Hello, my name is Ashley. This message was written from a sincere heart to answer any questions you may have about this endeavor, and ease any concerns you may have.

WHY THESE VIDEOS ARE BEING CREATED

We are friends who came together in a sincere effort to answer the call to help the elderly and others who struggle with their technology.  This is an ongoing Family Worship project.

WHY THIS WEBPAGE WAS CREATED

There are elderly ones and others who have difficulty navigating YouTube. This page provides a place to access things easily and it is not accessible from the home page of this website.

COPYRIGHT QUESTIONS

I am very concerned with making every effort to ensure I do not violate the copyrights of others.  

To achieve that, I regularly purchase the rights to use many of the elements seen in my videos.

I also strive to follow the law of the land, along with the guidelines set forth on JW.org.

I apologize if the following if difficult to understand.  I have done by my best in trying to explain "Fair Use" laws and the use of Trademarks. 

FAIR-USE COPYRIGHT LAWS:  Video recording of apps and the use of other copyrighted information for use in tutorials is not a violation of copyright laws.  

Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act allows the use of copyrighted works for teaching purposes.

The law states in part: “Fair Use” of a “copyrighted work, … for …teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.” (bold added).

TRADEMARKS:  Trademarks are often used by those who do not own them to clearly identify the company they are referring to, such as is done in these tutorials.

To assure you that this is true, you can see JW.org's acknowledgement of the use of trademarks owned by others here, under the subheading "Trademarks."

However, IT IS a violation of trademark law to use the logos of others in any way that causes harm to the trademark owner or to use them for commercial purposes.

MANDARINMANIA.COM IS A SECULAR SITE

Although MandarinMania.com has its roots in a family worship project, it quickly became a secular site serving the needs of people worldwide.  

ADS:  This website is ran at great expense at no charge to its users. To help cover those expenses, I engaged an ad service (much like the one seen on YouTube) to serve ads to my site. Although I requested that ads be "family friendly," I have no control over their actual content.

DONATIONS: When it comes to the Skillful Directions endeavor; it is provided with the spirit of Matthew 10:8: "You receive free, give free." No donations are required or expected.

MandarinMania.com, however, primarily serves the general public.

Services like Patreon and Ko-fi (as seen in the footer pages of my website and in the description boxes of MandarinMania's YouTube videos) where designed to allow people to financially support and reward content creators.

This practice is extremely common in the world of free content. This is because the cost of website hosting, video editing software, professional microphones, fees for the rights to use other people's work product, etc. is very high; and there are those who want to offer their financial support to keep free materials available online.