1. Copyrights and Reproduction
2. User Generated Content
3. Cookies and Privacy

Unless otherwise noted, the contents on this site, including the text and images, are protected under the Copyright Laws of the United States and other countries. Permission to use the text and images must be sought in advance before publishing these images.

Affiliate Program Disclosures

The FTC requires website operators and bloggers to disclose when links earn them a commission, as part of their policies for truth in advertising. Links on this site that are part of an affiliate program, where a commission is paid on purchases made through the link, are denoted by the phrase “(Affiliate link)” in superscript next to to the link.

• Amazon Associates Program
  V. Jason Franke/pointsinfocus.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

Linking and Abstracts

Hyperlinks are what make the Web work, without them, any site is pretty close to useless.

Please do link to articles on this site.

When linking sometimes it’s necessary or desirable to include a short synopsis, abstract, or summary of the page to which you’re linking. While I would personally prefer you created your own summary, I recognize that’s not always possible or desirable. As such, I consider it fair use to reproduce a small portion of the text of an article, not more than TWO (2) PARAGRAPHS of the page’s text for these purposes.

Content Reproduction

Wholesale reproduction of the content on this site is strictly prohibited.

While you might consider this some form of flattery, it really just hurts my ability to make a living and put food on the table. I take this kind of thing seriously.

Please save us both the time, effort, and money and don’t copy my content wholesale.

Fair Use

U.S. Copyright law includes the concept of fair use. Fair use provides certain exceptions for when copyrighted content can be reproduced without seeing a license. These cases include, “criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research.” Fair use rights are not automatic and are subject to further restrictions. (See 17 USC S 107 for the full text of the law).

I support the concept of reasonable fair use.

In all cases images and/or other content must be properly attributed.

Licensing Content

If your potential use of my content and/or images is not protected by fair use, I am willing to negotiate non-exclusive revocable licenses. The exact terms and potential costs will vary on a case by case basis.

Note: Not all content may be available to license.

If you’re interested in licensing content please visit our licensing page.

Comments / User Generated Content

Many articles on this site have a comment section. The ability to network and discuss topics with other people is a large part of what makes the internet a useful tool.

Comments are intellectual property of the person making the comment. By posting you agree to allow me to store, publish, and display the comment for the duration that it remains on this site.

Comments are moderated. At a minimum profane, harassing, and/or off topic material will not be published. Because that part of the moderation process is manual, comments may not appear immediately, though I do try to be timely about it.

Spam will not be posted, and will be removed when it is discovered.

All comments are scanned using a number of automated techniques to determine whether they are spam or not. The volume of spam generally is quite significant, compared to the actual number of comments. I generally see a very low percentage of improperly flagged comments as spam, but it does happen. If your comment doesn’t appear at all, may have been eaten by the spam filters.

Comments and/or other user generated content may not infringe on other’s copyrights. Comments that are found to do so, will be removed.

I reserve the right to remove or refuse to publish any user generated comment or content at any time for any reason.

Privacy

I take online privacy seriously. When posting a comment you required to provide some information that some people and countries consider personally identifiable information. Specifically you must fill in the name, and email address fields. What is done, and the requirements for those fields is described below.

Name – You may use a pseudonym or other online nickname if you prefer not to reveal your real name. I don’t generally care who you claim to be, so long as what you’re saying is not inflammatory or illegal, and your contribution to the discussion is valuable. The name or pseudonym you provide will be displayed associated with your comment.

Email Address – I hate spam emails, and I’m sure you do as well. The comment system collects your email address when posting. We do not display your email address in the clear or obfuscated form on the site, nor will we sell, or disclose, them to advertisers, spammers, or other parties unless required by law.

IP Address – IP addresses, identify a specific computer or network connected to the internet. When you post a comment, the IP address associated with your computer, or the network it’s on, is stored with that comment as part of the default behavior of WordPress. This information is not made public, or distributed by us, again unless required by law.

Web Address – When posting you may optionally enter a web site for limited self promotion. These addresses may be validated, and potentially removed at my discretion.

Other Information – Please be cognizant of the fact that you can disclose personally identifiable information in your post. If we do notice something obvious while moderating posts, such as user names, passwords, addresses or similar information we will likely delete the post in it’s entirety instead of making such information available or trying to redact just the personal information.

Cookies, 3rd Party Services, and Tracking Privacy

The short of it is that this, this site uses services that may (almost certainly do) set cookies on your computer. The most relevant two services are Google’s AdSense network and Google Analytics.

Additionally, this site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Other Cookies and their Use

The following table contains a list of 3rd party cookies from services that I use on this site.

Dealing With 3rd Party Cookies

I don’t currently provide any mechanism to deal with cookies directly as there are tools available for your browser to handle this — and this is ultimately where these kinds of controls belong. All major browsers allow you to disable all cookies, or 3rd party cookies. You can find instructions to disable cookies or just 3rd party cookies at the following links:

Moreover, some browsers, like Chrome, allow you to disable or set specific policies for specific cookies and sites.

Further absolute control had by installing an Ad Blocker or Content Blocker in your browser and blocking all tracking and advertising sources.

Changes to this Policy

This policy is subject to change if and when I determine it’s necessary, and without notice. It’s my sincere hope that I won’t need to turn to a significant amount of legal gibberish to insure that I’m not litigated into oblivion.