Read this carefully! This is a binding agreement between you and the copyright holders. That's right -- copyright holders. THIS WORK IS NOT BEING PLACED IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN! So read up. It's important.

This archive of reviews and links may be downloaded for personal use or for non-commercial use on your website. By non-commercial we mean the purpose of your website is not to make money or even to break even. If you charge admission or you have a banner on your website that pays you money (even theoretically) you can't use this archive. If you run a commercial website you can not create a "free" area on that site to house this archive. You can't even link directly into someone else's archive. For the purpose of this agreement, banners outside your control (such as those on tripod, geocities, or fortunecity) are acceptable.

The reason for this communistic approach is simple. These stories were freely shared, the reviews were freely written, this html freely distributed. So many people contributed to this work that it's almost impossible to name, or thank them all. They did not do this for you to make money off their work. The definition of that is slave labor. CD-ROM thieves and web sites have stolen the works of some of some great authors. We won't be a party to that.

You agree that if you download and install this archive and terrible, horrible things happen to your computer, your data, your wife, your kids, your mistress that it ain't our fault. In legal terms this is a disclaimer of warranty, liability, and guarantees. By downloading this you agree to assume all risks associated with this download and installation.

Realize also that since other people may have modified this archive and you may not be downloading it from the site where this archive originated that malicious people may have placed HTML/Javascript/Java/ActiveX/etc code in the archive that will damage your computer. This is a high risk download, some technical ability with webpage design is necessary to check your version of the archive for malicious code.

Still here? Great. If you just want to download this archive for use on your own personal computer (not published on the web) skip on down to the end.

If you plan to publish this archive on your website then there are a few more rules. Nothing too strenuous.

You must agree to keep the copyrights intact and unmodified. This is important to keep the archive in public hands not commercial. Second you agree to keep the entire archive within your storage areas. That is, don't make an absolute link to someone else's archive because you're afraid your webserver will bitch at you for using too much bandwidth. If you have to worry about bandwidth or space then you shouldn't be posting this archive on your site.

If you modify, add to, or subtract from this archive you must repackage this archive (with your changes) and make it available for download. Now here's the bummer part. If you change this archive then you are giving up your rights to any changes you make now and forever and you hand those rights over to the copyright holders of this archive.

For instance, lets say you create a gee-whiz-bang new navigation system for the archive. You follow the license and post it for public download. People love it and soon all the archives have that new navigation system. You start thinking, "Hey! I could make money off this!" This is the point where this agreement prevents you from emailing everyone who has a copy of the archive and demanding royalties. You've given up the rights to that navigation system forever.

In short if you're not making the changes simply because you love what you're doing then you're not cut out to modify this archive.

If you do make changes to the website you've got to use either verifiable public domain stuff, stuff you've created yourself, or stuff you've obtained explicit permission from the creator of the stuff to use under the terms of this agreement! Let's say you want to add a really cool background image to the archive. You can't do it unless you created the image and are willing to give up the rights to it so other people can use it in their archive, or you got it from a site which explicitly placed the image in the public domain, or you contacted the creator told him the terms of this agreement (better send him a copy, it's more reliable) and he agrees to it.

You agree not to change the text of the reviews, the copyright message (top/intro.html), or this agreement (dl.html). By changing text we mean that if you see the word "delta" in a review you can add html that will change the look of the word "delta" (font, color, size), you can make delta link to another page, but you can't change the word delta to read as something else. You can of course change anything you want in the underlying html which is not visible to the general public.

You agree not to distribute this archive on hard media. This means that you can backup this archive on tape, CD-ROM, zip-disks, DVD, etc but you can't give that backup to someone else and you most certainly can't sell it.

And lastly, if at any time you disagree with any part of this agreement you may release yourself of the obligations (save for work you have already donated to the project) by removing this archive from your computer and website. Remember though, modifications you made while this agreement was in force remain the property of the project. You can't take those modifications back.

That's a lot of terms and conditions, but really they're just there to ensure the rights of the authors and reviewers are respected. The most important thing you have to agree to is to have fun and enjoy the stories this archive makes available.