Copyright Statement
All of the written material and some of the graphics (static images
and animations), and all of the audio lecture recordings on these
pages are copyrighted by Richard W. Pogge unless otherwise noted, and
may not be reproduced without written permission.
Educational or non-profit organizations wishing to reproduce or
provide links to any part of these pages must contact Richard Pogge
(pogge.1@osu.edu) in writing.
Please see the Usage Guidelines below for specific information and
terms before contacting me.
Usage Guidelines
These web pages are intended primarily for use by Ohio State
University students enrolled in this course. Students formally
enrolled in this course are granted permission to make copies of the
online notes in unaltered form for exclusive personal use only,
provided that all copyright notices and citations of images and text
sources remain intact. "Personal Use", however, does not extend to
additional reproduction, alteration, distribution, or resale of these
notes in any form to anybody. Your use of these web pages implies
that you agree with and will respect these conditions of use.
All other interested persons who are not enrolled in this course at
The Ohio State University are welcome to browse these pages, provided
that they observe the following usage restrictions:
- Educators, educational organizations, or registered non-profit
organizations may link to these pages from their websites, but they
are expressly prohibited from copying any of the material on these
pages, in whole or in part, to their own websites, making translations
into other languages, or making copies for distribution in any
non-web form, electronic or physical. Graphics may not be copied
without written permission from the author, Richard Pogge (pogge.1@osu.edu). This permission
gives me a record of who is using this material outside of The Ohio
State University. Any graphics that are copied and inserted into
online documents must include a full citation as to their source,
including a link back to the page with the original context. This
serves two important purposes: it makes clear to your readers the
provenance of a graphic, and it relieves you of responsibility for
responding to queries about that graphic by others.
- You may not reproduce, distribute, translate into another
language, or resell any of the materials on these pages in any form,
nor may you charge others to gain access to these pages. In
particular, you are specifically prohibited from including any of the
written material or graphics, in whole or in part, in course note or
lecture note packages compiled with the intention of reselling them to
students enrolled in this or related courses at this or any other
educational institutions. This includes providing copies of these
notes, in whole or in part, to electronic note-taking services.
- Citations of factual material in these pages should be to the
original literature sources. Please contact the author of these pages
for information on the correct citation of particular materials, or if
you see incorrect citations so that the author may correct these
errors.
- All audio recordings of the lectures, whether obtained directly
from this site or via podcasting services like iTunes, are Copyright
© Richard Pogge, all rights reserved. You are allowed to make
personal copies for your own listening on personal computers or other
personal audio devices (including but not limited to mp3 players,
iPods, or home audio receivers), but you may not share or otherwise
distribute these audio files to others by any means. If others are
interested in listening to these lectures, please direct them to the
original sources (e.g., the RSS feed on this site or the iTunes
portal), as access by those means increases their traffic and helps
justify these services.
Note that by downloading any files from this site, you are implicitly
agreeing to the above conditions.
A Brief Note About Copyrights
The precise relationship between existing copyright laws and publically
accessible electronic documents on the Internet is a subject of
considerable discussion and debate. Copyrights are an essential
protection for teachers and students alike, as they play a fundamental
role in helping to preserve the integrity of our intellectual activities
(writing, images, etc.) by protecting our creative works from commercial
exploitation by others. I take the issue of copyrights very seriously
in the production of these web pages.
If you notice any inappropriately used or incorrectly cited text or
images, please contact me so that I can either seek the proper use
permissions or delete them from these pages (providing substitutions
where possible).
- Text Sources
- I have made a good faith effort to be very careful about not
including copyrighted text (other than my own) in these pages, except
where I have sought specific permission from the original authors. I
would appreciate help correcting any erroneous citations to primary
sources you might spot in these pages.
- Images
- Images are essential to teaching astronomy, and present a wide range
of copyright issues in the context of the Internet. Since copyright law
with regards to electronic graphics is still being developed, I have
little guidance except common sense. As such, I use primarily public
domain images on these pages, taking care to correctly cite the original
sources, and have sought permission for other images (e.g., I have an
agreement with the Anglo-Australian Observatory for use of some of their
copyrighted images on these pages).
Some of the images and graphics displayed during my lectures are
copyrighted materials unavailable in the public domain. While use of
these images in lecture is permitted under the well-established
principle of "Fair Use", that same principle prohibits me from posting
these images to the Web without the explicit permission of the
owner of their copyright. I am seeking permission from the original
sources to post some of the graphics on these pages, but not all persons
have granted that permission. For example, the publishers of the
textbook have provided me with electronic copies of most of the graphics
from the book which I may include in my lectures, but they do not grant
me permission to post them on the class webpages. This can be somewhat
inconvenient for the students, as a number of the images and graphics
used in lecture are not otherwise available online, but it is
unavoidable.
- Animations
- An exciting feature of electronic presentation is the ability to set
some images into motion. In astronomy we often deal with dynamic
phenomena: rotation, orbital motion, explosions, tidal encounters &
collisions, etc., and static pictures do not convey the concepts as
clearly as animations. We are beginning to create our own animations
for these classes, and are putting them onto the web pages for the
students to view (and play with) after class to help cement the ideas.
All OSU-created animations are copyrighted and subject to the same
restrictions noted above.
Some of the animations shown in class were created by others. In these
cases, I have put in links to the original webpages from which I got
them, or am seeking permission from the creators to make local copies
available to try to help with the download time for my students. In all
cases, these local copies are accompanied by links to the original
sources, and you should always consult with the creators to seek
permission to use them.
- Audio Recordings ("Podcasts")
- The increasing popularity of Apple's iPod portable music player and
similar technologies has made it possible to make high-quality digital
recordings of the lectures available to students online. Delivery of
these recordings is greatly enabled by "Podcasting", an especially
simple and powerful means of online multimedia content distribution.
Students find the recordings helpful as study aids (and to make up
lectures they missed because of illness or absense), and people outside
the university have written telling me that they are listening to
them for a wide variety of reasons (interest in the topic,
"life-learning", make the daily commute less boring, etc.). The value
of these recordings as a multifaceted study aid and public outreach tool
is such that I will continue to make my lecture recordings publically
accessible. However, these recordings do fall into some gray areas with
regards to copyright and ownership of the content that are still being
worked out. This is why I ask that listeners who like the recordings
share them by directing others to the originals, rather than making
copies. This lets me preserve the integrity of the original source
material, and the additional traffic allows me to demonstrate to my
Department and University that there is enough demand for the recordings
to continue making computer and network resources available to host the
materials online.
Updated: 2016 January 12 [rwp]