High-Resolution Files & Reproductions
These terms apply when you buy a high-resolution digital file from the Cultural Heritage Online archive, or a physical reproduction (print, poster, postcard). Please read them before you purchase — you accept them at checkout.
1. What you are buying
You are purchasing (a) the delivery of a high-resolution digital file from the CHO archive, and/or (b) a physical reproduction (print, poster, postcard). For works in the public domain, you are not buying copyright — you are paying for the technical supply of a master file that CHO and its contributors digitized, curate, and safeguard, together with the licence set out below.
What “high-resolution” means here, in plain terms. Every file is delivered as it is held in our archive: the photographer’s own original, without the Cultural Heritage Online watermark, unretouched and never enlarged to reach a bigger number. This is a working archive built over many years by many contributors, so the files are not uniform — some were taken recently, others years ago with the equipment of their time. The exact size in pixels, the file format, the weight, the year the photograph was taken and the print size at 300 dpi are shown next to each image on the page where you buy it. Please read those figures before purchasing: they are the specification of what you will receive. Where the picture shown on a page has been cropped for the layout, the file delivered is the full frame, which may be wider or taller than the version on screen.
2. Licence granted
Upon full payment you receive a non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use the file for personal use or for the single project you declared at checkout (for example: one publication, one exhibition, one production). Please include a credit line where reasonably possible: “Image: Cultural Heritage Online — [contributor’s collection]”.
3. What you may not do
You agree contractually not to:
- upload or share the unmodified high-resolution file on the internet or on file-sharing services;
- resell, sub-license, or redistribute the file to third parties;
- remove embedded credits or metadata;
- use the image in unlawful, defamatory, or misleading contexts.
4. Enforcement
These restrictions are contractual obligations. Breach entitles OASIS Tech LLC and the contributing collection owner to terminate the licence and to claim damages for breach of contract, independent of any copyright status of the underlying work.
5. Digital delivery and EU/UK withdrawal right
Files are delivered by a secure, time-limited download link immediately after payment. If you are an EU or UK consumer, by requesting immediate delivery you expressly consent to the immediate performance of the contract and acknowledge that you lose the 14-day right of withdrawal once the download begins (Directive 2011/83/EU, art. 16(m)). Physical reproductions follow the standard withdrawal rules for goods.
At checkout you confirm this consent with a required checkbox before payment. If you are not willing to give up the withdrawal right, please do not complete the purchase of a digital file.
If a purchase is refunded, the licence ends at that moment. Any copy of the file you downloaded must be deleted and must not be used, published or kept; continued use after a refund is use without a licence. The download link is disabled when a refund is issued, and we keep the record of when the file was delivered. Refunds follow our Refund Policy: for a file already downloaded, only if it is defective.
6. No warranty on suitability
Historical materials are supplied “as is” (age marks, scan artefacts). CHO warrants only that the file matches the preview at the stated resolution.
7. Seller
The licence is sold to you by Cultural Heritage Online — OASIS Tech LLC (Wyoming, USA), operating culturalheritageonline.com — and the payment is handled through Stripe as merchant of record: Stripe collects it, calculates and remits any VAT or sales tax due in your country, and issues your receipt. European Union law treats the platform that takes the payment and sets the conditions of sale as the supplier of a digital product, which is why the photographer is not named to you as the seller.
Where the photograph was supplied by a member of the site, the photographer named on the image keeps the copyright and every other right in it, and is paid a share of each sale (Terms of Service, §18). When uploading, they confirmed that they own the photograph and that they hold the rights needed to licence it. Your licence, and anyone you need to talk to about this purchase, is with us.
In every case, disputes are subject to the same governing-law and dispute-resolution terms as CHO’s site Terms of Service (see §5(b) and §18, “Archive and image sales”).
These Terms of Sale form part of, and are read together with, the CHO Terms of Service.