»MIT OpenCourseWare

Legal Notices

The following notices and licenses comprise together the MIT OCW License.

  • Creative Commons License 2.5
  • MIT Interpretation of "Non-commercial"
  • Infringement Notification
  • Privacy
  • Trademarks

OpenCourseWare materials are licensed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under a Creative Commons License. /
Creative Commons License 2.5
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5
You are free:
  • to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
  • to make derivative works
Under the following conditions:
/ Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
/ Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
/ Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one.
  • For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work.
  • Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above.
MIT Open Courseware licenses its copyrighted work to you on the terms of the Creative Commons license found here:
Full license
This page is not the actual license. The license terms are highlighted here in summary to provide a quick reference to the terms in the full license agreement.
MIT's license for OpenCourseWare follows Creative Commons licensing standards. Creative Commons is not a law firm and does not provide legal services. Distributing, displaying, or linking to this License Summary does not create an attorney-client relationship.

MIT Interpretation of "Non-commercial"

Non-commercial use means that users may not sell, profit from, or commercialize OCW materials or works derived from them. That said, we have found that there are certain “gray areas”in interpreting the non-commercial provision of OCW’s Creative Commons license. The guidelines below are intended to help users determine whether or not their use of OCW materials would be permitted under the “non-commercial”restriction. Note that there are additional requirements (attribution and share alike) spelled out in our license.

  1. Commercialization is prohibited. Users may not directly sell or profit from OCW materials or from works derived from OCW materials.

Example: A commercial education or training business may not offer courses based on OCW materials if students pay a fee for those courses and the business intends to profit as a result.

  1. Determination of commercial vs. non-commercial purpose is based on the use, not the user. Materials may be used by individuals, institutions, governments, corporations, or other business whether for-profit or non-profit so long as the use itself is not a commercialization of the materials or a use that is directly intended to generate sales or profit.

Example: A corporation may use OCW materials for internal professional development and training purposes.

  1. Incidental charges to recover reasonable reproduction costs may be permitted. Recovery of nominal actual costs for copying small amounts (under 1000 copies) of OCW content on paper or CDs is allowed for educational purposes so long as there is no profit motive and so long as the intended use of the copies is in compliance with all license terms. Students must be informed that the materials are freely available on the OCW web site and that their purchase of copied materials is optional.

Example: An institution in a remote area has limited Internet access and limited network infrastructure on campus, and a professor offers to create CDs of OCW materials relevant to her course. The professor may recover the costs of creating the CDs.

If you have questions about acceptable use of OCW materials, please send us feedback.

Infringement Notification

MIT OCW, prior to making any MIT OCW Materials publicly available, has reviewed all material extensively to determine the correct ownership of the material and obtain the appropriate licenses to make the material available on MIT OCW. OCW will promptly remove any material that is determined to be infringing on the rights of others. If you believe that a portion of OCW Material infringes another's copyright, please send us feedback. If you do not include an electronic signature with your claim, you may be asked to send or fax a follow-up copy with a signature. To file the notification, you must be either the copyright owner of the work or an individual authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner. Your notification must include:
1. Identification of the copyrighted work, or, in the case of multiple works at the same location, a representative list of such works at that site.
2. Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity. You must include sufficient information, such as a specific URL or other specific identification, for us to locate the material.
3. Information for us to be able to contact the claimant (e.g., email address, phone number).
4. A statement that the claimant believes that the use of the material has not been authorized by the copyright owner or an authorized agent.
5. A statement that the information in the notification is accurate and that the claimant is, or is authorized to act on behalf of, the copyright owner.
Privacy

MIT OCW respects the privacy of people who visit or use OCW. This privacy statement reflects the current information practices of MIT OCW. If and when there are future changes to our privacy policy, we will post them on this page. If you have questions or concerns about this policy, please send feedback to .

We do not collect personally identifiable information about any user or survey respondent unless the person voluntarily provides such information. For example, you might voluntarily provide email contact information to subscribe to the OCW newsletter, when sending feedback to OCW, or in conjunction with a survey. If you voluntarily provide your email address or other contact information for one of these purposes, we might also use it to inform you of changes to OCW or to ask for your feedback on some aspect of OCW. At your request, we will remove your contact information from our files.

We do not make your contact information or any other personally identifiable information available to anyone outside OCW or its service providers (who use the information only for authorized OCW purposes) unless we are legally required to do so. No one ever uses this information for any commercial or fundraising purposes.

In addition to the above, we collect certain anonymous (non-personally identifiable) information to help us improve the OCW web site and to evaluate the access and use of OCW materials and the impact of OCW on the worldwide educational community:

  • We collect information you provide about your use of and satisfaction with OCW through email you send us, through the OCW feedback form, and through OCW surveys. (You may voluntarily choose to include your contact information.)
  • We may use web analysis tools that are built into the OCW web site to measure and collect anonymous session information.
  • We also use “cookies”to improve your OCW web experience and to collect anonymous information about how you use OCW. However, cookies are not required for OCW use. If your browser is configured not to accept cookies, you will still enjoy full access to OCW and its content.

When we report information about OCW access, use, and impact, we report aggregate, non-personally identifiable data. Occasionally, we report quoted feedback from users. We do not attribute feedback to specific individuals unless we obtain permission to use that person’s name along with the feedback.

