Wikibooks:Copyrights/Proposed merger

Note: Additionally, this page must remain protected for legal reasons.

Copyright &copy; 2003 – 2024  To display author information, please check the "Page history" for individual pages and the "Authors" page for books.

All contributions to Wikibooks are the property of the submitter unless otherwise noted (for example; the submitter may be posting public domain text or other text they were given permission to copy, modify and republish under our copyright terms). All content is considered to be released under the following terms unless otherwise indicated (for example; a clearly-marked quotation);


 * Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

By clicking "Save page" you are indicating you grant the Wikimedia Foundation a license to use your work under terms of the above bolded text. If you do not agree with these terms, then do not submit your work to this website.

Publication by third parties
You may use the same title as the Wikibooks book and/or module(s) but trademark law prevents you from advertising the Wikibooks or Wikimedia names without our written permission. This does not prevent you from giving either Wikibooks or Wikimedia credit for the work by name; as a matter of fact we very much appreciate all the credit we can get (this is a separate issue from author credit; see below). But it does legally prevent you from leading your readers to believe that your version of our work is in fact an official Wikibooks or Wikimedia publication. See below for more.

Use on the Internet
For specifics read: GNU Free Documentation License
 * 1) Mention Wikibooks as the source (not mandatory; but appreciated)
 * 2) Provide a functional link back to the Wikibooks book or Wikibooks module (this satisfies the author credit requirement of our license)
 * 3) State that the text is available under the GNU Free Documentation License
 * 4) Link to a copy of the GNU FDL license (preferably stored on your own server).
 * 5) Your version of the text must be machine readable (meaning you cannot prevent others from copying the text)

Use in hardcopy
For specifics read: GNU Free Documentation License
 * 1) Mention Wikibooks as the source (not mandatory; but appreciated)
 * 2) Give credit to at least 5 authors listed on the "Authors" page of whatever book you are re-publishing (if fewer than 5 then include all).
 * 3) State that the text is available under the GNU Free Documentation License on at least one page of the book with the above bolded copyright notice.
 * 4) A full copy of the license needs to be included with the printed book.
 * 5) Whenever more than 100 copies are made, you must (choose one):
 * 6) Provide a floopy disk, CD, DVD or other computer media with the entire content of the book in machine readable text.
 * 7) Provide a network link to a website where the machine readable text can be obtained (this link must remain active for at least one year after publication of the hardcopy; if all you are doing is making an exact copy of a Wikibooks book, then you may use the URL of the corresponding Wikibooks book index page).

Copyright infringements
If you are the owner of content that is being used on Wikibooks without your permission, then please contact our Designated agent (see below) to have it permanently removed (you may blank the page but the text will still be in the page history). You may also place the module title of the offending page on Votes for deletion. We will, of course, need some evidence to support your claim of ownership.

If you suspect that content on a particular module contains a copyright infringement, then you may add to the top of the page. This will produce the following content:

In addition, this template will automatically add the violating page to Category:Copyright violations which will be reviewed by administrators at Wikibooks.

Fair Use Material
In some situations you may encounter material on Wikibooks that has been added because using it is considered to be Fair Use. The restricted sub-set of fair-use material should be legal to reproduce in most countries around the world, but you should check with expert legal opinion if you plan to commercially reproduce this sort of content, or if you plan on distributing a large number of copies of any Wikibooks content that uses this sort of material. All material that is being used under fair-use guidelines should be clearly identified as such, either through an image copyright identification tag or within the Wikibook itself. Fair Use of both text and images is a legal grey area where you must use judgment and personal opinion as to if something qualifies as fair-use or not.

What is Fair Use
Generally the term fair use applies to personal use of copyrighted material. One common example of fair use is to be able to copy music on a vinyl album or compact disc onto your home computer or portable MP3 player. This still doesn't give you permission to share these computer files with your friends, however.

