Copyright and takedown

Approved on 30 October 2026.

Quotogeny quotes other people’s words, and we mean to use only what we may. If something here infringes your copyright, tell us, and we will take it seriously. Van Riel Online Services makes Quotogeny and answers for it.

  • A credible notice means we withhold first and look afterwards.
  • Withheld content is kept, but not published, so it can come back if the notice turns out to be mistaken.
  • A person reads every notice and makes every decision. No AI decides, and no AI reads your notice.
  • What we withhold, and why, is on a public register, including what we found ourselves.

How to report

Use the form below, or write to info@vanriel.eu, in English or Dutch. You don’t need an account. Please include:

  • the page or quote: its address, or enough to find it;
  • the work it comes from, and who holds the rights;
  • your relation to the rights holder;
  • why it infringes: what is taken from the work, and how you know;
  • a statement that your notice is accurate and made in good faith;
  • your name and e-mail address.

These are the things Digital Services Act article 16 asks of a notice, and we ask them of every notice about our own content too.

What happens next

  1. Acknowledgement. The form gives you a reference number at once. A person confirms by e-mail within two working days. A notice sent by e-mail gets its reference that way.
  2. A person reads it. Nobody and nothing decides before that.
  3. While we look at it. If the notice is credible and about copyright, we withhold what it is about within one working day of reading it, before we have finished looking. It leaves every page, the search, the check and the audio, and goes on the register below.
  4. The decision, with its reasons. We write to you within ten working days of receiving the notice: what we decided, and why. If it was withheld, it stays withheld, or it comes back, and the register says which.
  5. If you object. Whichever side you are on, write to info@vanriel.eu with the reference within six months of the decision, saying why. A person looks at it again and answers within ten working days. You can also go to court at any time; see the terms.

What we withhold

Only what the notice is about: one wording, a translation, a picture, a reading, or a whole entry when the entry cannot stand without it. Withheld means out of everything we publish. We keep it in our own private archive, with the reason, so that a mistake can be put right.

Our own texts are out of copyright everywhere, as far as we can establish: author and translator died at least 70 years ago. People whose work is still in copyright are quoted briefly, each quote with its source, because finding out where a quote comes from is what the atlas is for. If you hold the rights and object to such a quote, the process is the same. A genuine quote by someone whose work is still in copyright has no audio reading, and no new daily game uses it.

What is not a copyright matter

This process exists for copyright. It cannot be used to take down a finding.

  • You disagree with a verdict. That a quote is fake, reworded or someone else’s is a statement of fact about where words come from, and we correct it when it is wrong. Send the evidence through Submit or the comments on the quote’s page. We do not withhold a verdict because someone dislikes it, and a notice that is really about one is answered as such, with reasons.
  • Your personal data. See the privacy statement.
  • A comment or a check by someone else. Use its Report button; see reporting illegal content.

What this page cannot settle

This page describes how we work. It is not legal advice, and we are not your lawyers. Whether a particular use is allowed depends on the law of the country and the facts of the case, and that is for a court, not for us or for this page. Nothing here takes away any right you have. Dutch law applies to our terms.

Send a notice

No sign-in. What we keep and for how long is in the privacy statement. No AI reads your notice.

The register

What has been withheld, and why. 12 items are withheld now, and 14 came back in another wording. All of them we found ourselves, in our own review of the atlas’s wordings on 30 October 2026: this applies to us first. The register names the work and the reason, not the wording, and no one’s personal details.

  1. W-2026-001 · 30 October 2026 · Our own review · Back in another wording on 30 October 2026

    A line of Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book I, chapter 7. The English wording the entry went by is word for word W. D. Ross’s translation, which is in copyright. Back in the public-domain wording of D. P. Chase (died 1902), in place of W. D. Ross’s.

