There now follows a short notice updating you on the copyright rules we use for articles that appear on Lib Dem Voice after 1st December. In effect, these are the rules we have used all along, but we are now putting them on a more formal footing.

Articles that appear on the Lib Dem Voice after 1st December 2009 will be copyright Lib Dem Voice and the original author, and will be licensed under the Creative Commons terms Attribution, Non-commercial licence.

Lib Dem Voice reserve the right to use material commercially to further the aims of the blog. Articles from before 1 Dec 09 remain the copyright of their individual authors.

This means that all text you find here from now on can legitimately be re-used without needing permission, provided it is not for commercial purposes and provided you make it clear who the author of the text is, and that it first appeared on LibDemVoice.org. If you wish to use our material commercially or if you wish to write a piece for us under different copyright rules, please contact us.

We actively encourage re-use of the articles – for example, have you considered using some of the Op-Ed pieces in your local party’s members’ newsletter?

If you have written for LDV before or are interested in becoming one of our authors, you may like to join our mailing list for contributors. It’s a low volume email list we use occasionally to commission pieces and give suggestions about pieces we’d like to see. If you’re interested, please contact [email protected]

One final note for contributors to explain the sentence that says: “Lib Dem Voice reserve the right to use material commercially to further the aims of the blog.” This is to allow us to more easily undertake projects like last year’s “Tangerine Book” which was a Christmas annual of the cream of the year’s articles. We produced the book to promote the blog and in the hope of making a small profit to be ploughed back into the blog. We would always like to contact our authors if we are able, but sometimes timescales make this tricky.