Copyright © notice on the contents of this site

Disclaimer: The ideas expressed on these pages are, at most, mine alone, and sometimes not even this, but just random thoughts passing through my head.

The above does not mean that the contents of this site are free for grabbing, copying, quoting in and out of context (except as allowed by international copyright law) and/or re-posting and re-publishing. In fact, I retain the copyright on everything on this site(including pages of this site that are physically located on other servers and/or at other Internet locations), except for items already copyrighted by others, patented by others, or in the public domain. This applies to all items on this site, even if not stated so explicitly for each item. Quoting or reproducing any copyrighted item published on this site requires my written (or e-mail) permission. I may grant this permission if you ask for it, and explain to me how you will use the materials you want to reproduce. Unless you have my written permission, you are in violation of copyright law. I may or may not give you my permission, and I may or may not charge a fee for these uses - you need to ask me, and we must reach a written agreement before you can go ahead and use my materials. Copyright laws of certain countries may grant you permission to quote limited amounts of text, as long as the source is clearly identified, without needing my explicit permission.

There are a few exceptions:

According to EU law, you do not need to ask my permission to link or cross-link to any of the materials on this web site, copyrighted or otherwise. However, you are not allowed to copy these items and store the copies on your web site.
Ads. However, these items may be copyrighted by their authors and/or providers.
Items that originated from other persons or entities, and are identified as such (for example, text on my page of quotations). These items, however, may be copyrighted by other persons or entities.
Cross-linked items that are stored on other web sites. These items, however, may be copyrighted by the owners of these sites.
Items that are identified as copyrighted and/or licensed by other persons or entities (for example, third-party software used on this site).
Items that are already in the public domain (for example, some of the icons used on this site), or that are explicitly placed by myself in the public domain.
External links and URLs published on this site, and their names and trademarks.
Web spiders and web archives are allowed to cache and index the materials on this site (regardless of copyright) and to make them publicly available for display and searching, as long as they link back to this site.
In specific instances, copyright law may exempt you from the need to obtain my permission. Depending on the copyright laws of your country, for instance, you may not need my permission to make an offline copy of materials from this web site for your personal use, or for scholarly studies.
Note that the use of text copied from this site, without a clear indication of its source, in a school essay, school exam, Masters thesis or PhD thesis is plagiarism, i.e. fraud, regardless of whether copyright laws of your country allow the use of copyrighted material for educational purposes. The contents of this site are indexed by the largest web indexing services, and you are not likely to get away with copy-and-paste from this site in a school essay or thesis.

The above conditions mean, for instance, that you need my written permission before you can use substantial amounts of copyrighted text, or any copyrighted illustrations, from this site in printed materials, or other web sites available to the public. This applies to all such uses, including non-profit web sites and printed materials freely distributed without charge. If I give you my permission, it applies only for the scope it is given initially. If you want to re-use the same materials for another book, or another web site, you need to apply again for my permission.