Wikipedia:Copyright review

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Copyright reviews are for discussing possible copyright violations on Wikipedia, including pages and images which are suspected to be infringements. To request copyright examination before including questionable content on an article, see Wikipedia:Requested copyright examinations. Remember to avoid copyright paranoia.

Copyright owners: If you believe Wikipedia is infringing your copyright, you may request immediate removal of the copyright violation. Alternatively, you may contact Wikipedia's designated agent under the terms of the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act.

Copyright owners who submitted their own work to Wikipedia: If you submitted work to Wikipedia which you had previously published (especially online), and your submission was marked as a potential infringement of copyright, stating that you are the copyright holder of the work on the article's talk page helps, but will not likely prevent deletion. It is sufficient to:

  • Make a note permitting reuse under the GFDL at the site of the original publication.
  • Send an email from an address associated with the original publication to permissions at wikimedia dot org or a postal message to the Wikimedia Foundation.

What's copyrighted? Copyright exists automatically upon creation in a tangible form. An author does not need to apply for or even claim copyright for a copyright to exist. Only an explicit statement that the material is in the public domain, licensed with the GFDL, or is otherwise compatible with the GFDL, makes material reusable under current policy, unless it is inherently in the public domain due to age or source.

What about fair use? Under fair use guideline, brief selections of copyrighted text may be used, but only with full attribution and only when the purpose is to comment on or criticize the text quoted.

If you see an article somewhere else which was copied from Wikipedia without attribution, visit the GFDL compliance page or meta:Non-compliant site coordination.


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Contents

[edit] When should this page be used?

A copyright review should be used when:

  • An image's fair use rationale may be invalid
  • An image may be tagged under an incorrect license
  • An article is a copyright violation (i.e. copied from a copyrighted source)

A copyright review should not be used for:

  • Requests for the deletion of articles or images, unless for the reasons stated above (WP:AfD and WP:IfD should be instead)
  • Clear violations of copyright ({{db-copyvio}} should be used instead)
  • Images without sources, licenses, or fair-use rationales
  • Questions regarding whether content that hasn't been added to Wikipedia can be added to Wikipedia (see Wikipedia:Requested copyright examinations)

[edit] Instructions

Material whose presence on wikipedia infringes copyright (ie. the material is not Public Domain, licensed under the GFDL or specifically licensed to Wikipedia on suitable terms) should, as a general rule, be removed.

Blatant copyright infringements of commercial sources may now be "speedied"

If an article and all its revisions are unquestionably copied from the website of a commercial content provider (directly engaged in making money from the content) and there is no assertion of permission, ownership or fair use and none seems likely, and the article is less than 48 hours old, it may be speedily deleted.

After notifying the uploading editor, add

{{db-copyvio|url=url of source}}

An administrator will examine the article and decide whether to delete it or not. You should not blank the page in this instance.
Article? Image?
  • Revert the page to a non-copyrighted version if you can
    The infringing text will remain in the page history for archival reasons unless the copyright holder asks the Wikimedia Foundation to remove it.
    • Add the following to the talk page of the contributor of the copyrighted material:
{{subst:nothanks | PageName}} ~~~~
  • However, if all revisions have copyright problems:
    • Blank the page and replace the text with
      {{copyvio | url=insert URL here}}
      • If you prefer not to use parameters, replace the text with
    • Go to today's section and add
      * {{subst:copyvio2 | PageName | url=''insert URL here''}} ~~~~
to the bottom of the list. Put the page's name in place of "PageName". If you do not have a URL, enter a description of the source.
  • Add the following to the talk page of the contributor of the copyrighted material:
{{subst:nothanks-drm | PageName}} ~~~~
  • You're done!
  • Add one of the following to the image description page:
    • {{imagevio | url=insert URL here}} ~~~~ for images directly from another site
    • {{invalidfur}} ~~~~ for possibly invalid fair use rationales
    • {{wronglicense}} ~~~~ for possibly incorrect licenses
  • Go to today's section and add one of the following templates to the bottom of the list:
    • * {{subst:imagevio2 | Image:ImageName |url=insert URL or description here}} ~~~~
    • * {{subst:invalidfur2 | Image:ImageName |reason=reason to believe the fair use image rationale is invalid}} ~~~~
    • * {{subst:wronglicense2| Image:ImageName |reason=reason to believe the license is incorrect}} ~~~~
Put the image's name in place of "ImageName" without the image prefix.
  • Add the following to the image uploader's talk page:
{{subst:idw-cp | Image:ImageName}} ~~~~
  • You're done!

Pages should stay listed for a minimum of seven days before a decision is made.

[edit] Alternatives to deletion

In addition to nominating potential copyright infringements for deletion, you could:

  • Replace the article's text with new (re-written) content of your own: This can be done on a temp page, so that the original "copyvio version" may be deleted by a sysop. Temp versions should be written at a page like: [[PAGE NAME/Temp]]. If the original turns out to be non-infringing, these two can be merged.
  • Write to the owner and Ask for permission. Check whether they gave or will give permission (or maybe they in fact posted it here!). Also see Wikipedia:Example requests for permission, Wikipedia:Confirmation of permission.

[edit] Instructions for special cases

  • Pokémon images: The discussion on Pokémon images has been moved to Template talk:Pokeimage.
  • Category:Unfree images: These may be listed, if they indeed are not available under a free license or a reasonable fair use rationale. Note that some of these may not actually be unfree images, but rather images which are released under multiple licenses.
  • Non-free licenses
    • Category:Images used with permission
    • Category:Non-commercial use only images
    • Category:Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial images
    • And any image under a non-commercial or no-derivatives license.
    These images are available for use on Wikipedia, but are not released under the GFDL. According to Jimbo Wales, we cannot use images that are not GFDL and are not usable under a fair use rationale [1]. Images from these categories may be listed here, but be sure that the image is not also available under a free license, and that a fair use claim cannot be made.
  • Probable copyvios without a known source: If you suspect that an article contains a copyright violation, but you cannot find a source for the violation (so you aren't sure that it's a violation), do not list it here. Instead, place {{cv-unsure|~~~|OLDID}} on the article's talk page, but replace OLDID with the oldid of the article version that you believe contains a violation. (To determine the OLDID, click on "Permanent link" in the toolbox area, and then look at the URL; the "oldid" will be an 8-digit number.)

[edit] Closing debates

Listings should be checked and processed by administrators after seven days. See Wikipedia:Copyright problems/Advice for admins for some help.

[edit] Open discussions

  • Monday, 24 July
  • Sunday, 23 July
  • Saturday, 22 July
  • Friday, 21 July
  • Thursday, 20 July
  • Wednesday, 19 July
  • Tuesday, 18 July

[edit] Overdue discussions

  • Monday, 17 July
  • Sunday, 16 July
  • Saturday, 15 July


  • Archived discussions

[edit] See also