AO's Acceptable Use License

[LeslieNoelani]

This thread is for clarification and discussion of Ambleside Online's Acceptable Use License.

The Advisory provides the AmblesideOnline curriculum and all the helpful ancillary resources as a free service. However, although the curriculum is free, it is still copyrighted. Any republishing of the content, either on paper or electronically (such as on a blog or website), requires written Advisory permission. This material represents many long hours of Advisory toil, and we appreciate the respect you show by linking to our website rather than republishing its contents (other than short attributed quotes) elsewhere.

We'll be revising this Q&A section that Amy, one of our wonderful Auxiliary moms, started as we see what additional questions we need to include.


Q: May I copy the site and link to it as my own work?
A: umm... NO. but thank you for asking.

Q: May I publish printables & schedules which use the AO years and Subject Rotations?
A: We are quite happy for families to use and make sundry helpful printables for their families' personal use, and/or to share gratis with the AO community via the forum. However, we ask that the Ambleside Online materials (pretty much anything taken from the website) not be used for personal gain or reposted elsewhere on the web. If you are in doubt about a specific project and whether or not it complies, please ask.

Q: May I quote from the CM series or from a Parent's Review article on my website or blog?
A: Yes! Please do! UNLESS your motive happens to be that of boosting visits to your site by mirroring ours. Which we can't really imagine than any of you lovelies would even think of doing. However, if that were the case, we'd thank you to please refer your readers to our site for the original text.

Q: May I print copies of the CM series or PR articles?
A: We'd love for you to print materials for use in personal study or in small group study settings. HOWEVER, we reserve the right to grant or withhold permission to print for reselling purposes.

[tui_song]

I am making a website about using Charlotte Mason methods in New Zealand. We have used AO as our base, substituting some NZ and other titles. I wanted to let other NZers know about how we have adapted our curriculum, hoping that it will help more Kiwis to use CM's methods (and also to consider AO, which I love). Is it allowed for me to do this, as long as I link clearly to Ambleside Online? My brain's a bit foggy today, so please forgive me if the answer is obvious in the license agreement, which I have read. Thanks!

[tui_song]

Oh, and I should say that my site will be non-commercial in the sense that I would not be selling my ideas.

[Amy Jo Hines]

So ... can I or can I not post what we are doing on my blog? I'm getting confused, and I like to post what books we are reading (and I'd like to post a what we read & how it went for last year). I'm not selling anything or even trailblazing (not offering your work for free with my own plan), just talking about what I love. My 9yo will have a pretty normal year 4 (2 subs & 1 bump), 11yo is doing a combo year 5/6, and my 7yo is getting a tweaked year 2 (little less history, more stories). Of course, I'll acknowledge/link/thank AO - I actually need to find one of those AO web buttons like Brandy has. I really do appreciate what you've done - and I like to talk/blog about things I like. At any rate, I'm getting mixed messages - is a black & white response possible LOL? I like black & white.

[LeslieNoelani]

I guess the most basic way to put it is like this: if your intention is to share what you're doing and add to the AO community/conversation/forum, then it's fine. It's not fine to build your own user base by drawing AO users away from AO.

To expand on the potluck analogy, if you go home and blog and talk about this great potluck you went to and say what you ate there, and who you met and what you talked about, and which side dishes you liked and which ones were too salty, and where this potluck was - not a problem. But if you think to youself, "that's a great idea, but I'm Chinese, I'm going to take their menus and recipes, tweak them, and do a full seven course Chinese-flavored potluck of my own in my backyard," whether you charge admission or not, whether you say you got the idea from AO or not, you're not adding to AO, you're taking away from it. We get great ideas, resources and feedback from AO users, and we all benefit from the community.

To take it a step further (which is going way past your actual question), if someone liked the idea of doing a potluck, it would be more respectful for them to do their own research, create their own original menu and find their own recipes rather than tweaking AO's and re-posting it.

