The Short Version
- Books — All rights reserved. Quote and link freely; don't reproduce or redistribute the work.
- Blog posts and wiki articles — CC BY-NC 4.0. Share, adapt, translate — non-commercial, with credit.
- Code snippets — MIT Licence. Use them anywhere, including in commercial work.
Books — All Rights Reserved
© 2026 Richard Barnes. All rights reserved.
Books published on EvilGeniusLabs.ca are made available for personal reading on this site, and as downloadable EPUB / PDF copies for offline reading by individual readers. The author retains all copyright in the work.
You may, without asking:
- Quote excerpts for the purposes of review, criticism, commentary, scholarship, or news reporting. This matches the protections of fair use and fair dealing; it is stated here so reviewers do not have to rely on inference.
- Link to the book's canonical URL on this site, or to any individual chapter.
- Recommend the book to others.
You may not, without written permission from the author:
- Reproduce the book in whole or in substantial part — in any format (print, digital, audio), on any platform (personal site, marketplace, archive, file-sharing service), free or paid, with or without attribution.
- Generate derivative works — translations, adaptations, abridgements, audio recordings, screen adaptations.
- Redistribute downloaded EPUB or PDF copies of the book.
- Use the work, in whole or in part, to train machine-learning models or generative-AI systems.
Violations of this licence are addressable under copyright law — DMCA takedowns in the United States and equivalent regimes elsewhere.
Blog Posts and Wiki Articles — CC BY-NC 4.0
Blog posts and wiki articles on this site are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.
In plain language:
- You may share, copy, and adapt the work — including translating, summarising, and remixing it.
- You must credit me (Richard Barnes) and link back to the original on EvilGeniusLabs.ca.
- You may not use the work for commercial purposes without permission.
Full licence text and legal terms: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0.
Code Snippets — MIT Licence
Any code snippet that appears in a blog post, wiki article, or book — fenced code blocks, inline code, downloadable example files — is licensed under the MIT Licence regardless of the surrounding prose's licence. Use it, modify it, ship it in commercial products. Attribution is appreciated but not required.
MIT License
Copyright (c) 2026 Richard Barnes
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to do so, subject to the
following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE.If You're Not Sure, Ask
These licences cover the common cases. They don't cover everything. If your use case sits in a grey area — a translation, a non-profit reprint, a classroom anthology, a podcast adaptation, anything where you'd rather have explicit permission than guess — use the contact form below.
Bespoke terms (including free permission) are available for genuine non-commercial, educational, or collaborative requests. The default answer to a polite ask is usually yes.
What "CC BY-NC" Actually Means
Creative Commons licences are permission grants, not transfers of copyright. Releasing a blog post under CC BY-NC 4.0 doesn't give the work away — it tells readers in advance what they're allowed to do without asking. I retain every right I had before; the licence just defines a clear, machine-readable set of permissions for the most common reuse cases.
Violations of the CC licence terms (commercial reuse, removal of attribution) are still copyright violations and can be addressed through standard takedown procedures.