Legal page

This page is motivated by disappointment. Disappointment in those who don't respect other people's work, steal it, and condone their actions by claiming that everything on the Internet is theirs to steal. I've had to deal with some of these plagiarists (for reserve to use stronger terms) and their perverse motivations, which range from "you should be happy that your articles get this much exposure" to "it's perfectly okay to steal from someone who doesn't have a legal page". Right, I didn't always have this legal page, and my pictures don't have little ACP logos in them, but that's only because I don't want to be forced to protect what's mine against unscrupulous individuals who think something is theirs just because it appears on their computer. However, seeing how a legal page has become a bitter necessity, I've created this page – but under protest.

First of all, let's state the obvious. I, Alfred Klomp, have the Dutch nationality and this site is hosted on a Dutch server, so this site falls under Dutch jurisdiction. All the articles and pictures on my site are created by me, unless otherwise stated. Under the Dutch Authorship law, that means they're my intellectual property and may not be copied, published, spread, etc by third parties without my consent. I present this site as-is, without any warranties as to the truthfulness of the information. Consequently, I am not responsible for any damages that may arise from using this site or parts of it. Any external pages I link to are obviously outside my sphere of influence, so I don't take any responsibility for their contents. This site is envisioned as a personal and noncommercial source of information, and as a personal platform to vent my opinions on cameras, stuff, flea markets, and other trivia. All opinions on this site are my own and are protected by the freedom of speech as stated in the Dutch constitution.

That's just the reading of the rights. Now comes the bit where I explain what I consent to and what not.

There are a couple of main rules for this site. Firstly, you are allowed to link to all html pages on this site (extention .htm), but not to any of the other more esoteric file types, like sound or image files. Linking to them is called bandwidth theft, and nothing annoys me more. If I find out, I will take whatever measure I can to tie you to the highest tree, so help me God, including replacing the images with lewd and/or obscene images extremely detrimental to your miserable standing, or reporting you to whatever authority is placed above you, notably the eBay anti-plagiarism desk. If you are indeed an eBay seller, I also spit on you for misleading your customers by selling them my camera.

If you are a noncommercially operating private individual, you are allowed to copy at most two pictures from this site for use on yours, provided that immediately adjacent to them, you place a link to the source page. Note that you must copy the pictures to your server, or else it's still bandwidth theft. You must copy them in their entirety and not alter them in any way. Note also that it's up to me to decide whether you're a noncommercially operating private individual, to avoid the obvious catfights.

You may not copy any of my articles to your server, unless the length of the excerpt is within the fair length of a quotation (1–2 paragraphs). Quoting is a fair practice and I don't want to outlaw it. However, copying larger parts of an article (or, why not, the entire article) is not quoting but plagiarism. If you feel you'd do your visitors great injustice by not offering them my luscious prose in full, just link to the original source and I won't bust your balls.

If you quote from my site, you must always include a link to the source. That's just good manners, towards me and towards your readers.

Note that copying and/or altering pictures is not considered quoting. If you copy entire pictures, you're not quoting but stealing an entire unit, which is forbidden. If on the other hand you crop or resize or otherwise alter the picture, you're not quoting but mutilating, which is also forbidden.

To counter the plagiarist's arguments in the first paragraph, I came up with four reasons why I don't want anyone to host my articles.

1. Copying is illegal: reference the Dutch authorship law on intellectual property. It's called plagiarism.
2. Copied articles are placed outside of my control and occasional updating. The articles and pictures on this site are continuously refreshed, but any copied ones won't be.
3. Multiple versions of one article pollute the Internet with duplicates and obscure their original source, i.e. my site.
4. My website is an independent and noncommercial source of public information, so any commercial or otherwise unsound use would be detrimental to its character.

You may not steal the design of my site. However, I don't lay claim to every html construct I use, so I still allow you to use tables and the <body> tag.

Also, you may not kick me in the balls.