Canadian Atheist’s copyright regime is fairly simple and permissive. For most common scenarios – like republishing some or all of CA’s content on your own website or blog, or on social media – the only requirement you have to worry about is that you clearly attribute the content to Canadian Atheist (don’t pass it off as your own work) and link back to the source.
This page exists to provide clearer and more detailed information about how things are copyrighted on Canadian Atheist, and what freedoms you are allowed. This should mostly be of interest to anyone considering doing things like syndicating Canadian Atheist content, creating a mirror or archive, or republishing it on a commercial site. For most people and most usage scenarios, all you need to worry about is proper attribution and linking back to the source.
General content
General content on Canadian Atheist is all of our posts and pages – basically everything except our branding elements (our logo and other things Canadian Atheist uses to identify itself). Branding element copyrights are discussed in the next section.
All general (non branding element) content on Canadian Atheist is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) licence.
The CC BY-SA 4.0 information page provides very nice, clear, and easy-to-read explanations of exactly what the permissions and restrictions of the licence are. I will provide a simple summary, but the official licence information should be considered authoritative.
For all general (non branding element) content on Canadian Atheist, the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence allows you to:
- copy, republish, and share the content in any format with anyone you like. That covers everything from: saving a copy on your device, to printing hard copies, to republishing one of our posts on your own site.
- modify the content. That includes cutting out or keeping only parts of the content, inserting your own responses or other stuff within the content, and reformatting a post to match your own site’s look.
However, the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence also has some terms you must abide by:
- Attribution
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You must clearly attribute the content to Canadian Atheist, and ideally to the original author of the content as well. Do not try to pass it off as your own work.
You must provide a link back to the original source of the content on Canadian Atheist.
If you have modified the content in any way, you must clearly indicate that you have done so, and how. Make sure you make it clear that Canadian Atheist does not endorse any changes you have made. (In other words, you can’t take a CA post, modify to change the message to something we didn’t say, then silently pass it along so that others may be fooled into thinking it came directly from us.)
- ShareAlike
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When you republish our content, whether modified or not, you must do so either under the same (CC BY-SA 4.0) licence, or a compatible licence. If this is not possible – for example, you wish to republish CA content somewhere with a commercial copyright – you will have to contact us and get explicit permission.
Canadian copyright law allows everyone certain freedoms even with material that is otherwise protected by copyright. Naturally that applies to Canadian Atheist content as well. Fair dealing exemptions allow you to use any part of Canadian Atheist’s content for review, criticism, parody, satire, research, education (for example, using it as teaching material in a class), private study, or news reporting), without worrying about our copyright terms or restrictions.
If you have any questions or concerns about Canadian Atheist’s copyright, or if you wish to request special permissions, feel free to contact us.
Branding elements
Branding elements, like our logo and other things Canadian Atheist uses to identify itself, are protected by copyright. Because these are the elements of our identity – the things that we want people to associate with us and identify us with – they are protected with more restrictive copyright terms. They are not released under a CC BY-SA 4.0 licence; they are fully protected by copyright with all rights reserved.
For more details about what Canadian Atheist’s branding elements are, and how they are protected (and what you are allowed to do with them), check out the branding section.