[KayPelham]

To expand on the potluck analogy,

Just reading that makes me so happy

[Brandy Vencel]

So ... can I or can I not post what we are doing on my blog? I'm getting confused, and I like to post what books we are reading (and I'd like to post a what we read & how it went for last year). I'm not selling anything or even trailblazing (not offering your work for free with my own plan), just talking about what I love. My 9yo will have a pretty normal year 4 (2 subs & 1 bump), 11yo is doing a combo year 5/6, and my 7yo is getting a tweaked year 2 (little less history, more stories). Of course, I'll acknowledge/link/thank AO - I actually need to find one of those AO web buttons like Brandy has. I really do appreciate what you've done - and I like to talk/blog about things I like. At any rate, I'm getting mixed messages - is a black & white response possible LOL? I like black & white.

Amy, feel free to snag that button from my sidebar any time you like.

In general, the rule of thumb is that we are encouraged to talk ABOUT AO, but not REPOST AO verbatim. One time, when I wanted to repost a couple of the booklists in the form of a government form required by our state, I just asked for permission and they gave it to me. I don't know if that is black and white enough?

By the way, I love that you are reading N&N! That is a great book and each time I read it I learn something new (like reading CM, actually).

[LeslieNoelani]

Just reading that makes me so happy

Kay, I imagine we haven't yet discovered all the ways we can have fun with this analogy.

[Brandy Vencel]

Oh, I meant to post this as an example of a post in which I explained what we changed for a year of AO, but didn't repost the entire booklist: School Prep: AO Selections for the Less Bookish Child.

[WendiC]

I have a couple suggestions/questions to consider that might help:

Are you copying and pasting from AO's website because that is more convenient? If so, then that might indicate that there is too much copying. It might be better for the AO community at large if you simply linked to the page that has the material you are talking about and said something like, "Instead of the year 2 history recommendations AO suggests here (link to our page), we substituted _______, although we did supplement with the Hiller book they recommend." Does that make sense?

I'm pretty sure under copyright law the limitations on copying even for review purposes is 300 words.

There are several problems with granting blanket permission to somebody to copy and paste from the website on the basis that they are not using Ao to make a profit.

One is that the copycat curricula out there that I know of which has been or is now being sold for profit began by saying they weren't out to make a profit- and I believe most of them meant that when they said it. But things change.

Another is that some of those who say they aren't looking at profiting from our work (and I am not saying either of you are in this group), go to the extra work of stripping out AO affiliate links when they copy and paste our work, and then do the extra work of adding in their own affiliate links. Ummmm..... I see a conflict between words and actions there.

Furthermore, those affiliate links are what we use to pay for the site, to pay for the webhosting, to pay for books that we purchase to review for the curriculum, to pay for the only visit we've ever had where all the Advisory could be together in the same place to work more effectively in person (though we'd love to be able to do this again sometime). We didn't have any affiliate links at all for the first dozen years or so and we paid for all of those things out of our own pockets, and none of us are wealthy (well, except by 3rd world standards, and we don't live in 3rd world countries). While some of us were struggling to make ends meet, we were watching others use our work for the foundation for their business (sometimes by somebody who told us they weren't doing that very thing), which makes us a little skittish about the whole thing.

We've also come to realize that quite often the entire AO community loses out by the liberal copying and pasting that's been going unchecked as well. What happens is busy homeschooling moms see our material copied and pasted and it looks to them (quite mistakenly) like they are seeing an officially recognized 'arm' of AO, and they never bother to click through and see the rest of the material, the resources, the forums, and all their own contributions by way of comments, suggestions, and creation or source materials and sharing of resources goes to the site that copied and pasted our material rather than to the AO community at large.

It also looks like official approval, and we wouldn't always approve of the specific substitutions being made (again, this is a general comment, not specific to the sites of the two previous questioners). So that makes us a little uncomfortable and concerned about a possible dilution of CM's principles and standards. It's not that anybody *needs* our affirmation to make substitutions, of course. It's just that we don't want there to be confusion about whether or not somebody's own adaptations are an extension of AO or something we've looked over and agreed with.

We love it when people want to talk *about* the curriculum, especially in such a way that encourages others to join the forum and add their contributions. This contributes to the community as a whole rather than taking away.

Does that make sense?