Fair Use & Attribution

Effective: 2026-05-07.

jwatte.com publishes original writing, free in-browser audit tools, and 130+ blog posts that often discuss third-party companies, products, regulations, and tools by name. This page explains the legal basis for those references and how to cite our work.

U.S. fair use (17 U.S.C. § 107)

Where a post quotes a third-party source — a regulator's rule, a vendor's documentation, an industry report, a news article — that quotation is fair use under 17 U.S.C. § 107. The four statutory factors:

1. Purpose and character. Posts are commentary, criticism, news reporting, scholarship, or research. The use is transformative — adding new commentary, audit findings, or how-to context around the quoted material.
2. Nature of the work. Cited material is overwhelmingly factual reporting, statutory text, regulatory guidance, or vendor documentation, all of which receive thinner copyright protection than fictional works.
3. Amount and substantiality. Quotations are short and tightly bounded — a sentence or paragraph at a time, never the heart of a longer work.
4. Effect on the market. Posts link back to the original source so readers visit it. They are a substitute for nothing and tend to send traffic upstream.

Nominative use of trademarks

Names of third-party companies, software, services, and tools (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Cloudflare, Netlify, Anthropic, OpenAI, Apple, Adobe, etc.) are referenced under nominative fair use: only to identify the underlying actor or product, with no implication of sponsorship, endorsement, or affiliation. The classic three-factor test (New Kids on the Block v. News America Publishing, 1992) is satisfied — the entity is not readily identifiable without using its name; only as much of the mark is used as needed; and nothing in the post suggests endorsement.

Third-party naming policy

We do not name a non-consenting third party as a negative case study in generalized content. Where a blog post references a real audit target, the target is either (a) one of our own sites, (b) a site that has explicitly given permission, or (c) anonymized as "a client site I was asked to audit." Specific clients and example sites are not used as cautionary examples without permission.

How we attribute

• Statistics and concrete numbers (pricing, lawsuit counts, percentages, spec thresholds) are cited in a closing "Fact-check notes and sources" section linking primary sources (government sites, vendor pricing pages, RFCs, research orgs).
• Direct quotations name the publisher and link to the original.
• Case studies refer to our own properties or anonymized clients only.
• Affiliate references (currently only Amazon Associates for the books) are disclosed per FTC 16 CFR § 255 — see Disclaimer.

Citing jwatte.com

Suggested citation:

Watte, J.A. (2026). [Post title]. jwatte.com. Retrieved [Date], from https://jwatte.com/blog/[slug]/

For tool output: please link back to the relevant /tools/[slug]/ page so your readers can audit the tool's logic.

Reuse of jwatte.com content

You may quote up to a few sentences with a link back. Re-hosting full posts, mirroring tool pages, or systematic scraping beyond what our robots.txt and ai.txt permit is not authorized. AI-crawler allow/disallow rules are documented in ai.txt; respecting them is a condition of acceptable use under our Terms of Use.

DMCA / takedown contact

If you believe content on jwatte.com infringes your copyright, send a notice meeting the requirements of 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3) using the chat box on this Site, or by mail to:

J.A. Watte (designated agent)
Apollo Beach, FL
Subject line: "DMCA Notice — jwatte.com"

Include: identification of the work, identification of the allegedly infringing material with URL, your contact information, a good-faith statement, a statement under penalty of perjury that you are authorized to act, and your physical or electronic signature. We process valid notices within 10 business days.

Corrections

Spot a number that disagrees with the cited source? Use the chat box on this Site with the post URL and the source URL. We typically push corrections within one publishing cycle.