NOTICE — Rights, fair use, and re-use

This archive is a private research collection. It exists to support careful, citable research and analysis of the documents that govern Major League Baseball and its associated entities.

Source documents

The source documents stored under documents/ (court rulings, statutes, hearing records, CBAs, league constitutions, commissioner memos, lease agreements, etc.) are works of:

• Government bodies (courts, Congress, GPO, state and local agencies) — these are generally in the public domain or available under broad use rights as government works.
• Private organizations (MLB, MLBPA, the leagues, teams, agents) — these are typically the property of their respective publishers. They are included here under principles of fair use for purposes of research, analysis, criticism, comment, scholarship, and journalism.
• Combinations (jointly published CBAs, joint policies) — typically jointly held; treated as above for re-use purposes.

The archive does not assert copyright over any source document. Source documents retain whatever rights status they carry from their publishers.

Metadata and prose

The metadata files (.md companion files), the catalog files (catalog/INDEX.md, catalog/WANTLIST.md, catalog/PROVENANCE_LOG.md), the governance documents (root .md files), and the research logs (research-logs/) are original work product of the project. They may be shared and adapted with attribution, in the spirit of Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0), unless otherwise noted.

Use guidance

• Quotations from source documents in derivative work (e.g., podcast episodes, articles) should be attributed to the original publisher of the document, with citation per STANDARDS.md §5.
• Reproduction of full source documents beyond the scope of fair use requires permission from the original publisher. The archive is a private research tool; it does not authorize bulk re-distribution of copyrighted documents.
• The archive itself is not a publication. It is a research aid.

Takedown

If you are a rightsholder and believe a document in this archive exceeds fair use, contact the archive maintainer. The archive operates in good faith and will accommodate well-founded takedown requests, while reserving the right to make a fair use defense where appropriate.

Disclaimer

The archive is provided as-is for research purposes. While every effort is made to confirm document accuracy per STANDARDS.md, no warranty is made that any document in this archive is the operative or controlling text. For legal questions, consult primary sources directly and engage counsel.