Wikipedia:Terms of use

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✘ This Wikipedia page is currently inactive and is retained as a historical archive.
Either the page is no longer relevant or consensus has become unclear. If you want to revive discussion regarding the subject, you should seek broader input via a forum such as the proposals page of the village pump.

Proposal, but hopefully non-controversial. See Wikipedia:Terms of use (proposal) for a proposed extension.

SUMMARY

This page describes the general terms and conditions upon which you may read the Wikipedia site. If you do not agree with these terms we ask that you do not read this site. Thank you. This is a summary of these terms and conditions:

  1. This is an agreement between you and the Wikimedia Foundation, and it also includes the license granted on the copyrights page, and associated disclaimers.
  2. You understand that certain things like page histories are archives as defined under the US Copyright Act. You should be aware of the copyright limitations that may exist on those archival materials.
  3. Even if you don't spend the time to read this you accept you have notice of it and are bound by it.

What follows is the unavoidable legal text. We hope you spend the time to read it and if you have any questions please post them on the talk page.

Contents

[edit] General terms

These Terms of use, the GFDL license granted to you on the Copyrights page, and the warranty disclaimers included in that license, are an agreement between you and Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a not-for-profit corporation founded in Florida.

[edit] Extent of the agreement between you and Wikipedia/Wikimedia

By using the Wikipedia site in any manner you are expected to make yourself aware of this agreement and have notice that it applies to you even if you do not contribute here or maintain a user account under your own name or use an account of any other person.

[edit] Title 17 United States Code § 108 archive notice

You understand that Wikipedia is only the current version of each article, all prior edits have been retired into the page history archives and any previous edit of a page has been superseded by the current edit, which is what is being distributed by Wikipedia. The Wikipedia does not intend to distribute them any longer except to the extent they are needed by contributors for building the Wikipedia and as "history" files under the terms of the Free Documentation License (GFDL).

Page histories on Wikipedia are also considered a not-for-profit educational archive under § 108 of Title 17 of the United States Code which concerns copyright under United States law. This law is specifically applicable to your contribution because that is where the archive is maintained. You understand that if you copy anything from page histories of prior versions of pages that you are copying from an archive and you specifically understand that you are hereby being given notice under Title 17 USC that it is your responsibility to comply with the copyright laws in regards to this archival material and your copying it may be considered infringement (specifically if any of the materials being stored in those prior versions are copyrighted materials that were submitted to Wikipedia without the author/authors or copyright holder's/holders' permission(s)).

[edit] Changes, modification and amendments

This is a protected page which means that changes to it will only be made if they are done by a systems operator (sysop). Sysops agree only to change this page if the change is in accordance with widespread community consensus and/or direction from the Wikimedia board. See the page history for details on when changes are made.

[edit] Notice Provision

It is the user's responsibility to check this page for changes. See below for the date of the last modification.