Licensing & Reprint Terms

The Massachusetts Times · massachusettstimes.us Effective: October 16, 2026

In plain terms. A great deal of reuse costs nothing here: quoting us with credit, teaching from us, printing a copy for yourself. This document governs what lies beyond those free lanes — republishing our work, reprinting it, carrying it in your own publication, product, or production. The rule is one sentence: commercial reuse happens under a written license from the License Desk, and never otherwise. Every license names exactly what it grants; nothing is implied, nothing is exclusive unless written in words, and no license ever carries machine or training rights unless it says so on its face. We pursue infringement, but we knock before we sue — thirty days' notice and a genuine chance to cure, both directions. Where this document can fairly be read two ways, the reading in your favor governs.

Article 1 — What these terms govern

These Licensing & Reprint Terms govern commercial and republication reuse of the work of The Massachusetts Times — reuse beyond the free grants of Article 2. They are part of the family of documents the Terms of Use name at their Article 1, whose definitions carry here. They govern human reuse only: automated access, scraping, retrieval, agent use, and use in machine learning are governed exclusively by the Machine Terms at /terms/machine and by Article 9 of this document, and no grant here extends to a machine.

Article 2 — What is already free, and needs no license

No license, fee, or permission is required for what the family already grants: quotation at reasonable length with credit and a link, under the Terms of Use; reproduction of individual articles for classroom instruction, under the Terms of Use and the Education Terms; personal reading, saving, printing, and accessible format-shifting. If your use fits a free lane, this document asks nothing of you. The free lanes are grants, not gaps: they are not enlarged by silence here, and they are never revoked by a license negotiation that fails.

Article 3 — The License Desk

Commercial reuse begins at the License Desk: [email protected], and the licensing door at /licensing on this host. An inquiry states six things: the work or works sought; the use; the medium; the territory; the term; and the audience or circulation. The Desk answers inquiries in the order received, and an inquiry is never an obligation — on either side — until an instrument issues under Article 4.

Article 4 — The license instrument

Every license is a written instrument, and the instrument is the entire grant. It names the works, the use, the medium, the territory, the term, the fee, and the credit line. What it does not name, it does not grant. Three rules govern every instrument:

Nothing is implied. A license to reprint is not a license to excerpt, translate, adapt, or anthologize; each named use is the whole of the grant.
Nothing is exclusive unless written in words. No course of dealing, volume of purchase, or length of relationship creates exclusivity, and no instrument forecloses the publisher's own continued use, publication, and licensing of its work.
Nothing reaches machines by default. Article 9 governs.

Article 5 — Reprints

A reprint license grants reproduction of a named work, whole and unaltered, in a named medium and quantity. A reprint carries the credit line of Article 7 in a position and size a reader will actually encounter, reproduces the work without abridgment or alteration beyond mechanical reformatting, and attributes the work's date — a reprint of a dated work presents itself as of that date, never as new reporting.

Article 6 — Republication and excerpting beyond quotation

Republication — carrying our work, or excerpts beyond the free quotation grant, inside your own publication, broadcast, production, or product — is licensed per work and per use. An excerpt license states the passage's bounds exactly. Serialized, recurring, or wholesale republication is a distinct instrument with its own terms, and no accumulation of single licenses matures into a standing right.

Article 7 — Attribution, and the form of it

Every licensed reuse carries credit in this form, adapted only as the instrument states: "From The Massachusetts Times. Used under license." — with, where the medium allows it, a link to the work's address on massachusettstimes.us. The credit is part of the consideration: a reuse serving without its credit line is outside its license while the omission stands.

Article 8 — Integrity of the work

No license permits altering the work's substance, reordering it to change its meaning, placing it under another byline, or presenting it so that it appears to be the licensee's own reporting. The publication's mastheads and marks appear only within the credit line, and no reuse may imply that the publication endorses the licensee, its product, or its cause. A use that breaks this article ends its license at the moment of the breach.

Article 9 — Machines, severed again

No instrument under these terms grants crawling, scraping, indexing, retrieval, agent access, corpus inclusion, or use in training or evaluating machine-learning systems, unless the instrument grants it on its face, in words. Machine and corpus licensing is conducted only through the License Desk under the Machine Terms and the published rate card, and a human republication license is never evidence of machine rights. A licensee's own processing incidental to the licensed human use — typesetting, printing, serving the licensed copy — is not machine use within this article.

Article 10 — Term, breach, and cure

A license runs for its stated term. For breach, the knock comes before the suit: the publisher gives written notice naming the breach and thirty days to cure it, and a licensee owed anything under an instrument gives the publisher the same. An uncured material breach ends the license; Articles 7 and 8 survive for every copy already made, and lawfully distributed physical copies already in readers' hands are not recalled.

Article 11 — Fees

Fees are stated by the instrument, anchored to the published rate schedules where the publisher publishes them, and owed as the instrument provides. No fee is ever owed for the free lanes of Article 2. The whole-price rule of the Terms of Sale governs every payment: the stated fee is the entire fee.

Article 12 — The Open Covenant, and disputes

The covenant stated at Article 14 of the Terms of Use binds here in full: no forced arbitration, no class-action waiver, no retroactive change, the plain-terms head made in good faith, and ambiguity read in the licensee's favor. These terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and of the United States; disputes belong to the state and federal courts sitting in Massachusetts, with your small-claims right and any unwaivable protection of your own jurisdiction preserved.

Article 13 — The publisher, and general terms

The Massachusetts Times is published by The Massachusetts Times Company, a private, wholly American citizen-owned business based in the United States. Notices go to the License Desk and the masthead desk on this host. If any article or part of one is held unenforceable, it is enforced to the extent the law allows and the rest stand; a right not exercised is not waived. A licensee may not assign an instrument without written consent; the publisher may assign these terms and its instruments to a successor that assumes them whole, with every licensee's rights intact. Articles 7, 8, 9, 12, and this article survive the end of any instrument. These terms, with the instrument for your license and the family of documents the Terms of Use name, are the entire agreement about licensed reuse.

— End of the Licensing & Reprint Terms —

These terms are part of the Terms that govern this publication.