Terms of use

This site is published by Alice Dumas. Using it means accepting what is on this page. If you disagree with any of it, the remedy is simply not to use the site — nothing here is a contract you can be held to beyond your visit.

The essays are Alice Dumas’s own work and remain her copyright. You are welcome to read them, print one for yourself, link to them anywhere, and quote from them — a reasonable extract, with her name and a link back.

What is not welcome is republishing an essay in full elsewhere, presenting the writing as someone else’s, or feeding the work into a commercial product without asking. If you want to do something more than quote, ask at adumas887@gmail.com. The answer is usually yes.

Some artwork and photography shown alongside the essays is reproduced in reference to what is being discussed, and remains the property of the artists and photographers who made it. Those images are notAlice Dumas’s to license, and permission for them has to come from their creators. If you hold rights in something reproduced here and would rather it were not, write to the address above and it will be taken down.

What you write in a comment stays yours. By posting it you are giving permission for it to be displayed on the page you posted it on, which is the only thing done with it.

Comments are expected to be civil. Anything that is abusive, hateful, threatening, defamatory, unlawful, someone else’s work passed off as yours, or simply advertising will be hidden or deleted.

There is no automated filter deciding this and no appeal process, because it is one person reading her own comment section. A comment may be removed without notice, and being removed is not a judgement on anything beyond the comment itself.

Subscribing means agreeing to receive an email when a new essay is published. It is not used for anything else, it is never passed on, and every email carries a working unsubscribe link that takes one click and no explanation.

The site is offered as it is. It may be offline for maintenance, an essay may be edited after publication, and links to other sites may stop working or lead somewhere that has since changed — those other sites are not under Alice Dumas’s control and are not endorsed by being linked.

The essays are opinion and criticism, written in good faith and researched with care. They are not professional, legal, or financial advice, and nothing on the site should be relied on as a statement of fact about a living person or organisation beyond what is plainly being argued.

Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited. Beyond that, Alice Dumas is not liable for loss arising from use of the site — which for a site that publishes essays and takes comments is close to a theoretical concern, but it is better said than assumed.

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction over any dispute. If you are a consumer elsewhere in the UK, you keep the protections of your own local law.

These terms may change, and the date at the top moves when they do. How your information is handled is a separate matter and is set out in the privacy notice.