COPYRIGHT

Our terms and conditions set out the detail of what you can and cannot do with our content and all use of FT.com is subject to them. This copyright policy summarises how users are allowed to use our content and also explains the types of use that require the purchase of additional licences. Thank you for reading this policy, our ability to invest in high quality journalism depends on our users complying with it.

What is copyright?

Copyright law gives the copyright owner the exclusive right to control the use of copyright protected works. All of the material published on our website is protected by copyright law and should only be used as set out in the “How may I use FT content?” section below. Use that is made without our permission may therefore infringe our copyright which can result in personal and corporate liability. Where we state below that something is not allowed or permitted, then to do so is a breach of our terms and conditions, i.e. is a breach of contract, and almost certainly also violates copyright law.

How may I use FT content?

You can do the following:

■ View our content for your personal use on any device that is compatible with FT.com (this might be your PC, laptop, Blackberry, iPhone or other mobile device) and store our content on that device for your personal use.

■ Print single copies of articles on paper for your personal use.

■ Share links to articles by using the article tools we make available at the foot of each article.

■ Publish online, headline links and the first 256 characters of an article (what we call teaser text), or forward links or teaser text to other individuals, provided this is not done for commercial gain. “Commercial gain” means that you are extracting value for your own work that would not be possible if you were not using FT content within that work - for example by attracting advertising revenue, subscription payments, or by reducing the need for users or other third parties to pay for FT content directly.

■ You may download our RSS feeds and view them for your personal use. We currently publish headlines and teaser text within our RSS feeds. You may also make an RSS feed available to third parties, users within an organisation you work for or users of a website that you publish, on condition that you:

• only publish the feed for access via a web-based browser.
• do not use or publish the feed as part of a paid for service or for other commercial gain.
• publish the feed as it is made available on FT.com, so that you only include the headline and teaser content, and ensure that the headline links back to the full text article on FT.com.
• attribute the feed to the FT as “© The Financial Times Limited [year]”.
• do not archive the feed or any of its content.
• comply with our guidelines on usage of FT logos.

■ Republish extracts from FT articles on an occasional basis as part of your own original work and provided this is not done for commercial gain. An “extract” is a small proportion of the article. “Occasional”, means you are republishing extracts from less than ten FT articles a month. You must attribute the extract to the Financial Times (including the individual journalist) and provide a link back (online use) or reference (offline use) to the original article.

And what can’t I do?

You cannot do anything other than make use of the content as set out above, unless you buy the appropriate licence, see below for details. By way of example only, this means that you cannot:

■ If you are a registered user or subscriber, share your user name and password with anyone else. A password is for one person’s use. Sharing a password means a copy of our content may subsequently be made by someone who is not authorised to do so. Password sharing is a breach of our terms and conditions and is likely to result in an infringement of copyright. We monitor usage to detect password sharing.

■ Copy, publish or redistribute full text articles in any way.

■ Archive or store any of our content for access by anyone other than yourself.

■ Create summaries, abstracts or other derivative works from our content, except as permitted in the “How may I use FT content?” section above.

■ Photocopy or scan copies of articles.

I thought that as long as I linked back to your website or published an attribution, that there are no restrictions on how I can use your content?

This is not correct. Merely providing a link or an attribution is not a defence to copyright infringement.

Why does it matter if I copy FT content without permission?

Unauthorised copying is a way of avoiding paying for the value you are gaining by using the content. We make a significant investment in creating FT content to deliver value to you and to make a return on that investment. If we are unable to protect that investment by licensing our content and collecting revenue, then it threatens our ability to continue to create the content.

What about “fair dealing” or “fair use” - doesn’t that allow me to copy things for the purpose of reporting news or which are in the public interest?

Copyright law does allow, to a limited extent, republication for certain limited purposes, including the reporting of news. We recommend that you take independent legal advice on the exact meaning of these terms if you want to rely on them. From our perspective, we regard use as “fair” if a third party uses their own words when reporting on facts that the FT has also reported, and provided that an appropriate attribution is provided. We do not regard it as “fair” if our content is copied frequently or extensively (e.g. from many FT headlines and/or articles every day), our opinions are republished or if our content is used by a third party service in such a way that such service is a substitute for our own products and services. Unless your use of our content is described in the section above “How may I use FT content?”, it is likely that we regard it as “unfair” and a breach of our terms and conditions.

But I need to use FT.com to do my job and I already use it in the way you say I can’t. Do I have to stop?

Yes, you do. We would be delighted to talk to you or your company about purchasing the appropriate licence, so that once the licence is in place, you can use FT content as you do today. We provide group licences for use by many people and multi-platform licences to enable access to our content via a number of different platforms. See http://ftcorporate.ft.com/ for more details. It’s likely that both you and your company are legally responsible if you are using FT.com to do your job in a manner that we do not permit, so we encourage you to approach us to discuss a corporate licence and legitimise that use.

May I scrape FT.com and republish FT headlines as part of a commercial service?

Only if you purchase a licence from us to do so. We provide licences and feeds for organisations that wish to systematically republish our headlines as part of a commercial service. See http://ftcorporate.ft.com/ for more details.

May I photocopy FT newspaper articles?

If you wish to photocopy FT newspaper articles to redistribute to other people then you will need a licence from The Newspaper Licensing Agency.

What will you do about possible past misuse if my organisation wants to buy a licence to cover future use?

If you voluntarily disclose misuse that no longer occurs and you engage meaningfully with us to formalise that usage within a reasonable timescale by acquiring the appropriate licence, then our sole objective will be to build a long-term commercial relationship. This will be at our normal rates and we will not seek compensation from you for past misuse. We will take a less lenient approach with individuals and organisations that we discover infringing our copyright, particularly if those organisations refuse to stop the infringing activity and/or refuse to engage with us.

Is all material published on FT.com protected by copyright?

Yes, it is, and so is all of the content we publish in our newspaper, magazines, mobile applications etc. Our content is also protected in other ways, for example, protected as a database by way of database rights.

Does that mean that FT owns all of the material?

We own most of it, and what we don’t own ourselves we ensure we obtain the appropriate rights, permissions or licences to re-use. If you believe that we are using your content without your consent, please email us at help@ft.com so we can investigate this.

I have some questions about your policy, who should I contact?

Please email us at help@ft.com.