Ethical, Respectful Sharing Policy (2020)

The story so far...

Professor Pete's Classroom classifies as a small, Australian, "Mum and Dad" family business.

That means that we have no full-time staff, no rich backers, no company car or business-class air trips. It's just the two of us, Trish and Peter Price, and our virtual assistant, Adrian.

We have been in business since 1998, but we are not making lots of money. Not even close.

An uncomfortable truth:

A lot of our resources are taken by our customers and shared with other teachers, thereby depriving us of income to which we are entitled.

Such actions breached our policies and the End User Agreements which are clearly attached to all our products.

We have decided to take action to reduce unethical and illegal sharing of our intellectual property (our classroom maths resources).

The approach taken by other educational publishers:

One way for educational publishers to respond to customers stealing their property is to increase security and make it harder to steal the content. This will typically involve:

• Selling digital resources which have to be unlocked with a password
• Adding security restrictions on printing digital resources
• Hiding resources behind firewalls that log customers' actions such as copying, printing, sharing or emailing
• Adding ugly watermarks to remind users of copyright restrictions

Our new, friendly sharing policy

First, we admit that we considered making it harder for customers to steal our stuff.

But we quickly realised that all of the above measures would cost us money (like, seriously, thousands of dollars) or p**s off our customers, or both.

Instead, we have decided to do something truly radical and counter-intuitive:

We want you to share our resources with other teachers, including those who are not (yet) our customers.

That can't be right? You probably need to see that in writing, again.

We want you to share our resources with other teachers, including those who are not (yet) our customers.

No, that's not a mistake.

Let me explain why we are changing our business model so radically, and why we haven't lost our minds.

New: Ethical, Respectful Sharing Policy

1. We encourage sharing of our resources via any available channels, with the only restrictions being:
1. You may not try to re-sell our work
2. You limit your sharing to the quantities listed in this policy
2. You must share in ways that are both ethical and respectful of us as creators
3. We ask you to recommend to anyone receiving a copy of our resource to consider becoming a member
1. Single memberships now AUD $49.99 per year
2. Team membership now AUD $99.95 per year
3. Per-teacher school memberships: AUD $29.99 per year
4. The sharing policy legally covers the use of every resource available at profpete.com, with the exception of the following resources listed for separate purchase via our store. These resources must be purchased and not shared:
1. BlitzIt Mathematics resources (print and digital versions)
2. Pretests
3. Developing Fluency eBooks, including the "10 Minutes a Day" resources
4. Think Bubble Maths resources

 Fair Use Policy

Resources may be freely shared by our fully-paid member ("the member") with other teachers ("non-members") without making payment to Professor Pete's Classroom ("the vendor"), up to the following limits:

1. Share up to 2 resources or up to 10 pages, whichever is greater
2. Share resources via email; social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest; or in person
3. Share with members of a school community on a single campus
4. Resources that have been shared under this policy without payment to the vendor may be freely copied, printed and distributed to a maximum of one class of up to 30 students
5. A non-member may copy, print and distribute up to 10 pages from up to 2 resources, without having to pay the vendor

Questions / feedback to peter@profpete.com

Policy edited by Peter Price, current as of 21 November 2020.