If you wish to re-publish our HTML and PDF files, or you wish to use excerpts of Wicasta Lovelace’s introductions, please contact us to be added to our Sanctioned Users lists. This marks you as an official friend of the Malleus Maleficarum Online project, and you will receive full recognition for your consideration.
The text of the Malleus Maleficarum as translated by Rev. Montague Summers is in the public domain. As such, you do not need our permission to use the text itself. However, the HTML and PDF files which we created and posted to the web site are not in the public domain. These files are protected by U.S. copyright law.
Therefore, if you wish to extract the text of the Malleus from our HTML and PDF files for your own uses, that is an appropriate use of the material. Re-distributing our HTML and PDF files is not.
Copying our HTML and PDF files and posting them to another web site is no different from copying a song from your favorite band and placing it on a web site for distribution. It’s simply something you don’t have a right to, and the HTML and PDF files themselves are protected as original works under U.S. copyright law. In the view of American law, taking copyrighted works for your own use and re-distributing them opens you to legal prosecution as a known thief.
As well, the introductions that have been written in regard to the online publication of the Malleus Maleficarum are the original work of Wicasta Lovelace, and are copyrighted. Unauthorized use of these files is a violation of copyright law and may open you to legal action.
Within these parameters, feel free to use the actual text of the Malleus Maleficarum as you see fit. Our intention from the start was to promote the work itself so that it would not be forgotten. As such, we do not mind when people find their own uses for the text of the Malleus, because it serves our own ends. We do, however, object when unscrupulous users take our HTML and PDF files and post them to their own web sites without proper credit, often while claiming, or leaving the impression, that’s it is their own, original work.