Wikipedia:Image copyright issues for dummies
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This is an essay. It is not a policy or guideline. Please update the page as needed, or discuss it on the talk page. |
- This is not meant to imply that you are a dummy, the title is simply a spoof on the popular ...For Dummies instruction book series.
There is a lot of confusion regarding copyright issues, in particular regarding images, on Wikipedia. While Wikipedia allows anyone with a registered account to upload images and other media files, it also expects uploaders to abide by a complex set of policies, guidelines and real life laws when doing so. Sadly, not all Wikipedians know or understand what is expected of them, and as a result thousands of images have to be deleted for legal or policy-related reasons every week. This page is an attempt to help educate people about the basic requirements for uploading images to the English language Wikipedia. Do not treat this as legal advice; it is simply intended to help dispel some of the most common misunderstandings regarding copyright law and Wikipedia copyright policies.
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[edit] Legal issues
Part of the complexity surrounding copyright and Wikipedia is that legal aspects are not consistent around the world. The most important thing for Wikipedia is to abide by US copyright law, because the servers are located in the United States. Nevertheless, Wikipedia is used around the world, and since our mission is to create a worldwide free encyclopedia, awareness of more restrictive conditions elsewhere (for instance, Europe) is important.
[edit] Key principles and common misunderstandings
The most important things to remember are that all creative work generates a new copyright by default, and the absence of a copyright notice on something does not mean it is in the public domain. Conversely a work based on an existing work is simply considered a copy unless it was made with the express permission of the original copyright holder. So even if you take a screenshot from a game or movie and heavily edit and resize it, you will still not have any copyright to the resulting image, and trying to release it under a free license would be a copyright infringement. Another common misunderstanding is that works that have been made available to the public are in the public domain, or can be used for any purpose; this is not the case. Again, only an explicit statement from the copyright holder can release all of his or her rights to the work and make it legally available for any purpose. Also note that while some blogs and other websites are sometimes labeled as being available under some form of free license, it does not necessarily mean that all pictures that happen to be posted on that site are available under the same license. Most likely, only the webmaster's text is free, while most of the images are used with permission or as fair use, yet again, unless it is made clear that the images are also released by their respective copyright holders, assume them to be copyrighted. If in doubt, ask before copying, and be sure to ask for the right thing.
[edit] Fair use
Under US law, there is a doctrine called fair use, which means that copyrighted works can be used without permission in a limited way for things like scholarship and review. Note that fair use is only a valid defense as long as the use is "fair" in that it does not negatively affect the economic interests of the copyright holder (e.g., putting online a complete copy of a book or map that is currently for sale is an example of something not to do). American courts have said fair use can include the entire work in full quality though, but this does not mean that will always be the case (especially if the work is of high commercial value). Fair use claims are evaluated on a case-by-case basis, so what is judged to be fair use in one case may not be so in another. It depends on the nature of the work and the context in which it is used. Fair use in commercial publications is a grey area and very open to interpretation — but in the case of a non-profit educational institution like Wikipedia, we have very wide leeway. The courts have never ruled against an instance of educational fair use (unless they are giving away a product that a publisher is actively selling, such as course packs.)
The doctrine of fair use is significantly different, and in many cases nonexistent, in many other jurisdictions.
[edit] Wikipedia policies
Legal issues aside, Wikipedia policies impose further restrictions on what kind of material you can upload to the site. Just because something is legal does not automatically mean it can be used on Wikipedia.
The goal of Wikipedia is to create free content (free as in speech) that anyone can use for any purpose as long as they abide by the requirements of the GFDL license.
For this reason, free (as in speech) content is always preferred over un-free or restricted content. Wikipedia does allow fair use content to some extent, but only when it is not possible to create or obtain a free alternative.
Basically, fair use content should be replaced by free content, whenever possible (unfortunately this can be hard for many "pop culture"-related topics), because we want our content to be truly free, and besides, the rationale we use to claim fair use on Wikipedia (a non-profit website) might not apply to someone wanting to distribute a version of the article elsewhere, forcing them to remove the image anyway. Wikipedia is not responsible for the legal situation of downstream users (who often ignore even the GFDL), but nevertheless, it is our goal to stay as close to the GFDL as possible. This means that our fair use content should ideally be backed by detailed fair use rationales that would hold up even for commercial downstream use. There is nothing wrong with citing educational and non-profit use on Wikipedia to further strengthen our claim, but it should not be relied upon exclusively.
As touched upon above, the GFDL license under which Wikipedia is released explicitly allows our content to be used commercially. For this reason, all our content must allow commercial use, even though Wikipedia itself is non-profit. Many people are willing to let their images be used for non-commercial purposes, but unfortunately Wikipedia cannot accept images with such a restriction. Similarly the GFDL license permit anyone to re-use our content, for this reason content that only Wikipedia itself have permission to use may (ironically enough) not be used. Some people might also be willing to let us use their images provided they are not altered in any way, however again the GFDL states that our content may be altered and built upon so such restrictions are not acceptable either. For these reasons most content found on the internet must be considered non-free, and not usable for our purposes. Only content that have been explicitly released under a free license by the copyright holder may be used. Anything else may still qualify as fair use in the right context however, but a fair use rationale is still required to use such images on Wikipedia.
To obtain free licensed images, you can either take photos yourself and upload them under a free license, you can put in a request for other Wikipedians to make such images, or you may ask the copyright holder of a non-free image to release it under a free license. There are also free licensed images to be found on the internet, for example some images on flickr.com are available under Creative Commons licenses that are free enough for Wikipedia. There are also various archives of public domain images out there.
[edit] Sourcing and tagging
All media uploaded to Wikipedia require a source and a "copyright tag". Images that lack either of these will be deleted after a week. Note that the source is supposed to tell us who hold the copyright to the picture, an URL to where you found the picture is good, but it is useless if the page you link to does not say who the copyright holder is or what kind of license it is available under, so simply linking to an image on Photobucket, or some random GeoCities fan site is no good. Search a bit harder and try to find an official site for the person or company who hold the copyright instead, or otherwise include enough info to let people know who the copyright holder actually is. If you create a picture yourself, then the "source" for that image is you, you need to put enough information on the image page to make it clear that you are the copyright holder, and that you release it under a free license. The license itself should be represented by a "copyright tag" template, but you should always explain why the license tag you have put on the image is appropriate. If others cannot verify that the copyright tag you have put on an image is appropriate, they might assume it's a copyright violation and have the image deleted, so always make sure there is enough information on the source and license of the images and media files you upload.
If you upload an image under a fair use claim, be sure that it complies with Wikipedia fair use policy and will be used in an appropriate way. When you include a fair use image in an article, you also need to write a fair use rationale for that page on the image description page. Note that while Wikipedia's non-profit status can and should be used to strengthen a fair use rationale to "defend" Wikipedia itself from liability, it should not be relied upon exclusively for the same reasons that non-commercial-only content is banned. We want our content to be reusable downstream, so avoid using higher resolution images than necessary, make sure images are directly relevant to the article, and don’t use more images that you have to and so on.