  2. W-2026-002 · 30 October 2026 · Our own review · Back in another wording on 30 October 2026

    A line of Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, Book I. The English wording the entry went by is Cyril Bailey’s translation of 1910. He died in 1957, so it is in copyright in the UK and the EU. Back in the public-domain wording of William Ellery Leonard (died 1944), in place of Cyril Bailey’s.

  3. W-2026-003 · 30 October 2026 · Our own review · Back in another wording on 30 October 2026

    A line of Seneca, On the Shortness of Life, chapter 1. The English wording the entry went by comes, by the entry’s own account, from a modern translation in copyright, most likely C. D. N. Costa’s. Back in the public-domain wording of Aubrey Stewart (died 1918), in place of a modern translation in copyright.

  4. W-2026-004 · 30 October 2026 · Our own review · Back in another wording on 30 October 2026

    A line from Dostoevsky, The Idiot, Part 4, chapter 5. The English wording the entry went by is Eva Martin’s translation of 1915, and we could not confirm her dates. Back in the public-domain wording of Constance Garnett (died 1946), in place of Eva Martin’s, whose dates we could not confirm.

  5. W-2026-005 · 30 October 2026 · Our own review · Back in another wording on 30 October 2026

    A line of Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, Letter I (‘On Saving Time’). Its English passage is Richard M. Gummere’s translation. He died in 1969, so it is in copyright in the UK and the EU. Back in our own draft translation from the Latin, in place of the translations in copyright or unidentified.

  6. W-2026-006 · 30 October 2026 · Our own review · Back in another wording on 30 October 2026

    A line of Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, Letter XIII (‘On Groundless Fears’). Its English passage is Richard M. Gummere’s translation. He died in 1969, so it is in copyright in the UK and the EU. Back in our own draft translation from the Latin, in place of Gummere’s, which is in copyright in the UK and the EU.

  7. W-2026-007 · 30 October 2026 · Our own review · Withheld

    A line of Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, Letter XXXVI. Its English passage is Richard M. Gummere’s translation, in copyright in the UK and the EU, and the wording it went by is a line of a song from 1998, also in copyright.

  8. W-2026-008 · 30 October 2026 · Our own review · Withheld

    The English text of Seneca’s Letters to Lucilius that Check searched. It is Richard M. Gummere’s translation. He died in 1969, so it is in copyright in the UK and the EU. The Latin text stays.

  9. W-2026-009 · 30 October 2026 · Our own review · Back in another wording on 30 October 2026

    A line from Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, Part 5, chapter 4. The English wording the entry went by comes, by the entry’s own account, from a later translation that we could not identify, so we could not confirm it is out of copyright. Back in the public-domain wording of Constance Garnett (died 1946), in place of a later translation we could not identify.

  10. W-2026-010 · 30 October 2026 · Our own review · Back in another wording on 30 October 2026

    A line from Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, Part 3, chapter 3. The English wording the entry went by comes, by the entry’s own account, from a later translation that we could not identify, so we could not confirm it is out of copyright. Back in the public-domain wording of Constance Garnett (died 1946), in place of a later translation we could not identify.

  11. W-2026-011 · 30 October 2026 · Our own review · Back in another wording on 30 October 2026

    A line from Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground, Part 2 (“À Propos of the Wet Snow”), chapter 6. The English wording the entry went by comes, by the entry’s own account, from a later translation that we could not identify, so we could not confirm it is out of copyright. Back in the public-domain wording of Constance Garnett (died 1946), in place of a later translation we could not identify.

  12. W-2026-012 · 30 October 2026 · Our own review · Back in another wording on 30 October 2026

    A line from Dostoevsky, The Idiot, Part 3, chapter 1. The English wording the entry went by follows, by the entry’s own account, the translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky, which is in copyright. Back in the public-domain wording of Constance Garnett (died 1946), in place of a wording that follows Pevear and Volokhonsky’s.

  13. W-2026-013 · 30 October 2026 · Our own review · Withheld

    Eva Martin’s version of a passage from Dostoevsky, The Idiot, stored beside the entry at Part 3, chapter 5. The entry itself stays. We could not confirm Eva Martin’s dates, so we could not confirm her translation is out of copyright.

