Editing Encyclopedia:Copyrights (section)

== Contributors' rights and obligations ==
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If you contribute text directly to Wikipedia, you thereby license it to the public for reuse under CC BY-SA and GFDL (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts). Non-text media may be contributed under a variety of different licenses that support the general goal of allowing unrestricted re-use and re-distribution. See [[#Guidelines for images and other media files|Guidelines for images and other media files]], below.

If you want to import text that you have found elsewhere or that you have co-authored with others, you can only do so if it is available under terms that are compatible with the CC BY-SA license. You do not need to ensure or guarantee that the imported text is available under the GNU Free Documentation License, unless you are its sole author. Furthermore, please note that you cannot import information which is available only under the GFDL. In other words, you may only import text that is (a) single-licensed under terms compatible with the CC BY-SA license or (b) dual-licensed with the GFDL and another license with terms compatible with the CC BY-SA license. If you are the sole author of the material, you must license it under both CC BY-SA and GFDL.

If the material, text or media, has been previously published and you wish to donate it to Wikipedia under appropriate license, you will need to verify copyright permission through one of our established procedures. See [[Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials]] for details. If you are not a copyright holder, you will still need to verify copyright permission; see the [[#Using copyrighted work from others|Using copyrighted work from others]] section below.

You retain copyright to materials you contribute to Wikipedia, text and media. Copyright is ''never'' transferred to Wikipedia. You can later republish and relicense them in any way you like. However, you can never retract or alter the license for copies of materials that you place here; these copies will remain so licensed until they enter the [[public domain]] when your copyright expires (currently some decades after an author's death). 

=== Using copyrighted work from others ===
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All creative works are copyrighted, by international agreement, unless either they fall into the [[Wikipedia:Public domain|public domain]] or their copyright is explicitly disclaimed. Generally, Wikipedia must have permission to use copyrighted works. There are some circumstances under which copyrighted works may be legally utilized without permission; see [[Wikipedia:Non-free content]] for specific details on when and how to utilize such material. However, it is our goal to be able to freely redistribute as much of Wikipedia's material as possible, so original images and sound files licensed under CC BY-SA and GFDL (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts) or in the [[public domain]] are greatly preferred to copyrighted media files used under [[fair use]] or otherwise. 

If you want to import media (including text) that you have found elsewhere, and it does not meet the [[Wikipedia:Non-free content|non-free content policy and guideline]], you can only do so if it is public domain or available under terms that are compatible with the CC BY-SA license. If you import media under a compatible license which requires attribution, you must, in a reasonable fashion, credit the author(s). You must also in most cases ''verify'' that the material is compatibly licensed or public domain. If the original source of publication contains a copyright disclaimer or other indication that the material is free for use, a link to it on the media description page or the article's talk page may satisfy this requirement. If you obtain special permission to use a copyrighted work from the copyright holder under compatible terms, you must make a note of that fact (along with the relevant names and dates) and verify this through one of several processes. See [[Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission]] for the procedure for asking a copyright holder to grant a usable license for their work and for the processes for verifying that license has been granted. 

'''Never''' use materials that infringe the copyrights of others. This could create legal liabilities and seriously hurt Wikipedia. If in doubt, write the content yourself, thereby creating a new copyrighted work which can be included in Wikipedia without trouble.

Note that copyright law governs the creative expression of ideas, ''not'' the ideas or information themselves. Therefore, it is legal to read an encyclopedia article or other work, reformulate the concepts in your own words, and submit it to Wikipedia, so long as you do not follow the source too closely. (See our Copyright FAQ for more on [[Wikipedia:FAQ/Copyright#Can I add something to Wikipedia that I got from somewhere else?|how much reformulation may be necessary]] as well as [[Wikipedia:FAQ/Copyright#Derivative works|the distinction between summary and abridgment]].) However, it would still be unethical (but not illegal) to do so without citing the original as a reference (see the [[wikipedia:plagiarism|plagiarism guideline]]).
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=== Linking to copyrighted works ===
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Since most recently-created works are copyrighted, almost any Wikipedia article which [[Wikipedia:Cite sources|cites its sources]] will link to copyrighted material. It is not necessary to obtain the permission of a copyright holder before linking to copyrighted material, just as an author of a book does not need permission to cite someone else's work in their [[bibliography]]. Likewise, Wikipedia is not restricted to linking only to CC BY-SA or open-source content.

However, if you know or reasonably suspect that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of copyright, do not link to that copy of the work without the permission of the copyright holder. An example would be linking to a site hosting the lyrics of many popular songs without permission from their copyright holders. Knowingly and intentionally directing others to a site that violates copyright has been considered a form of [[Contributory copyright infringement|contributory infringement]] in the United States (''[[Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry]]'' [http://www.law.uh.edu/faculty/cjoyce/copyright/release10/IntRes.html]); cf. ''[[GS Media v Sanoma]]'' for a landmark case in the European Union. Linking to a page that illegally distributes someone else's work sheds a bad light on Wikipedia and its editors.

The copyright status of [[web archiving|web archives]] in the United States is unclear. On Wikipedia it is currently acceptable to link to archives such as [[Wikipedia:Using the Wayback Machine|the Wayback Machine]], which host unmodified archived copies of webpages taken at various points in time.

In articles about a website, it is acceptable to include a link to that website even if there are possible copyright violations somewhere on the site.

Context is also important; it may be acceptable to link to a reputable website's review of a particular film, even if it presents a still from the film (such uses are generally either explicitly permitted by distributors or allowed under fair use). However, linking directly to the still of the film removes the context and the site's justification for permitted use or fair use.

=== Copyright violations ===
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Contributors who repeatedly post copyrighted material despite appropriate warnings may be [[Wikipedia:Blocking policy|blocked]] from editing by any [[Wikipedia:Administrators|administrator]] to prevent further problems.

If you suspect a copyright violation, you should at least bring up the issue on that page's [[Wikipedia:Talk page|discussion page]]. Others can then examine the situation and take action if needed. Some cases will be false alarms. For example, text that can be found elsewhere on the Web that was in fact copied from Wikipedia in the first place is not a copyright violation on Wikipedia's part.

If a page contains material which infringes copyright, that material–and the whole page, if there is no other material present–should be removed. See [[Wikipedia:Copyright violations]] for more information, and [[Wikipedia:Copyright problems#Instructions|Wikipedia:Copyright problems]] for detailed instructions.

=== Guidelines for images and other media files {{Anchors|Images|Videos|Audio|Image guidelines}}===
Images, photographs, video and sound files, like written works, are subject to [[copyright]]. Someone holds the copyright unless the work has explicitly been placed in the [[Wikipedia:Public domain|public domain]]. Images, video and sound files on the internet need to be licensed directly from the copyright holder or someone able to license on their behalf. In some cases, [[:WP:NFCC|Wikipedia's non-free content use policy]] may allow them to be used irrespective of any copyright claims.

On Wikipedia, the use of media files is subject to the [[Wikipedia:Image use policy|image use policy]], and additionally the use of non-free content is governed by [[Wikipedia:Non-free content]]. Image description pages must be tagged with a special tag to indicate the legal status of the images, as described at [[Wikipedia:Image copyright tags]]. Untagged or incorrectly-tagged images may be deleted.

Questions about media copyright may be directed to [[WP:MCQ|Wikipedia:Media copyright questions]], which is generally staffed by volunteers familiar with Wikipedia's media copyright guidelines and policies.