Astro-Databank:Copyright

In principle, the content of the Astro-Databank wiki is protected by international copyright. The holder of the right to publish, modify and distribute these data is Astrodienst AG, Zollikon/Zürich, Switzerland. Astro-Databank is a non-profitl community project and in the legal sense a subdivision of Astrodienst AG, with no commercial interest. The spellings Astro-Databank, Astrodatabank and ADB are used interchangably and refer to the same project.

The Astro-Databank web pages may only be accessed by human readers, using a web browser. Spidering, i.e. collecting the content of numerous Astro-Databank pages with the help of software engines is not permitted.

The data in the wiki consist of pages describing either a person or a mundane event.

• birth information (name, date and time of birth, birth place)
• source information, rating information, data collection details
• important event information
• relationship information: how this person is linked to others in the wiki
• category information
• biographical notes
• links to other public resources, mainly to Wikipedia biographies and portrait images

No copyright for birth data

Astro-Databank holds that birth data records (name, date, time and location of a person's birth) and event data records (date, time, location and nature of an event) are factual information, not products of creative writing. In most jurisdictions, such factual data are not subject to copyright and may be freely used and republished, once they have been made public.

Therefore Astrodatabank grants the right to anyone to use and republish birth data and event data records, as they are contained in the Astro-Databank wiki, if the context of the usage is non-commercial.

In the interest of quality of data collection and data distribution, it is expected that the source of the data is noted along with the data, and that the Rodden Rating assigned by Astro-Databank is carried forward with the data record. For mentioning the source, the user of the data is given to choice to either name Astro-Databank as the source, or to quote a sufficient amount of the source information given in the Astro-Databank article, so that the reader of such data can identify the original source. If Astrodatabank is named and the medium of publication allows it, a link to the corresponding Astrodatabank Wiki page should be placed with the data.

Recognition for the labour of data research

Astro-Databank recognizes and respects the labour involved in researching and finding birth data records. While the finder of such data cannot claim to own the copyright or exclusive publishing right for them, there often are many hours of work and investigative effort involved in finding and verifying such data. Astro-Databank always mentions the original collector in the source notes, together with the actual source reference. The special data field 'collector' is assigned to him/her if he/she is established as systematic and reliable collector. Though data collecting is basically a labour of love by volunteer data enthousiasts, Astro-Databank often also contributes to the cost involved in birth data collection, e.g registry fees, purchase of biographies, research library subscriptions, work hours. Such financial contributions or donations do not imply a recognition of copyright upon the birth data.

Copyright for text, images and for data elements created by Astro-Databank

Text contained in the Astro-Databank wiki is either the product of creative writing by the Astro-Databank editors, or it is copied from sources like Wikipedia which permit extensive quoting and re-publication under certain conditions. All text is subject to copyright and may not be copied or republished elsewhere, unless permission is granted by Astro-Databank, or the conditions of the original source are fulfilled. This applies also to the assignment of categories and to some parts of the source notes, as far as they go beyond the listing of original publication titles, authors and collectors.

The biographical notes and the source notes can contain phrases or sentences which were not originally written by Astro-Databank or Astrodienst. Some parts of the text (less than 10% by the end of 2013) is copied or rephrased from Wikipedia. The names of the authors within Wikipedia are accessibly by following the link to Wikipedia, and then clicking on the 'history' link on top of the Wikipedia page. All authors are listed in historical sequence of their creative contributions or editing acts. While Astro-Databank quotes and publishes such text legally in this wiki, it cannot grant any right to others to use the same text.

The same applies for images contained in the Astro-Databank Wiki. Astro-Databank contains only small thumbnail copies of the original images. No right is granted by Astrodienst to anyone to use or publish the same images or thumbnails. If an image originates from a source outside Astro-Databank, for example Wikipedia or Wikipedia Commons, the copyright conditions of that source apply. The origin and license status of images can be accessed by clicking on the image, or, in many cases, on the author and license link below the image. The use of these images elsewhere is subject to these license conditions.

The most important licenses are found on this page: Licenses

See also:

• Contact information or, for email, adbdata@astro.com
• History of this project

These rules and statements may be changed by Astrodienst AG at any time. The user of the data accepts the location of Astrodienst AG in Switzerland as place of court for any conflict which may arise out of the publication and usage of these data.