The content available here is provided under various licenses. In short, here are our policies:

Historical fencing manuals

The historical manuals available here in the manuals section are considered public domain and are generally provided with the approval of the libraries, with a rare few exceptions. Exceptions are made for a small amount of manuals to which one library claims copyright, but for which rulings in the Supreme Court of the country in which this library is located clearly state that this library holds no copyrights to these digitized documents.

For precedence and legal rulings on the topic we refer to:

Image copyright (Germany)
NationMaster.com: Image copyright (Germany)
Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp (USA).

Based on this we have judged that public accessibility to these documents is more important than claims to copyrights which have no proper legal (or ethical) standing.

Do note however that the HROARR site respects copyrights and does not intentionally break any copyrights of the originators of the source material provided here. Any material that proves to be provided in breach of copyrights will be taken down immediately.

This is also the reason why we do not provide a copy of the Ms I.33 since the Royal Armouries has denied us permission to distribute the material and the UK law supports their copyright ownership.

Translations, transcriptions and interpretations

Translations, transcriptions and interpretations are provided with the approval of the original authors. Note however that special conditions may apply for third party use and if so included in the individual documents.

Note also that none of the copyright protected material may be used or redistributed for any commercial purposes without the permission of the copyright owners. For specific info, see the copyrights info of the individual documents.

Articles & reviews

Articles and reviews are provided by authors collaborating directly with the HROARR site and they retain all rights to their works. Any republishing in any form of their work requires their explicit consent and anyone wishing to republish their work should contact them directly.

Republishing articles from HROARR on another site.

You may translate and republish articles from HROARR onto your own site, provided that you in doing so meet the following terms:

  1. The rights to translate articles from the HROARR site and publish them online only concern the works written by the author who gives such permission. Each author will have to be contacted individually.
  2. The rights to translate and publish online can be revoked at any time by the original author and the material must then be taken down within reasonable time.
  3. There must be a link to the original article with a text saying: “Article written by
    and originally published at [URL]. You can add “Translated by” if you wish.
  4. No banners may accompany the articles and nothing may be charged for republishing the articles, e.g. through membership fees etc.
  5. The articles may not be republished in printed form or sold on any form of media. If you wish to do so, then contact the author.
  6. The original author must be notified when a new translation is published.