Terms Of Use

Copyrighted material

All material on this site is copyrighted by Sharif; any unauthorized use is prohibited. I am making an effort to present only original material on this site. All pictures were either taken personally or paid for, and all writing is mine. Therefore:

Please do not copy any material off this site for your own. If you like something on this site, link to it! Preferably, link to the main page; if you must link to a specific page on the site, please be aware that the site structure may change at any point in time and you may end up with a dead link.
Please do not use any of the illustrations and pictures. All people depicted graciously allow me to show their pictures on my website, but they may not be too pleased to find their image used for whatever other purpose. Yes, that flyer for your party sounds innocent enough, but if it was your picture on a stranger's invitation you wouldn't be thrilled either!
Please do not put direct links to any of my illustrations or pictures on your own website. This takes valuable bandwidth away from my website. For low priced and nice pictures (including belly dance pictures), check out stock photo sites like iStockPhoto.
If you think you have a reasonable non-commercial application where you'd like to use any of this material, ask me for permission. If I can be of service I probably will, but you really have to ask first!

Thank you for your cooperation!

Opt-out policy

This site contains material (photos, bios, event information) that is generally publicly available: info found on a public website, pictures taken in a public place, common knowledge, etcetera. It also contains stuff that is my personal opinion or even completely made-up . In any case, if you object to a picture or a description of yourself on my website, you can to have it removed and I will do so at my earliest convenience. Of course, I encourage you to allow me to use it anyway, and to remember that almost any publicity is good publicity! In return, I generally allow the subject of a picture to use it for their own promotion with proper credit (but you do have to ask!).

For your information, here's a quick rundown of applicable law (paraphrasing heavily):

According to American (and most of the rest of the world's) Copyright Law, the photographer owns the right to the image - it is his/her work of art. This includes pictures of people taken in a public place. Contrary to popular belief, you cannot demand such a picture to be destroyed just because you're in it - but of course you can ask.
The photographer is free to use such pictures for self-promotion, i.e. for his own portfolio. I consider this website and its picture albums my portfolio, and see this as a fair use of these pictures. Still, I offer the above-mentioned opt-out policy.
However, the photographer cannot sell such pictures for others to use, like in magazines or product promotion. For that a "model release" is necessary wherein the human subject agrees to the use of their image for such purposes, usually for a fee.
Obviously, the owner of a venue can set their own rules about photography as a requirement for admission: none at all, or only without flash, only without tripods, etcetera. Many commercial buildings, malls and concert venues have such rules in place (but they are increasingly difficult to enforce due to the ubiquitous camera-phone). But most of the larger belly dance events (Rakkasah, Desert Dance) allow non-flash photography by the general public.