Copyright Information
The IFF holds the copyright to all these materials, if you wish to use these for something other than personal study, please refer to the Copying and Fair Use guidelines below.
We appreciate you buying these valuable materials. Income from these products allow us to continue the work of translating, transcribing and publishing more for the whole Feldenkrais Community. We encourage you to use these works for your own study and to get together with colleagues and study them together. Remember that copying or otherwise distributing these works is illegal and deprives us of the resources to continue this work.
What is Copyright?
Copyright is a form of protection provided to authors of original works by the laws of the United States and international treaties to which the United States is a party. The copyright laws of the United States give the owner to the copyrights to a work the exclusive right to:
- Reproduce the copyrighted work in copies however produced (e.g. photocopying, scanning, faxing, electronically);
- Prepare derivative works (e.g. translations, revisions, abridgements, dramatizations, video adaptation, any form which the work may be transformed or adapted);
- Distribute copies for sale;
- Perform or display the work publicly; and
- Authorize others to do any of the above.
What is the copyright policy of the IFF and the IFF Distribution Center?
The IFF and the IFF Distribution Center hold all the copyrights to materials. You must request permission in writing to use these materials for any use other than private study. If you wish to include any portions of these works in products of your own, translate or transcribe them, please contact the IFF for permission. For some products, rights may need to be obtained from other sources as well. Please contact the IFF Materials Manager to request permission.
Copying and Fair Use of Materials
What is right and what is fair?
- Copying
The International Feldenkrais Federation (IFF) has received inquiries concerning the right to copy the materials provided to practitioners, including the Alexander Yanai (AY) transcripts. The following information provides clarification regarding the copyright of the materials and what people may do with these materials.
The uniqueness of the materials
The estate of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais owns the copyright of the materials of Dr. Feldenkrais and has given the IFF exclusive rights to many of these materials. The IFF has been given the exclusive license to copy, distribute, make derivative works, translate, and publish them. This exclusive license to the IFF is for all forms of media. including printed manuals, audio and video tapes, and all other electronic media, such as any digitized version of the materials, including publication on a website, or through email transmissions.
In undertaking the publishing of the materials, the IFF has committed significant financial resources and hundreds of hours of work to make these materials available. Revenues from the sale of the materials are used to pay for the translation and publishing of additional volumes. For example. for the Alexander Yanai materials, the original lessons were recorded on old reel-to-reel tapes in Hebrew. To publish them in English, they had to be translated, edited, proofread, typeset and printed. Although this is being done as inexpensively as possible, the process costs money. To continue to produce the and other materials, the IFF must sell them.
If illegal copies of the materials are circulated, ales are reduced and this undermines the financial viability of the IFF Distribution Center, impacting our ability to produce these educational materials.
It is not permissible to make copies of the materials. If someone offers you copies, tell them you are not interested. The IFF will take legal action and refer serious cases of illegal copying to Guilds for consideration as ethical violation.
The IFF publishes the materials for educational purposes, and hopes that Feldenkrais teacher-practitioners us them for teaching, as well as for private study. As more teacher-practitioners study these materials, the more the profession will grow in its knowledge and understanding of the work of Moshe Feldenkrais. Likewise, the more the materials are used for teaching, the more the public will be exposed to Moshe’s genius and the value of the Feldenkrais Method. Everyone benefits when this happens.
Illegal copying of these materials undermines the project; it undermines the members of the professional community; it undermines the IFF and its member Guilds and Associations.
- Fair Use.
2.1 Studying and using, not copying, the materials
Copyright laws provide for very small amounts of a work to be quoted for the purposes of private study. each lesson in the materials is a separate and protectable “work” under the copyright law, so that only a few phrases or sentences may be quoted (without further express permission from the IFF) as part of a study group discussion. The “fair use” provisions of copyright law cover this. Fair use allows a very limited amount of copying of a work to occur, without the copyright owner’s permission, so long as certain requirements are met:
- The amount of the work copied must be very small
- The purposes of the copying must be related to purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship or research
- The permitted use should only be for non-profit purposes
- The permitted use may not diminish the potential market for the work
For example. if a study group wants to send entire lessons to participants who do not own a published edition of the materials, such use would not constitute fair use. The copy would be for a substantial part of the work or the lesson (the whole thing). As discussed above, the copy would diminish the market for the work, as those recipients would have no incentive to buy a published edition of the work through the IFF.
2.2 Recording Advanced Training Sessions that use IFF Materials
Our community has a number of individuals who have developed in-depth understanding of the Method and use of the IFF materials for teaching advanced trainings/workshops for practitioners. If the practitioner intends to record the workshop and then later distribute the workshop, this may fall within definition of “derivative works”, and thus the IFF or the IFF-Distribution Center must be contacted for permission.
2.3 Electronic Use
As the IFF and the IFF-DC moves toward providing digital versions of the original works by Dr. Feldenkrais, care regarding redistribution needs to be taken. It is not allowed to copy any lesson or discussion and/or send it to others through email and/or to post it on an electronic bulletin board or website. If members of an online study group each have published editions, discussion of the different lessons are easy. Each part of the lessons have detailed numbering which can be referred to in discussion. If necessary, to emphasize a point, a sentence or two may be quoted.
2.4 Personal Use
Exclusively for personal use, it is permissible to make a digital copy of the material for study purposes. For example, record the main instructions of a lesson (for movement and directed attention), to play back and study the lesson, especially if the recording is put in a persons own words. Such a tape must not be copied, broadcast, given away, sold or otherwise distributed. It may be only for personal use.
2.5 One’s own work
Publishing or copying versions of the materials, which include additions or changes to the material is not allowed. Copyright law protects the actual words and expression of work. Copyright law also protects the right to make derivative works. A derivative work is one that is derived from the original work.
A modified lesson with changes, for example to certain nuances, is not allowed to be published except with the express permission of the copyright owner or holder.
However, any person who drafts a lesson in their own words, with their own expression, and where the text is not derived substantially from the materials, then this is considered one’s own work, not subject to the copyrights owned by the estate of Moshe Feldenkrais.
Modifying a lesson for live teaching is permitted.
Seeking Permission
Anyone seeking to publish any of the IFF’s Educational Materials, for example, for use in broadcast, should contact the IFF. Often it is possible to obtain permission. Please contact the IFF Materials Manager to request permission.
- More information
For more information about copyright law, visit the FAQ section of the US Copyright Office webpage:
