Commons:Licensing
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This page gives non-lawyers an overview of complicated copyright laws through an example-based tutorial. It aims to help uploaders decide whether an image or other media file is acceptable on Wikimedia Commons. If you are a re-user looking for information on how to use Commons content in your own work, seeCommons:Reusing content outside Wikimedia.
Wikimedia Commons only acceptsfree content, that is, images and other media files that are not subject to copyright restrictions which would prevent them being usedby anyone, anytime, for any purpose. The use may however be restricted by issues not related to copyright, though, seeCommons:Non-copyright restrictions, and the license may demand some special measures. There is also certain material, the copyrights of which haveexpired in one country while still applying in another. Some of the details are explained below. Wikimedia Commons tries to ensure that any such restrictions are mentioned on the image description page; however, it is the responsibility of reusers to ensure that the use of the media is according to the license and violates no applicable law.
Wikimedia Commons only accepts media
Wikimedia Commons doesnot acceptfair use justifications: seeCommons:Fair use. Media licensed exclusively undernon-commercial only licenses (like CC BY-NC-SA) are not accepted either.
The license that applies to an image or media file must be indicated clearly on the file description page using acopyright tag. All information required by that license must be provided on the description page. The information given on the description page should be sufficient to allow others to verify the license status. It would be best to do this immediately in the summary field on the upload form.
If you are a copyright holder and would like to confirm permission, please use theemail template to send it viaVRT.
A copyright license is a formal permission stating who may use a copyrighted work and how they may use it. A license canonly be granted by the copyright holder, which is usually the author (photographer, painter or similar).
All copyrighted material on Commons (not in thepublic domain) must be licensed under afree license that specifically and irrevocably allows anyone to use the material for any purpose; simply writing that "the material may be used freely by anyone" or similar isn't sufficient. In particular, the licensemust meet the following conditions:
Sometimes, authors wish to release a lower quality or lower resolution version of an image or video under afree license, while applying stricter terms to higher quality versions. It isunclear whether such a distinction is legally enforceable, but Commons's policy is to respect the copyright holder's intentions by hosting only the lower quality version.
The following restrictionsmust not apply to the image or other media file:
For example, the following are generallynot allowed:
Commons also allows works that are not protected by copyright (i.e. works in the public domain). Please readthe section about public domain below.
For an explanation of the justification for this licensing policy, seeCommons:Licensing/Justifications.
You can offer as many licenses for a file as you want as long asat least one of them meets the criteria for free licenses above. For example, files may be licensed with both Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (meets the criteria) and Attribution-NonCommercial (does not meet the criteria). In this example, re-users would be given the option to create derivatives using a compatible license (ShareAlike) or use a different licensing model and be restricted to NonCommercial use. A re-user who opts for the latter may however not upload their derivative work to Commons, as Attribution-NonCommercial does not meet the criteria for a free license.
Multi-Licensing with restrictive licenses may be desirable for compatibility with the licensing scheme of other projects; also, multi-licensing allows people who create derivative work to release that work under a restrictive license only, if they wish—that is, it gives creators of derivative worksmore freedom with regards to which license they may use for their work. SeeCommons:Multi-licensing.
The following well-known licenses are preferred for materials on Commons:
| Creative Commons license icons and names | Abbreviations & versions | OK here? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
 | CC Public Domain Mark 1.0 |  Generally OK | Often found on Flickr images, and considered to be freely licensed in most circumstances. -see Public Domain section below |
 | CC0 |  OK | |
 | CC BY (1.02.02.53.04.0) | OK | |
 | CC BY-SA (1.02.02.53.04.0) | OK | |
 | CC BY-NC (1.02.02.53.04.0) |  Not OK | |
 | CC BY-NC-ND (1.02.02.53.04.0) | Not OK | |
 | CC BY-NC-SA (1.02.02.53.04.0) | Not OK | |
 | CC BY-ND (1.02.02.53.04.0) | Not OK | |
| Notes on the symbols | |||
| |||
Again, works in thepublic domain are also accepted (see below).SeeCommons:Copyright tags for more licenses.
Works which are not available under a license which meets theDefinition of Free Cultural Works areexplicitly not allowed. See the Wikimedia Foundationboard resolution on licensing for more information.
Some examples of licensing statuses commonly found on the Internet, butforbidden on Commons, include:
Creative CommonsNon-Commercial Only (-NC) licenses
Creative CommonsNo-Derivatives (-ND) licensesNon-permitted licenses mayonly be used on Commons if the work is multi-licensed under at least one permitted license.
If an image is not OK, considerasking the author to release their work under a free license such asCC BY (Creative Commons Attribution license), orCC BY-SA (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike).
TheGNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) is not practical for most content, especially for printed media, because it requires that they be published along with the full text of the license. Thus, it is preferable to publish the work with a dual license, adding to the GFDL a license that permits use of the photo or text easily; a Creative Commons license, for example. Also, do not use the GPL and LGPL licenses as the only license for your own works if it can be avoided, as they are not really suitable for anything but software.
GFDL is not permitted as the only acceptable license where all of the following are true:
All description pages on Commons must indicate clearly under which license the materials were published, and must contain the information required by the license (author, etc.) and should also contain information sufficient for others to verify the license status even when not required by the license itself or by copyright laws.
Specifically, the following informationmust be given on the description page, regardless if the license requires it or not:
Of less importance, butshould always be provided if possible:
These points of the description can be done at best using theInformation template. For usage of this template seeCommons:First steps/Quality and description.
In some cases, a document (media file) may have multipleaspects that can and have to be licensed: Every person that contributed a critical part of the work has rights to the results, and all have to make their contribution available under a free license—seederivative work. However, the distinctions are unclear and may differ from country to country. Here are a few examples to clarify:
This is often problematic, if the artwork is not the primary content of the image or is not clearly recognizable: in that case, usually only the creator of the resulting picture (recording, etc.) holds a copyright. For instance, when taking a photograph of a group of people in a museum, the photo may also show some paintings on the walls. In that case the copyright of those paintings does not have to be taken into account. The distinction however is not very clear. TheCommons:De minimis policy has more information about this concept.
Note that the license forall aspects has to be determined and mentioned explicitly. Also note that mostreproductions do not allow the person doing the reproduction to claim a new copyright; the creator of a digitalimage /reproduction of a picture owns nonew copyright to the resulting digital image. The only relevant copyright is that of the original picture. This also applies toScreenshots.
Material released under a license likeCC0 is considered the equivalent of public domain material; works that lack originality and edicts are in the public domain; a few governments around the world, including the US Federal, California, and Florida governments place most of their works, including most of theirpublic records in the public domain;the English Wikipedia's guideline on public domain material more precisely defines these many exceptions.
Commons accepts material that is in thepublic domain, that is, documents allowed by the above exception, or that are not eligible to copyright, or for which the copyright has expired. But the "public domain" is complicated; copyright laws vary between countries, and thus a work may be in the public domain in one country, but still be copyrighted in another country. There are international treaties such as theBerne Convention that set some minimum standards, but individual countries are free to go beyond these minimums. A general rule of thumb is thatif the creator of a work has been deceased for more than 70 years, their works are in the public domain in the country the creator was a citizen of and in the country where the work was first published. If the work is anonymous or a collaborative work (e.g. an encyclopedia), it is typically in the public domain 70 years after the date of the first publication. If the author is unknown after an extensive search, a work may be presumed to be in the public domain 120 years after creation (see{{PD-old-assumed}} for more details).
Many countries use such a copyright term of 70 years.A notable exception is the U.S. Due to historical circumstances, the United States has more complex rules:
If renewed during that window, copyright lasts until95 years after first publication.
The large majority of works published before 1964 have passed into the public domain, butit is imperative to determine that copyright was not renewed. (TheUS Copyright Office online catalog can be used to search for renewals in 1978 or later—useful for works published in 1951 through 1963; Google has scans of the paper catalog includingworks registered from 1923 up to 1978).
For works created before 1978 but only published 1978 or later, there are somespecial rules. These terms apply in the U.S. also for foreign works.
However, the year and location of publication is essential. In several countries, material published before a certain year is in the public domain. In the U.S. this date is January 1, 1930. In some countries,all government-published material is public domain, while in others governments claim some copyright (seeCommons:Copyright rules by territory).
In the US, the copyright situation forsound recordings (including those published before 1930) is a special case. UnderTitle II of theMusic Modernization Act, recordings that were first fixed prior to February 15, 1972 are copyrighted for a period of time under US federal copyright that depends on when the recording was first published. This federal copyright applies regardless of any formalities (copyright notice, registration, and/or renewal.) The specific copyright term lengths are as follows:
Sound recordings that were first fixed on or after February 15, 1972 are subject to the same US copyright law term lengths and provisions as other works.
In some jurisdictions (like the United States), one can also explicitly donate work one has created oneself to the public domain. In other places (like the European Union) this is technically not possible; instead, one can grant the right to use the picture freely with, for example, theCreative Commons Zero Waiver, which waives all rights granted by copyright, but the waiver might not be legally binding in the full extent of what is normally understood as “public domain” (e.g. regardingauthors' moral rights).
TheHirtle chart isa tool for helping to determine if something is in the public domain in the United States.Commons:International copyright quick reference guide helps to determine if a work first published outside the United States can be uploaded.
Commons is an international project, but its servers are located in the U.S., and its content should be maximally reusable. Uploads of non-U.S. works are normally allowed only if the work is either in the public domain or covered by a valid free license inboth the U.S.and the country of origin of the work. The "country of origin" of a work is generally the country where the work was first published.[1]
When uploading material from a country outside the U.S., the copyright laws ofthat countryand the U.S. normally apply. If material that has been saved from a third-party website is uploaded to Commons, the copyright laws of the U.S., the country of residence of the uploader,and the country of location of the web servers of the website apply. Thus, any licence to use the material should apply in all relevant jurisdictions; if the material is in the public domain, it must normally be in the public domain in all these jurisdictions (plus in the country of origin of the work) for it to be allowable on Commons.
