As an independent distributor of alternative culture media, the content of this site is either original to me according to US copyright law, considered Fair Use for educational purposes, or licensed using Creative Commons free culture licensing. You are free to:

You may modify the resources according to your requirements. You are encouraged to use anything found on this site, or in the art zines, for any number of personal and commercial projects. Your rights to do so are protected under the free culture license the zines are released under as long as the following requirements are met:

Share-Alike:

We own nothing shared. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, do not slap a copyright symbol on the resulting work! This prevents others from continuing to build upon it. You may redistribute and/or modify the work, in whole or in part, under the terms of either this same license or the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License so you ensure the work’s continued accessibility.

Attribution:

I do not require credit nor a link back to this site in the case of non-commercial or personal use, although any credit is much appreciated.

Please Keep in Mind:

I only publish material, short quotes, or found images covered by Fair Use law. When I publish resources by others or quote from articles originally published elsewhere, that content is of course still under its original copyright.

While applications of other's work may be protected under Fair Use law, not all artists are okay with you monetizing or freely distributing their work. Always check with the individual artist for consent.

Why?

I recognize that private ownership of media, ideas, and technology is rooted in European concepts of property stemming from a history of colonialism. These systems of privatization and monopolization, namely copyright and patent law, enforce a punishment/reward system which benefits a privileged minority at the cost of others’ creative expression, political discourse, and cultural survival. The private and public institutions, legal frameworks, and social values which uphold these systems are inseparable from broader forms of oppression. Indigenous people, people of color, queer people, trans people, and women are particularly exploited for their creative and cultural resources while hardly receiving any of the personal gains or legal protections for their work.

I also recognize that the public domain has jointly functioned to complement the private, as works in the public domain may be appropriated for use in proprietary works. Therefore, I use Creative Commons licensing not only to circumvent the monopoly granted by copyright but also to protect against corporate appropriation.

Commercial Use

Counter-intuitively, preventing commercial use retains a commercial monopoly on all rights associated with a work. The misleading name confuses many non-commercial projects into thinking this is an appropriate license, but permitting commercial use rejects those monopoly rights while copyleft protects it from being appropriated into a private work.

Cultural Appropriation

Adopting ideas, artifacts, practices, and other elements from marginalized cultures is a colonialist practice by which the cultural resources of indigenous people and people of color have been made readily available for consumption by others. In doing so, these elements are stripped of their cultural roots and reduced to consumable commodities exchanged between and benefiting their appropriators. Sometimes what is perceived as innovative and adopted by others is seen as inferior in its original context.

Globalized cultural and intellectual property systems have little potential to protect against or redress cultural appropriation. While rejecting private ownership over ideas, media, and technology does not necessarily inhibit cultural appropriation, doing so challenges the means to monopolize the products of appropriated resources.

While these works are created with this ideology in mind, the work does touch on cultural subjects and motifs which may be interpreted differently than I have intended. I aim to be respectful of objections of where my work unintentionally minimizes voice. Being a good ally comes first and foremost, so please let me know how I’m doing.

DMCA Copyright Infringement Notification

• A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
• Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or if multiple copyrighted works at a single online site are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works at that site.
• Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material.
• Information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact the complaining party, such as an address, telephone number, and, if available, an electronic mail address at which the complaining party may be contacted.
• A statement that the complaining party has a good-faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
• A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

The notice should be sent via email to contradistro@gmail.com.

We may display a copy of your DMCA notice in place of the removed content.

Note: Under Section 512(f) of the DMCA, any person who knowingly misrepresents that material or activity is infringing may be subject to liability for damages. One company that sent an infringement notification seeking removal of online materials that were protected by the fair use doctrine was ordered to pay such costs and attorneys fees under this provision. See http://www.eff.org/cases/online-policy-group-v-diebold. In addition, “in order for a copyright owner to proceed under the DMCA with “a good-faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law,” the owner must evaluate whether the material makes fair use of the copyright.” Lenz v. Universal, 572 F. Supp. 2d 1150, 1155 (2008)

Please also note that the information provided in this legal notice will be forwarded to the person who provided the allegedly infringing content. A copy of this legal notice may also be sent (with your personal information removed) to a third-party that may publish and/or annotate it for non-commercial research and educational purposes. Contra Distro reserves the right to review the allegedly infringing material and independently determine whether it is infringing.

License concepts and wording adapted from freeculture.org/about/license/