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Legal Notices

The following notices and licenses comprise together the MIT OCW License.

OpenCourseWare materials are licensed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under a Creative Commons License. Creative Commons - some rights reserved 

Creative Commons License 2.5

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5

You are free:
  • to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
  • to make derivative works
Under the following conditions:
  Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
  Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
  Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one.
  • For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work.
  • Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.

Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above.

MIT Open Courseware licenses its copyrighted work to you on the terms of the Creative Commons license found here:

Full license

This page is not the actual license. The license terms are highlighted here in summary to provide a quick reference to the terms in the full license agreement.

MIT's license for OpenCourseWare follows Creative Commons licensing standards. Creative Commons is not a law firm and does not provide legal services. Distributing, displaying, or linking to this License Summary does not create an attorney-client relationship.

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MIT Interpretation of "Non-commercial"

Non-commercial use means that users may not sell, profit from, or commercialize OCW materials or works derived from them.  That said, we have found that there are certain “gray areas” in interpreting the non-commercial provision of OCW’s Creative Commons license.  The guidelines below are intended to help users determine whether or not their use of OCW materials would be permitted under the “non-commercial” restriction.  Note that there are additional requirements (attribution and share alike) spelled out in our license.

  1. Commercialization is prohibited.  Users may not directly sell or profit from OCW materials or from works derived from OCW materials.

    Example: A commercial education or training business may not offer courses based on OCW materials if students pay a fee for those courses and the business intends to profit as a result.

  2. Determination of commercial vs. non-commercial purpose is based on the use, not the user.  Materials may be used by individuals, institutions, governments, corporations, or other business whether for-profit or non-profit so long as the use itself is not a commercialization of the materials or a use that is directly intended to generate sales or profit.

    Example: A corporation may use OCW materials for internal professional development and training purposes.

  3. Incidental charges to recover reasonable reproduction costs may be permitted.  Recovery of nominal actual costs for copying small amounts (under 1000 copies) of OCW content on paper or CDs is allowed for educational purposes so long as there is no profit motive and so long as the intended use of the copies is in compliance with all license terms.  Students must be informed that the materials are freely available on the OCW web site and that their purchase of copied materials is optional.

    Example: An institution in a remote area has limited Internet access and limited network infrastructure on campus, and a professor offers to create CDs of OCW materials relevant to her course.  The professor may recover the costs of creating the CDs.

    If you have questions about acceptable use of OCW materials, please send us feedback.

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Infringement Notification

MIT OCW, prior to making any MIT OCW Materials publicly available, has reviewed all material extensively to determine the correct ownership of the material and obtain the appropriate licenses to make the material available on MIT OCW. OCW will promptly remove any material that is determined to be infringing on the rights of others. If you believe that a portion of OCW Material infringes another's copyright, please send us feedback. If you do not include an electronic signature with your claim, you may be asked to send or fax a follow-up copy with a signature. To file the notification, you must be either the copyright owner of the work or an individual authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner. Your notification must include:

1. Identification of the copyrighted work, or, in the case of multiple works at the same location, a representative list of such works at that site.

2. Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity. You must include sufficient information, such as a specific URL or other specific identification, for us to locate the material.

3. Information for us to be able to contact the claimant (e.g., email address, phone number).

4. A statement that the claimant believes that the use of the material has not been authorized by the copyright owner or an authorized agent.

5. A statement that the information in the notification is accurate and that the claimant is, or is authorized to act on behalf of, the copyright owner.

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Privacy

MIT OCW respects the privacy of people who visit or use OCW. This privacy statement reflects the current information practices of MIT OCW. If and when there are future changes to our privacy policy, we will post them on this page. If you have questions or concerns about this policy, please send feedback to ocw@mit.edu.

We do not collect personally identifiable information about any user or survey respondent unless the person voluntarily provides such information. For example, you might voluntarily provide email contact information to subscribe to the OCW newsletter, when sending feedback to OCW, or in conjunction with a survey. If you voluntarily provide your email address or other contact information for one of these purposes, we might also use it to inform you of changes to OCW or to ask for your feedback on some aspect of OCW. At your request, we will remove your contact information from our files.

We do not make your contact information or any other personally identifiable information available to anyone outside OCW or its service providers (who use the information only for authorized OCW purposes) unless we are legally required to do so. No one ever uses this information for any commercial or fundraising purposes.

In addition to the above, we collect certain anonymous (non-personally identifiable) information to help us improve the OCW web site and to evaluate the access and use of OCW materials and the impact of OCW on the worldwide educational community:

  • We collect information you provide about your use of and satisfaction with OCW through email you send us, through the OCW feedback form, and through OCW surveys. (You may voluntarily choose to include your contact information.)
  • We may use web analysis tools that are built into the OCW web site to measure and collect anonymous session information.
  • We also use “cookies” to improve your OCW web experience and to collect anonymous information about how you use OCW. However, cookies are not required for OCW use. If your browser is configured not to accept cookies, you will still enjoy full access to OCW and its content.

When we report information about OCW access, use, and impact, we report aggregate, non-personally identifiable data. Occasionally, we report quoted feedback from users. We do not attribute feedback to specific individuals unless we obtain permission to use that person’s name along with the feedback.

For more detailed information, please refer to the following Frequently Asked Questions:

This privacy statement was last updated on November 19, 2003.

Trademark

  "MIT", the "Massachusetts Institute of Technology", and its logos are registered and unregistered trademarks of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  All other brand names and logos that appear throughout the MIT OCW course materials and web pages are marks owned by third parties.


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