  14. W-2026-014 · 30 October 2026 · Our own review · Withheld

    Eva Martin’s version of a passage from Dostoevsky, The Idiot, stored beside the entry at Part 2, chapter 5. The entry itself stays. We could not confirm Eva Martin’s dates, so we could not confirm her translation is out of copyright.

  15. W-2026-015 · 30 October 2026 · Our own review · Withheld

    Eva Martin’s version of a passage from Dostoevsky, The Idiot, stored beside the entry at Part 3, chapter 5 (“My Necessary Explanation”). The entry itself stays. We could not confirm Eva Martin’s dates, so we could not confirm her translation is out of copyright.

  16. W-2026-016 · 30 October 2026 · Our own review · Withheld

    Eva Martin’s version of a passage from Dostoevsky, The Idiot, stored beside the entry at Part 1, chapter 5. The entry itself stays. We could not confirm Eva Martin’s dates, so we could not confirm her translation is out of copyright.

  17. W-2026-017 · 30 October 2026 · Our own review · Withheld

    Eva Martin’s version of a passage from Dostoevsky, The Idiot, stored beside the entry at Part 1, chapter 6. The entry itself stays. We could not confirm Eva Martin’s dates, so we could not confirm her translation is out of copyright.

  18. W-2026-018 · 30 October 2026 · Our own review · Withheld

    A clause from a modern translation of Nietzsche, quoted in the notes of an entry on Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The entry itself stays. By the entry’s own account it comes from a translation in copyright, probably Walter Kaufmann’s.

  19. W-2026-019 · 30 October 2026 · Our own review · Withheld

    The text of Apple’s 1997 advertising campaign, credited to Steve Jobs. It is a whole advertising text of about 100 words, in copyright, not a short quote.

  20. W-2026-020 · 31 October 2026 · Our own review · Withheld

    The appendix of notes printed with the English text of Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra that Check searched. The translation stays. The notes are by Anthony M. Ludovici. He died in 1971, so they are in copyright in the UK and the EU.

  21. W-2026-021 · 31 October 2026 · Our own review · Withheld

    The introduction printed with the English text of Dostoevsky’s The House of the Dead that Check searched. The translation stays. The introduction is by Julius Bramont, and we could not find his dates, so we could not confirm it is out of copyright.

  22. W-2026-022 · 31 October 2026 · Our own review · Back in another wording on 31 October 2026

    A line of Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, chapter 9. The English wording the entry went by comes from a translation whose translator we could not identify, so we could not confirm it is out of copyright. Back in the public-domain wording of D. P. Chase (died 1902), in place of a translation whose translator we could not identify.

  23. W-2026-023 · 31 October 2026 · Our own review · Back in another wording on 31 October 2026

    A line of Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8, section 47. The English wording the entry went by comes from a translation whose translator we could not identify, so we could not confirm it is out of copyright. Back in the public-domain wording of George Long (died 1879), in place of a translation whose translator we could not identify.

  24. W-2026-024 · 31 October 2026 · Our own review · Back in another wording on 31 October 2026

    A line of Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6, section 54. The English wording the entry went by comes from a translation whose translator we could not identify, so we could not confirm it is out of copyright. Back in the public-domain wording of George Long (died 1879), in place of a translation whose translator we could not identify.

  25. W-2026-025 · 31 October 2026 · Our own review · Back in another wording on 31 October 2026

    A line from Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part 1, chapter 4. The English wording the entry went by comes from a translation whose translator we could not identify, so we could not confirm it is out of copyright. Back in the public-domain wording of Thomas Common (died 1919), in place of a translation whose translator we could not identify.

  26. W-2026-026 · 31 October 2026 · Our own review · Withheld

    Another version of a passage from Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, stored beside the entry at Part 1, chapter 7. The entry itself stays. Its translator is not named where it was seen, so we could not confirm it is out of copyright.

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