Instructors are also given special permission to copy some materials in limited quantities for direct instructional purposes. This is known as educational fair use and should not be an excuse for material used on Wikibooks.

Problems with Fair use
We suggest that you avoid fair use materials and use them only if you can find a good reason and cannot substitute them. Generally, more and more media is available at Wikimedia Commons, which is a common repository of free media for all Wikimedia Projects and use of Commons should be a normal procedure. Wikimedia Commons does not permit fair use images within their collection.

Fair use law is exclusive to United States and countries with similar law systems. In most of the European countries works that fall into fair use in the US cannot be used at all or the number of conditions when fair use applies is substantially smaller. This is sometimes called fair dealing where scholarly use of copyrighted material may be used in limited situations. When you use fair use images in your book, many people from other countries won't be able to print it. Most of the purposes listed below as acceptable according to the Wikibooks narrower standard may be accepted in many more countries than solely the US, but you should still be aware of further restrictions. Get to know the laws governing fair use or fair dealing within your country if you use content like this or try to reproduce Wikibooks content in general.

What is Permitted on Wikibooks
To simplify the process of trying to determine if something qualifies as fair-use here on Wikibooks, only content which meets the following criteria will be allowed to stay on Wikibooks. We are not lawyers here and are not prepared to stay on the leading edge of legal theories and the latest court judgments and case law. The only real alternative is to simply ban fair use content on Wikibooks altogether, which has been done for some Wikimedia projects due to the complex issues involved.

Fair Use Text
Permitted Fair Use on Wikibooks for Text:


 * Textual Excerpts
 * Very short excerpts from a much larger work, usually just a few words or a single sentence or two. Scholarly citations of the source of that text is especially encouraged.

Fair Use Images
Permitted Fair Use on Wikibooks for Images:


 * Coat of Arms, Flags, Seals, etc. of administrative entities, political authorities and institutions
 * These items are often protected by Crown Copyright or other similar legal protections, where copyright does not expire. As with company logos, it should be in some text that is specifically about the entity represented by the seal, or the seal itself. While this may seem like a violation of NPOV guidelines, you should be respectful when dealing with official symbols of various governments and not desecrate these symbols or use them in irreverent manners. Violating this standard is not only unethical, but can get you arrested even by countries other than the ones which these official symbols represent.
 * Coins, Banknotes, Stamps
 * These images should also be resized, partially covered, or otherwise changed to avoid counterfeiting laws. Adding text over the top of the image like Sample or Copy may be useful, or if you are pointing out features of the money, using arrows within the image that would otherwise ruin its value as legal tender may also be acceptable. Displaying stamps is often done by graphically "cancelling" the image with usually a solid black line across the denomination value of the stamp or some other simple mark that still leaves most of the image available for viewing.
 * Company Logos and trademarks
 * Logos are permissible only for modules that are specifically about the company or product whose trademark is being used. Under no condition should endorsement be implied by the use of the logo, which would be an inappropriate use.  A formal disclaimer is suggested within the text (perhaps as a footnote) to acknowledge the appropriate owner of the trademark.
 * Software Screenshots
 * It is important that these screen shots be of significantly lower resolution than would be found on the computer screen (10% of the original pixel size or even considerably less) and that the screen capture is there to illustrate a specific point you are trying to make within the text you are writing. Rather than a full screen capture, you may even want to only display a small portion of the screen instead.  Using these screen shots should not be done for decorative purposes simply to have some graphical elements in the content of the Wikibook.

What is not accepted on Wikibooks

 * Large amount of text copied from other websites.
 * Images used for decorative purpose.
 * Parody applications of fair use. While funny and considered legal, fiction is not appropriate for Wikibooks as defined in What is Wikibooks.  You may instead want to consider the Uncyclopedia for content like this.

