Chris I face a similar conundrum with my website which I created some months back. I believe the HSE information is not protected by copyright but not sure about many others. I also contacted a former university about their documentation and received a curt negative response. I suspect that photos freely available on the net are not a problem but other material...not sure. So, I decided that all articles on my site would be bespoke articleswritten by me and not copied and pasted, thus trying to avoid palgiarism and copyright. Hence I have given myself quite a task - roll on winter. Ray

You can get a 'Click-Use License' from the HSE which allows you to use their info but you must link back to the relevant article. You can find it somewhere on the HSE website (I can't remember where).

HSE are very clear about how and where their material may be used Chris. I think you will find that you will not be able to reproduce material from their site without permission as it is for a commercial purpose. http://www.hse.gov.uk/copyright.htm Regarding pictures. Just because they are available on the web most certainly does not mean they have no copyright. In fact most pictures you see on the web do have copyright associated with them. Linking to other sites is a very useful way of helping people to find information but check that the site in question does allow linking - some don't. HSE in particular has specific rules about using its logo as a link.

I also contacted IOSH to ask the same question and was put through to an answer machine that told me he was away from the office until Wednesday 2nd June. ??? :-(

I expect they do know, but if they get only part of the explanation and their answer is interpreted as the questionner would want it, then the outcome will be an unhappy one. I would urge anyone who might think to follow ChrisBurns advice on this matter to think carefully, and check with HSE.

I think this link is more about protecting our information that we send to IOSH as opposed to that if IOSH.

Why not use an RSS feed to sites such as IOSH and HSE? To save you time in writing your own articles from scratch, why not try something like Article Writer Pro? Try googling it and you should come up with the website. The guy's name is Andy Black. I've used this software on a couple of websites I used to run and found it exceptionally good. Once you are up to speed, you can then write additional articles in your own time/ way, but to kick start your site, software like that above can often be incredibly helpful. Also, have you thought about SEO?

Thanks Heather - a bit heavy that so I'll forget about the IOSH stuff. Nick - thanks for that - I just wonder how many different ways there can be to write the same message? The link is to a US site so I think the grammar will be different to our version of the English language ?

Chris, I'm sure the software I used was UK orientated, but can't be sure now as it's been about a year since I used it so do stand to be corrected. I also think it is subscription based now, but again, not sure, as I have free membership (if I could remember what the password was...) as I started using it when it was a beta version, prior to launch. Then again, once the software has generated your 400 or so word article, then it wouldn't be that difficult to proof it, amending any differences in grammar. You'd be surprised how much an article can be changed to provide 'original content', which is what search engines look for. Too much copying and pasting of other peoples articles can eventually lead to your website being suppressed in search results (unless you pay for search engine sponsorship...)