This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Clicking the above link (or the Creative Commons button on the side) will display a page with a brief description of the license under which I am releasing Nixon to the public. In that page is a link to a more legal-language version of the license. This page is my explanation to you of what all this means - sort of a halfway mark between the simple and legal versions.

1. As long as you credit me as the creator of the Nixon comic, you can do whatever you want with it. You can copy it to your own website and display it. You could make your own comic based on the Nixon story. Someone could make a movie based on the Nixon story. You even have permission to try and sell such things, as long as I am given credit.

2. Anything you make from the Nixon comic will itself fall under the above rule. So, if you make fanart of Nixon, or your own Nixon-based comic, anyone else can take that fanart or comic and do what they want with it. If a Nixon movie is made, anyone could copy and sell it, or transform it.

You are not allowed to simply put your name on any part of my Nixon comic and say you did it. You are also not allowed to claim credit for any derivative works (like fanart) made from Nixon that you yourself did not create.

Your ability to display my work does not mean I am obliged to support such display; if, for instance, you directly "hotlink" to images on my webspace, that is a seperate matter apart from the license, and I will deal with such things accordingly.

Lastly, the open nature of Nixon's copyright does not necessarily extend to any of my other creations. My other art, comics, or music remain under my control unless notified otherwise. You may not copy my other works without permission.

REPRODUCTION RIGHTS:

Anyone has the right to copy and distribute Nixon in any way, including trying to sell it. If, for instance, Marvel Comics wished to take the images from my site and publish them as a paper comic, they could, so long as I was credited.

(The likelihood of such action is slim, I feel. And, if anyone was serious about printing the comic, they would need to negotiate with me directly to acquire the high-resolution art files from which the web-comic is made.)

If some company did print a Nixon comic from my art files, anyone could copy that comic and give it away or try to sell it.

DERIVATIVE WORKS:

FANART - The nature of fanart has been one of those legal grey areas for many years. Many artists draw popular characters owned by other individuals and companies. Even artists who have never worked on the actual comics of the characters they draw have sold sketches and art of these characters at conventions. While there have been no cases, as far as I know, of a comics company suing an artist over these sketches, the truth is that these artists are comitting a form of copyright violation each time they make this art.

With Nixon, anyone can make fanart of the characters guilt-free. Under this license, so long as I am named as the creator of the character, anyone can make fanart of any character from the Nixon comic for any purpose. All it takes to comply with the license is to place a statement on the artwork like "[Nixon character] created by Colin Wales".

The caveat to this is that any such works themselves are released under the same license. That means that anyone can take these pieces of fanart and copy them without needing permission from the artist. If I saw a nice bit of fanart, I could take it and put it on my site (with the appropriate credit). Someone could take the image and make t-shirts out of it if they so wished.

COMICS - In Japan, doujinshi are common. These are fan-produced comics that often use popular characters owned by other creators and companies. While the industry there looks the other way for the most part, the copyrights still remain with the original holders, and they have the power to move in and squelch any such publication if they disapprove of it for some reason.

With Nixon, I give any and all creators the permission to make comics using my ideas and characters. Anyone who wishes to make their own story using the Nixon concepts may do so freely, and even sell it if they like. The only stipulations, again, are that I am credited as the original creator - and that the resulting comic itself becomes released under the same sort of license.

OTHER STUFF - In fact, anyone could make anything from Nixon and its characters and concepts. Disney (if it was somehow taken over by lunatics), could create a Nixon animated cartoon. They could clean it up and alter it however they liked, so long as they gave me credit - and so long as they understood that any movie they made would become fair game for other people to copy, distribute, and base their own works from.

In the end, I have tried to make Nixon as much like an Open Source comic as possible - where, like software, the property is acessible to anyone who wishes to work with it, so long as the proper credit is given.

As I write this, the comic is just starting, and there is much about the story that has not been revealed. If there is enough interest, a "bible" may be released that details the world and situations of the comic and its characters, for anyone wishing to make Nixon-based works that remain true to the original concept as much as possible. (Anyone who doesn't care about that is free to go crazy whenever they choose.)