External References about Fair Use

 * Article on Wikipedia
 * Wikipedia Fair Use Guidelines
 * Italian Wikipedia Copyright Policies
 * Wikipedia Fair Use Criteria
 * United States Law about copyright (note section 107 that is specifically about fair-use)
 * US Copyright Law - A wikibooks about copyright law
 * Opinions on fair use from and educator's perspective

You can use images in a Wikibook when they are uploaded to English Wikibooks or to Wikimedia Commons. You can upload new images to Wikibooks, but we will delete unlicensed images. This policy explains how.

Image upload policy
To use an image, you must first upload the file to English Wikibooks or to Wikimedia Commons. If you have an image file with a free licence that is acceptable to Wikimedia Commons, you can upload it to either place, but we strongly recommend that you upload it to Commons so that other wikimedia projects may use it if they wish. If it a fair use image (see above), you can only upload the image to Wikibooks. Otherwise, you cannot use the image.

Before you upload an image
Wikimedia Commons contains many media files and so the image you want to use may already have been uploaded. Try searching Commons before you upload any files.

File types
There are many acceptable file types, but the most common are GIF, PNG, JPG, and SVG. The filename should end in ".gif", ".png", ".jpg", or ".svg" respectively. The server automatically renders SVG images into PNG; thus, you can upload SVG images without requiring your readers to add SVG support to their browser.

Acceptable licences

 * 1) Ensure the file licence is a free licence compatible with the Wikimedia Commons' rules or that fair use applies.
 * 2) * The Creative Commons Attribution licences, the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licences, the GNU Free Documentation Licence and the Free Art Licence are examples of acceptable licences. We also accept public domain images, and also screenshots of free/libre software like GNU GPL.
 * 3) * GFDL is a licence that has been created for written text not images and applying it for images results in serious inconveniences. If you want a free, copyleft licence for images, we reccomend Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike licence.
 * 4) * Any licence that prohibits modification or commercial use is not acceptable. For example, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs is not acceptable. The only exception is if fair use applies.
 * 5) * You can find list of Wikibooks copyright tags at Image copyright tags

Upload an image to Wikimedia Commons
If you are not familiar with Commons already, read their first steps at Commons. Note that your Commons account is separate from your Wikibooks account, though you might want to use the same username.

Commons does not allow fair use images.

Upload an image to English Wikibooks

 * 1) Only images that are permitted for use in Wikibooks but which are not permitted by Wikimedia Commons should be uploaded to Wikibooks.
 * 2) You have to log in to upload files. Creating an account only takes a few seconds and is free.
 * 3) Please do not upload any images from other Wikimedia projects (including Wikipedia) to Wikibooks. We should not create redundant copies, if you want to use an image from, for example, Wikipedia, upload it to Commons. See Move an image from other project to Commons section. This rule does not apply to fair use images.
 * 4) Upload your file.
 * 5) *Describe your file; give the source of the image (preferably an URL). If you made the image and own the copyright, say so.
 * 6) * Choose the correct licence or fair use option from the menu. This automatically inserts a image copyright tag such as cc-by-sa-2.5, GFDL, or screenshot.

Move an image from Wikibooks to Commons
If the licence is acceptable to Commons, any user can reupload the image to Commons, then mark the redundant copy at Wikibooks with or NowCommonsThis. Administrators of Wikibooks can follow the procedure at Category:NowCommons to delete such images.

Image deletion policy
If an images does not have a valid image copyright tag, any user may mark the image with:


 *  nld

This puts a warning on the image, similar to:

The warning includes the current date. Seven days later, an administrator can delete the image, unless someone puts a correct image copyright tag on the image.

Uploading images without licence despite being warned may result in temporary block, and in extreme instances may result in a permanent block.

Copyright violations
Images found to be a copyright violation should be tagged with . Any user can send a Boilerplate request for permission to the author of the image to request licensing it under a free licence. If the status of the image is not confirmed in 7 days, the image will be deleted. Users who are notorious copyright violations uploaders might be blocked by administrators.

Related topics

 * Deletion policy deletion of images
 * Image copyright tags
 * Help:Files How to insert an image to a page