For more detailed information, please refer to the following Frequently Asked Questions:

  • What information does MIT OCW collect from visitors to the Web site?
  • What are “cookies,”and does MIT OCW make use of cookies on its Web site?
  • Does MIT OCW share the information it receives?

This privacy statement was last updated onNovember 19, 2003.

Trademark

"MIT", the "Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology", and its logos are registered and unregistered trademarks of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. All other brand names and logos that appear throughout the MIT OCW course materials and web pages are marks owned by third parties.

From the FAQ referenced above:

39.What information does MIT OCW collect from visitors to the Web site?
The information we collect from visitors helps us improve the MIT OCW site, and assists us in evaluating the access, use, and impact of MIT OCW on the worldwide educational community. MIT OCW collects the following information from visitors:

  • Information You Provide: We receive and store any information you enter on the MIT OCW Web site or give us in any other way. You provide most such information when you submit feedback on the site, contact us by email, or agree to participate in a visitor survey. This information may include your name and email address, your academic status, your institution, your geographic region, how you are using MIT OCW, and what you think of the site. In all cases, any information you provide is strictly optional and voluntary and you may choose to use the MIT OCW site without ever providing this information. If you voluntarily provide your email address or other contact information, we will not share personal information with anyone without first requesting your explicit permission to do so.
  • Automatic Information: We receive and store certain types of information whenever you interact with the MIT OCW Web site. Like many Web sites, we make use of “cookies,”and we obtain certain types of information when your Web browser accesses Examples of the information we collect and analyze include the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the MIT OCW site; computer and connection information such as browser type and version, operating system, and platform, and; content you viewed or searched for during your visit to MIT OCW. During some visits we may use software tools to measure and collect session information, including page response times, download errors, and length of visits to certain pages. If your browser is configured to not accept cookies, you will still enjoy full access to all MIT OCW content. However, none of this information is personally identifiable or linked back to you individually.
  • Email Communications: We maintain a list of interested visitors who voluntarily provide their email addresses and to whom we email the monthly “MIT OpenCourseWare Update”email newsletter, and other infrequent email announcements pertaining to MIT OCW. If you no longer want to receive the newsletter, or any other communications from MIT OCW, send an email and we will remove you from our database.

40.What are "cookies," and does MIT OCW make use of cookies on its Web site?
Cookies are alphanumeric identifiers that this Web site transfers to your computer's hard drive through your Web browser to enable our systems to recognize your browser when you make return trips to the site. This allows us to track your use of the site (anonymously), and to analyze patterns in site use, such as repeat visits, length of visits, and breadth of content used, for example). Cookies also allow us to conduct periodic, online, voluntary user surveys where we can gain more insight into what type of people are actually using the site, how they are using the site, and what the educational impact of the site is on these users.

MIT OCW's use of cookies is designed to be unobtrusive, and we do not collect personally identifiable information through their use. However, if you do not wish to accept cookies, the "Help" portion of the toolbar on most Web browsers will tell you how to prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie, or how to disable cookies altogether. Disabling cookies will in no way affect your access to content on the MIT OCW site. If you leave cookies enabled on your Web browser, you may be asked to complete a brief questionnaire that will help us gain a better understanding of the use and impact of MIT OCW.

41.Does MIT OCW share the information it receives?
Information about our users is an important part of understanding and extending the impact of MIT OCW in the worldwide academic community. Personally identifiable information about individual users (name, email address, etc) will not be made available to third parties except as outlined below, nor will it ever be used for commercial purposes. We share user information in the following contexts:

  • Agents: We employ companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. Examples include compiling and categorizing user feedback, analyzing survey data or data about your use of the site, and providing customer support. These agents have access to user information needed to perform their functions, but may not use this information for any other purposes. These agents are bound by non-disclosure agreements.
  • MIT OCW Sponsors: We work closely with philanthropic organizations that provide the funding that makes MIT OCW possible. These sponsors are interested in evaluating access, use, and impact of the MIT OCW Web site in order to determine if MIT OCW is achieving its objectives. We will provide information on a regular basis to these sponsors for evaluation purposes. We will not share any personally identifiable information such as name or email address unless you have given us explicit permission to do so.
  • Institutions interested in the "OpenCourseWare Movement": Part of MIT OCW's mission as an organization is to encourage other educational institutions to openly share their course materials with the world, as MIT is doing. In order to accomplish this objective, we are committed to sharing what we learn in public forums, at educational conferences, and with other educational institutions. This may include aggregate data about usage of the site, feedback we have received, and the impact of MIT OCW on people throughout the world. However, in no case will we share any personally identifiable information, such as name or email address, unless you have given us explicit permission to do so.
  • Evaluation Data: There is a variety of anonymous data published on the MIT OCW Web site describing general user behavior and how users interact with MIT OCW content, such as where users are accessing the Web site from, how many times they access the site, or what their educational role is (educator, student, or self-learner). But this is all general data that carries no personal identifiable information.
  • Case Studies or Email Feedback: Some MIT OCW users have agreed to let us post their picture and/or name on the MIT OCW Web site as case studies of how people are using and interacting with MIT OCW materials. These case studies and user emails have only been published after we have secured explicit permission to do so. If a user chooses not to let us publish his or her email, case study or photograph on the MIT OCW Web site, this will not in any way limit their access to the MIT OCW site or its contents.

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From ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Global/terms-of-use.htm25 December 2006