Policies

Copyright in a Nutshell

All content on Pulau Bahasa (“PB” or this website) is released under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Why does PB care so much about copyright and licensing? What does it mean to you? Here are answers.

Have you ever been threaten by legal warnings like this? KBBI – the most prominent Indonesian-Indonesian dictionary compiled with the initiative of the Ministry of Education of Indonesia – gives us the following notification on the top page:

Ketentuan Hukum: pelanggaran terhadap Hak Cipta KBBI Daring terancam hukuman pidana penjara paling lama 4 (empat) tahun dan/atau pidana denda paling banyak Rp1.000.000.000,00 (satu miliar rupiah)
quote from KBBI

It means “maluses of KBBI violating the copyright law carry a maximum sentence of four years in prison or a fine of up to one billion rupiah (= approx. USD 6K+)“. Wow! It sounds so serious! Since everyone using the Internet can access to KBBI completely for free, some of you might not be aware that KBBI is a copyrightable work.

Actually, (almost) all creative works – no matter how they are good or poor – are automatically protected by copyright laws once they are created. Copyrightable works such as texts and images publicly shared even on an online personal blog are legally equal to registered lands and buildings. You cannot break into someone’s house and throw a party there. Likewise, reusing texts and images created by others results in copyright infringement if you did not get permission from the author/copyright holder beforehand, and if the amount and purpose of use exceed the limitations set by the laws.

It is cumbersome, however, for authors/copyright holders to respond to requests for reuse one by one. Instead, they choose a Creative Commons license in advance of publishing in order to clarify their intent how their works shall be reused/remixed by others. As long as you comply with the terms of use (CC license) set by the authors/copyright holders, you can use their works without getting permission. Wikipedia articles, for example, are published under CC BY-SA 3.0. As for this website (PB), CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 is the license that all of the users/readers must comply with.

What is CC BY-NC-SA 4.0?

BY = You must provide the name of the author (if supplied) AND “Pulau Bahasa” or “PB” as well as the link (URL) when you reuse, remix and/or redistribute. Indicate clearly if you modify the original works on PB.
NC = You may not use the materials for commercial purposes ^(hint) without permission.
SA = Share Alike. If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license (or the original license if noted).

These conditions are NOT applied when you simply READ and LEARN something from articles on PB. With the same land/house analogy, you as a passenger will never be legally punished when you merely enjoy seeing beautiful roses in someone’s garden. The point is that you cannot prone the branches or steal the roses. Likewise, you cannot behave like the original author (owner) and USE his/her texts and images.

What you are allowed and not allowed

Without complying with the abovementioned three condition, you are allowed to

quote a reasonable amount of words/sentences from PB in order to give others additional explanations, to express your feelings, or to criticize PB through your personal blog or social media.
take a personal note (paper-based or digital) for your eyes only.
pick up phrases/sentences from PB and create an Anki (or any other flashcard app) deck for your personal use unless the deck is shared publicly.

By complying with the abovementioned three conditions, you may

print out all or part of the content on PB and distribute the printed copies to your fellow self-learners.
quote as many words/sentences from PB and incorporate them into your personal non-commercial blog or Twitter.
create an Anki deck based on the content of PB and share the deck publicly by giving appropriate credit.

You may NOT

print out and distribute to your students in a classroom of a for-profit education institution or to your employees at your workplace.
quote a large part of PB, compile it into a book and sell the book.
quote a large part of PB, compile it into your corporate website.
create an Anki deck based on the content of PB and share the deck publicly without giving appropriate credit.

Should you wish to reuse the content of PB for a commercial purpose (e.g. as a language app developer or language teacher), please directly contact the author via the Contact Form.

Your comments on this website

Find typos or incorrect explanations? Want to request additional articles? Please feel free to leave your comments in the “comment” section available at the bottom of each article page. Remember that your own comments will also become a part of PB. It means that you agree to publish your comments under the same CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. You must write your comments with your own expressions. Do not copy (steal) others’ expressions and paste them onto PB.

Images on this website

Most of the images used on PB are provided by Pixabay. Some of them are restricted for editorial use only. None of them is allowed to sell.

For example, the site icon of PB is created by OpenClipart-Vectors and distributed through Pixabay. It is “free to use under the Pixabay license; no attribution required“.

Before reusing images on PB, read carefully the licensing conditions. Learn more about the Pixabay image licensing policy here.