For example, if a person in the UK uploads a picture that has been saved off a French website to the Commons server, the uploader must be covered by UK, French and US copyright law. For that person to upload that photograph to Commons, the photograph must be public domain in France, the UK and the US, or there must be an acceptable copyright license for the photograph that covers the UK, US and France.
Exception: Faithful reproductions of two-dimensional works of art, such as paintings, which are in thepublic domain are an exception to this rule. In July 2008, following astatement clarifyingWMF policy, Commonsvoted to the effect that all such photographs are accepted as public domain regardless of country of origin, and tagged with a warning. For details, seeCommons:When to use the PD-Art tag.
TheUruguay Round Agreements Act or URAA is a US law that restored copyrights in the U.S. on foreign works if that work was still copyrighted in the foreign source country on the URAA date. This URAA date was January 1, 1996 for most countries. This means that foreign works became copyrighted in the U.S. even if they had been in the public domain in the U.S. before the URAA date. See alsoWikipedia:Non-U.S. copyrights.
Because the constitutionality of this law was challenged in court, Commons initially permitted users to upload images that would have been public domain in the U.S. without the URAA. However, the constitutionality of the URAA was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court inGolan v. Holder. Afterdiscussion, it was determined that the affected files would not be deleted en masse but reviewed individually. There wasfurther discussion about the best method for review of affected files, resulting in the creation ofCommons:WikiProject Public Domain (not active anymore).
Files affected by the URAA should be tagged with{{Not-PD-US-URAA}}.
Files nominated for deletion due to the URAA should be evaluated carefully, as should be their copyright status under US and local laws. A mereallegation that the URAA applies to a file cannot be the sole reason for deletion. If the end result of copyright evaluation is that there is significant doubt about the freedom of a file under US or local law, the file must be deleted in line with theprecautionary principle.
Oldorphan works areaccepted, provided that at least one of the following two conditions applies:
When uploading such works, please add{{Orphan works}} to the file page to explain the situation.
See also:Commons:Flickr files.
TheCreative Commons Public Domain 1.0 mark (PDM) is often applied to images on photography websites such as Flickr.com, and is not a license. Despite this, the community found that when a user applies PDM to their own work, they are releasing their work to be in the public domain, and these works are believed to be freely licensed. For further information, seeAccept files published by the copyright holder with a Public Domain Mark.
Wikimedia Commons doesnot accept content under the condition offair use. SeeCommons:Fair use.
Imagine you want to upload a picture of Bart Simpson, but of course you can't just scan it in. Why not take a picture of a little action figure and then upload it? Don't. The reason why you can't upload photographs of such figures is that they are consideredderivative works. Such works can't be published without permission of the original creator.
The US Copyright Act of 1976, Section 101, says: "Aderivative work is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a “derivative work”." A photograph of a copyrighted item is considered a derivative work in US jurisdiction. US Copyright Act of 1976, Section 106: "(...) The owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: (...) (2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;"
Therefore, "unauthorized" derivative works, like photographs of copyrighted action figures, toys, etc., must be deleted.For more information, seeCommons:Derivative works.
Exception: So-calleduseful articles - objects with an intrinsicutilitarian function, even if commercial designs, are not subject to copyright protection in the US. Consequently, images thereof are not derivative works under US law. For details and applicability of this exception, see the Supreme Court’s decision inMazer v. Stein, and{{Useful-object-US}}.
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Regarding trademarks (see alsoCommons:Copyright rules by subject matter: Trademarks): Most commercial items and products are protected by intellectual property laws in one way or another, but copyright is only one such protection. It is important to make the distinction between copyright, trademarks, and patents. Wikimedia Commons generally only enforces copyright restrictions, for these reasons:
→ For these reasons Commons accepts any trademark whose copyright has expired. Moreover, Commons accepts images of text in a general typeface and ofsimple geometric shapes, even if it happens to be a recent trademarked logo, on the grounds that such an image is not sufficiently creative to attract copyright protection.[2] Such images should be tagged with{{PD-ineligible}} or one of thelist of more specific tags for this kind of works (e.g.{{PD-textlogo}} for simple logos).
Raster renderings (i.e. PNG images) of uncopyrighted simple designs can themselves be regarded as being uncopyrighted. Forvector images (i.e. SVG files) of uncopyrighted simple designs, the question as to whether the vector representation has its own copyright is less clear; see theEnglish Wikipedia copyright information about fonts and the{{PD-textlogo}} talk page for more information.
It is often very difficult to determine whether a design is protected by copyright or not, and images of these sorts are frequently nominated for deletion, with various results. SeeCommons:Threshold of originality and/or “Threshold of originality” (in Wikipedia) for some guidance.
Theraster rendering of a font (ortypeface) is not subject to copyright in the U.S., and therefore is in the public domain. It may be copyrighted in other countries (seeintellectual property of typefaces on Wikipedia). You should use{{PD-font}} in this case.
Some guidance on applicable copyright rules can be found at
See also
Collections of laws:
Copyright treaties:
Other:
