guidelines above.

Last Modified: 24 Jan 2010

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