DHG

The German Haiku Society (GHS) reserves the right not to be responsible for the topicality, correctness, completeness or quality of the information provided. Liability claims regarding damage caused by the use of any information provided, including any kind of information which is incomplete or incorrect, will therefore be rejected. All offers are not-binding and without obligation. Parts of the pages or the complete publicationincluding all offers and information might be extended, changed or partly or completely deleted by the webmaster of the GHS-Websites without separate announcement.

The GHS is not responsible for any contents linked or referred to from his pages - unless he has full knowlegde of illegal contents and would be able to prevent the visitors of his site from viewing those pages. If any damage occurs by the use of information presented there, only the author of the respective pages might be liable, not the one who has linked to these pages. Furthermore the GHS is not liable for any postings or messages published by users of discussion boards, guestbooks or mailinglists provided on his page.

The GHS intended not to use any copyrighted material for the publication or, if not possible, to indicate the copyright of the respective object. The copyright for any material created by the authors of the GHS is reserved. Any duplication or use of such diagrams, sounds or texts in other electronic or printed publications is not permitted without the author's agreement.

This disclaimer is to be regarded as part of the internet publication which you were referred from. If sections or individual formulations of this text are not legal or correct, the content or validity of the other parts remain uninfluenced by this fact.

a. requests from people for permission to reproduce the images in the pages elsewhere;

b.questions as to whether we have violated copyright in having these images on display, especially where the images have demonstrably come from other digital collections. Our views on this, after having discussed the matter with several lawyers who specialize in copyright matter, are:

a. as the artists who produced the works have all been dead for more than 70 years, there is no issue of copyright with regard to the individual works;

b. the act of taking a work of art, or a reproduction of such a work, and placing it on a scanner, is in no way a creative act. The resulting digital image is not a new creation, and the person who made the image has
no valid claim for copyright over it;

c. the assembly of a set of digital images into a collection may lead to a valid establishment of copyright over the collection itself, including, for example, the accompanying text, the theme of the collection, the particular selection of prints, etc. This, of course, does not establish any valid copyright over the individual prints, as they may validly appear in other collections by other people.

d. We do not believe we have violated any copyright in assembling these pages of prints. Moreover, we do not claim any copyright over the images themselves, or the collection. As far as we are concerned, anyone can take the images from this site and do whatever they like with them. If you want to reproduce them in a magazine, etc. etc. please do so. We do not "grant permission", because that implies we are in some position over ownership over them; we are just saying that as far as we are concerned they are free.

Martin Berner, President of the German Haiku-Society, Frankfurt/Main im Dezember 2003,