"English Banana.com materials" means worksheets, MP3s, video files, books, CD-ROMs and any other file or product that has been created and published by English Banana.com, that exists either on our website server (www.englishbanana.com) or offline, including digital versions (e.g. a .pdf file) as well as physical copies (e.g. a workbook copy of the Big Grammar Book, or a CD-ROM). This licence excludes web pages created by English Banana.com that are published online on our server.

"End-user" means students, teachers, and any employee working within an educational organisation (e.g. a school, college or university) or a not-for-profit organisation (e.g. a charity). Please note that this licence does not apply to employees working within a commercial business where the primary business goal is to generate profit.

This licence is effective from 1st July 2007 and replaces all existing statements and notices regarding copyright and copying of English Banana.com materials. It applies to all English Banana.com materials.

Although this licence gives end-users certain copying and distribution rights to English Banana.com materials, English Banana.com owns the worldwide copyright to English Banana.com materials at all times.

1. You may print out and photocopy English Banana.com materials for your own use, or to give to others, e.g. teachers may photocopy worksheets and give them to their students.

2. You may save English Banana.com materials to a computer.

3. You may cut and paste, edit and otherwise adapt English Banana.com materials, e.g. adapt a worksheet that is saved as a .doc Word document so that it is more suitable for your needs.

4. You may add any or all English Banana.com materials to an internal server or intranet system - e.g. a school intranet system - so that other end-users within the organisation may access them.

5. Performance rights: the drama scripts included in the English Banana.com materials ("A Merry Hospital Radio Christmas", "Waterfall" and "An Elephant's Memory of Cakes Once Thrown") may be produced by amateur and not-for-profit groups with no royalty charges. Please contact us if you are planning a production so that we can help you by advertising it on our website. For all other kinds of performance, please contact us.

In a departure from our previous copying policy, this new licence gives the end-user the right to copy, distribute and sell English Banana.com materials:

6. You may freely copy and either sell or give away English Banana.com materials on CD-ROM or in paper format (book, booklet, spiral-bound, etc.). We do not require you to pay us commission on English Banana.com materials that you have sold, nor do you need to contact us prior to doing this. Although if you do contact us we will be happy to give you free publicity in the form of web space on www.englishbanana.com to advertise your activities and we may give you a mention in a future press release.

Example 1 -

An ESL teacher in the USA downloads the "Big Grammar Book", "Big Activity Book" and "Big Resource Book" (complete books) as three separate .pdf files from our website and burns them to a blank CD-R disc. He then makes a copy of this disc for each student in his class. He can either charge students a reasonable amount for each copy to cover the costs of duplicating the CD-ROM (e.g. buying the blank CD-Rs), or he may choose to give them away without charge, with the costs being absorbed by the school materials budget or by his salary. Another option would be to charge students a nominal amount for each CD-ROM but donate the money raised to a charity chosen by the whole class.

Example 2 -

A student in Japan prints out 40 worksheets from our website and puts them together to make a homework pack. Her teacher allows her to use the school photocopier to copy a set for all her friends. There has been no charge to her, so she doesn't think of charging her friends.

Example 3 -

A young teacher in a language school in Peru prints a selection of 100 worksheets and compiles them together to make a book. She arranges for a local printer to produce 1,000 copies of the book, which are then sold at a fair price by the school, with all proceeds (after deduction of printing costs) going to support the running of the school. It may be that enough money is raised to fund a school trip for the students.

Example 4 -

An international charity based in England prints or duplicates English Banana.com materials and sells them to raise money for its cause.

Note: this list of examples is by no means exhaustive. If you do decide to sell or give away English Banana.com materials, feel free to contact us with details of your project so that we can share what you're doing and give you some free publicity on our website!

1. You may not repackage and resell English Banana.com materials in order to generate a business profit.

2. You may not upload English Banana.com materials to an internet server.

3. You may not capture English Banana.com materials in frames on a website.

We don't know of any other publisher of educational materials that allows end-users to print, copy, distribute, sell or give away its products. But we always like to be a little different from the rest at English Banana.com! If you know of anyone operating a similar scheme, we would be happy to advertise them on our website.

So why are we doing this? Our aims are quite simple really:

1. We want students and teachers to use and benefit from English Banana.com materials.

2. We understand that for many people around the world who are learning or teaching English it is not possible to pay market prices in pounds sterling or US dollars to gain access to materials.

3. We believe that education is vitally important to the improvement of every individual's quality of life. Since we have benefited from many years of free education we are happy to be able to give a little something back.

4. The incredibly fast development of the internet and digital technology over the past ten years - e.g. the ability for people to download files from the internet and print them in seconds - has made it possible financially for us to create worksheets, books and other materials that can be published online and printed out relatively cheaply by anybody with access to a computer and the internet, anywhere in the world. We would really love to be able to send out physical copies of our books and CD-ROMs to everybody who emailed us to request them, but English Banana.com is a privately-funded business which does not receive financial support from any external source, and as a consequence we are unable to do this due to financial limitations. We believe that by giving this licence to our end-users we are doing as much as we possibly can at the moment. We've been giving away free resources online since 2002 when English Banana.com first hit the internet. Since then we have allowed visitors varying degrees of access to our materials. This licence represents a significant step forward for us. Who knows what could be possible in the future!

We hope that you will benefit from using this licence. If you would like to ask us a question about it, or send us your comments or suggestions, please contact us via our contact page.

By accessing and using www.englishbanana.com you accept that all materials and services, including links to external websites, are provided in good faith and 'as is'. You agree that you will not hold English Banana.com responsible for any issues or consequences that may arise from accessing and using English Banana.com materials. No guarantee of availability or reliability of either use or accuracy is given by the author or may be assumed. All files on www.englishbanana.com have been virus-checked before being uploaded to our server. However, this disclaimer has been posted to make it clear that when users download files from our website they do so at their own risk. English Banana.com cannot be held responsible or liable for any damage or loss resulting from accessing and using material from www.englishbanana.com.