Wikipedia:Copyright problems/Header
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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ATTENTION: For blatant copyright infringements:
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This page is for listing and discussing possible copyright problems involving text on Wikipedia, including pages which are suspected to be copyright violations. For images and text that are clear copyright violations, follow the procedure for speedy deletion; list images that are suspected to be copyright violations at possibly unfree images and images with disputed fair use rationales at Non-free content review.
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[edit] 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.
[edit] 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, then stating on the article's talk page that you are the copyright holder of the work, while not likely to prevent deletion, helps. It is sufficient to either:
- Make a note permitting reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA) and the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts) at the site of the original publication; or
- Send an email from an address associated with the original publication to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org or a postal message to the Wikimedia Foundation.
See also Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials.
[edit] 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 Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA) or is otherwise compatible CC-BY-SA, makes material reusable under current policy, unless it is inherently in the public domain due to age or source.
[edit] What about fair use?
Under guidelines for non-free content, brief selections of copyrighted text may be used, but only with full attribution.
If you see an article somewhere else which was copied from Wikipedia without attribution, visit the CC-BY-SA compliance page or meta:Non-compliant site coordination.
Purge server cache if recent edits are not visible.
[edit] Plagiarism that does not infringe copyright
Wikipedia will naturally refer to and include some material that comes from outside sources. This material may be in the public domain, may be included under a fair use argument, or it may be under a license compatible with the license used on Wikipedia. Examples of public-domain works include text and images from United States Government publications, and older works—such as the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica—that are no longer, or never were, covered by copyright. Some further examples are at Category:Attribution templates.
Even when material is not covered by copyright, it is still important to state its origin, including its authors or creators. Failure to include the origin of a work is misleading and also makes it more difficult for readers and editors to refer to the material's source. It may also violate the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
Material that is plagiarised but which does not violate copyright does not need to be removed from Wikipedia if it can be properly sourced. Add appropriate source information to the article wherever possible, or move unsourced material to an article's talk page until sources can be found.
If an editor has copied text or figures into Wikipedia without proper attribution, politely refer him to Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:Citing sources, and/or Help:Citations quick reference. Editors who have difficulties or questions about this guidance can be referred to the Help Desk. Editors engaged in ongoing plagiarism who do not respond to polite requests may be blocked from editing.
[edit] Repeated copyright violations
Contributors who repeatedly post copyrighted material after appropriate warnings will be blocked from editing to protect the project, see 17 United States Code 512.
[edit] Instructions
Material whose presence on Wikipedia infringes copyright (ie. the material is not Public Domain, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License, or specifically licensed to Wikipedia on suitable terms) should, as a general rule, be removed.
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If infringement is not blatant or the speedy deletion criteria do not apply:
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[edit] Instructions for special cases
- 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 can't be sure that it's a violation), do not list it here. Instead, place {{cv-unsure|~~~|2=FULL_URL}} on the article's talk page, but replace FULL_URL with the full URL of the article version that you believe contains a violation. (To determine the URL, click on "Permanent link" in the toolbox area, and copy the URL.)
[edit] Alternatives to deletion
In addition to nominating potential copyright infringements for deletion, you may:
- Rewrite the article, excluding copyrighted text, including — unless you give credit — text authored by others on Wikipedia. This is done on a temporary page at Talk:PAGENAME/Temp so that the original, copyright-infringing version can be deleted by an administrator and the rewrite copied over. 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.
- Where appropriate, please address the matter with the contributor who added the infringement. {{copyvio}} and {{db-g12}}, for speedy deletions, will generate a notice that you can paste on the contributor's page. Other notices can be found at Category:Copyright maintenance templates.
[edit] Instructions for administrators
Pages should stay listed for a minimum of 7 days before they are checked and processed by administrators. See Wikipedia:Copyright problems/Advice for admins for some help.
All pages tagged with {{copyvio}} are placed in Category:Possible copyright violations.
[edit] See also
- Wikipedia:Copyrights
- Wikipedia:Request for immediate removal of copyright violation
- Wikipedia:Confirmation of permission
- Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks
- Wikipedia:Non-free content
- Wikipedia:Media copyright questions
- Wikipedia:Citing sources
- WebCite - tool to archive webpages to allow stable citation links.

