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The Filthy Human Hands (FHH) License v1.0
ABOUT
As fancy primates, we regularly produce bits of interesting human-made ephemera as part of our ongoing creative explorations.
Some of these are easily shareable.
Historically, it's been possible to offer such goodies under extremely permissive Creative Commons licenses. In the age of "artificially intelligent" machines mulching all of human expression and creativity, there's a need to be clear that we want people to play with our toys.
In short, we made a ridiculous thing with our silly human brains, using our filthy human hands, in order to inspire our messy human hearts.
It is with strong encouragement, and a few simple rules, that we invite you to use your brains, hands, and hearts to play along with us.
LICENSE TERMS
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No part of a work under this license may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purposes of training autonomous agents, generating anything created by artificial intelligence (AI), any form of data mining/scraping, or related systems and technologies.
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No part of a work under this license may be used or reproduced in any manner by organizations or businesses with more than fifty (50) employees.
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No part of a work under this license may be used or reproduced in any manner which promotes bigotry of any kind. This includes fascism, sexism, misogyny, transphobia (including erasure/denial of nonbinary identities), homophobia, racism, ageism, ableism, sane-ism (including denial of multiplicity/plurality), and discrimination against non-human identities.
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Any use of any form of a work under this license must include an attribution crediting the original creators for their contribution.
Beyond these restrictions, a work under this license is otherwise released by its creator for exploring, playing with, remixing, and enjoyment.
Go make something beautiful.
The Filthy Human Hands License was created by Russ Sharek and Liam Woodard
For more information: https://whirling.top/fhh
2026-03-02 - Filthy Human Hands (FHH) Licence v1.0 released.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions.
Is this a real license?
It may come as an uncomfortable surprise to discover that everything in the known world is actually made up, including this license.
What if that wisdom makes me uncomfortable?
Discomfort can be an excellent teacher. If it helps, the authors of this license are fairly certain that the reader is as real as they are.
This document won't hold up to legal scrutiny.
Copyright law, as written and enforced, protects the interests of large corporations. As such, it's likely that you are correct. This is likely true of any open or permissive license.
Why does the license mention non-human identities?
As clowns, we're especially human. However, a number of our dear friends don't identify as such. We wanted to include their wondrous creativity, so we broadened the anti-discrimination clause a bit to make room.
Techbro voice: "But LLMs/AI/etc are sentient‽"
The potential sentience of LLMs, overglorified search engines, world-burning grift machines, or the toaster in our kitchen is not a topic we are interested in debating. The sentience of our protogen, cyborg, and human/machine hybrid friends is respected despite its absolute ability to muddy this issue.
Why the fifty (50) employee limit?
The EU defines the upper limit of a "small business" as having fifty (50) or less employees.
Why bother?
Mark Twain once said that the only thing worse than a young pessimist was an old optimist.
Why was the Filthy Human Hands license created?
Some (actual) clowns wrote it so they could give away some creative stuff.
Ok, which clowns are responsible for this?
Russ Sharek and Liam Woodard.
Additionally, some friends from the small internet provided useful resources and ideas:
- Bill Hunt
- Frédéric van der Essen
- ilo Mimuki
- Maddie
- Rodolfo
- Wael Karram
- WetDryVac
May I use this license on my own projects?
The Filthy Human Hands License is licensed under the Filthy Human Hands License. An attribution to its creators is listed in the LICENSE itself.
Follow its guidelines, and have fun!
Where did the handprint come from?
During renovation of the Delrita Reading Room in This Old Clown House, Russ Sharek put a paint covered hand on the wall and photographed it. The photo was later manipulated using Inkscape, and the handprint extracted in vector form.
The resulting SVG file is available for use under the Filthy Human Hands v1.0 License.