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Copyright and licensing
Before you upload an image, make sure that the image falls in one of the four categories:
Own work: You own all rights to the image, usually meaning that you created it entirely yourself. (example, see below for details)
Freely licensed: You can prove that the copyright holder has released the image under an acceptable free license. Note that images that are licensed for use only on Wikipedia, or only for non-commercial or educational use, or under a license that doesn't allow for the creation of modified/derived works, are unsuitable. (example, see below for details)
Public domain: You can prove that the image is in the public domain, i.e. free of all copyrights. (example, see below for details)
Fair use: You believe that the image meets the special conditions for non-free content, which exceptionally allow the use of unlicensed material, and you can provide an explicit non-free use rationale explaining why and how you intend to use it. (example, see below for details)
Always note the image's copyright status on the image description page, and provide specific details about the image's origin. An Image copyright tag provides a standard template for the licensing of the image. The image summary provides necessary details to support the use of the image copyright tag. An image summary should contain the following:
Description: The subject of the image
Origin (source): The copyright holder of the image or URL of the web page the image came from
Author: The original creator of the image, especially if different from the copyright holder
Permission: Who or what law or policy gives permission to post on Wikipedia with the selected image copyright tag
In addition, the summary might also contain the following, where appropriate:
Date: Date the image was created. The more exact, the better
Location: Where the image was created. The more exact the better
Other versions of this file: Directs users to derivatives of the image if they exist on Wikipedia
More information on how to provide a good description of the image's origin
A good description of the origin for an image from an internet location is to point to the HTML page that contains the image ( Navy News Service - Eye on the Fleet ) and not directly to the image itself: ( http://www.navy.mil/management/photodb/webphoto/web_021028-N-3228G-006.jpg ).
A good description of the origin for an image from a book is to provide full a bibliographic citation for the book (Author, Title, ISBN number, page number(s), date of copyright, publisher information, etc.) and not just title and author.
A good description of the origin for a self-created image is to state "It is my own work." and not just use a tag that indicates it is your own work ({{self}} or {{PD-self}} for examples).
[edit]User-created images
Wikipedia encourages users to upload their own images. All user-created images must be licensed under a free license, such as the GFDL and/or an acceptable Creative Commons license, or released into the public domain, which removes all copyright and licensing restrictions. When licensing an image, it is best practice to multi-license under both GFDL and a Creative Commons license.
Such images can include photographs which you yourself took. The legal rights for images generally lie with the photographer, not the subject. Simply re-tracing a copyrighted image or diagram does not necessarily create a new copyright—copyright is generated only by instances of "creativity", and not by the amount of labor which went into the creation of the work. Photographs of three-dimensional objects almost always generate a new copyright, though others may continue to hold copyright in items depicted in such photographs. Photographs of two-dimensional objects such as paintings in a museum often do not (see the section on the "public domain" below). If you have questions in respect to this, please ask the regulars at Wikipedia talk:Copyrights.
Images with you, friends or family prominently featured in a way that distracts from the image topic are not recommended for the main namespace; User pages are OK. These images are considered self-promotion and the Wikipedia community has repeatedly reached consensus to delete such images.
Some images may contain trademarked logos incidentally (or purposely if the image is either freely licensed, covered under freedom of panorama, or being too simple to be copyrightable). If this is the case, please tag it with {{trademark}}.
[edit]Free licenses
For a list of possible licenses which are considered "free enough" for Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Image copyright tags. Licenses which restrict the use of the media to non-profit or educational purposes only (i.e. non-commercial use only), or are given permission to only appear on Wikipedia, are not free enough for Wikipedia's usages or goals and will be deleted.[1]. A list of websites that offer free images can be found at Wikipedia:Free image resources. In short, Wikipedia media (with the exception of "fair use" media—see below) should be as "free" as Wikipedia's content—both to keep Wikipedia's own legal status secure as well as to allow for as much re-use of Wikipedia content as possible.
If the place where you found the image does not declare a pre-existing free license, yet allows use of its content under terms commonly instituted by them, it must explicitly declare that commercial use and modification is permitted. If it is not the case, it is to be assumed that it is not unless verification or permission from the copyright holder is obtained.
[edit]Public domain
Further information: Wikipediaublic domain and Wikipedia
Public domain images are not copyrighted, and copyright law does not restrict their use in any way. Wikipedia pages, including non-English language pages, are hosted on a server in the United States, so U.S. law governs whether a Wikipedia image is in the public domain.
Images may be placed into the public domain by their creators, or they may be public domain because they are ineligible for copyright or because their copyright expired. In the U.S., copyright has expired on any work published anywhere before January 1, 1923. Although U.S. copyrights have also expired for many works published since then, the rules for determining expiration are complex; see When does copyright expire? for details.
In the U.S., reproductions of two-dimensional public domain artwork do not generate a new copyright; see Bridgeman v. Corel. Scans of images alone do not generate new copyrights—they merely inherit the copyright status of the image they are reproducing. For example, a straight-on photograph of the Mona Lisa is ineligible for copyright.
If you strongly suspect an image is a copyright infringement you should list it for deletion; see Deleting images below. For example, an image with no copyright status on its file page and published elsewhere with a copyright notice should be listed for deletion.
[edit]Fair use images
Some usage of copyrighted materials without permission of the copyright holder can qualify as fair use in the United States (but not in most other jurisdictions). However, since Wikipedia aims to be a free-content encyclopedia, not every image that qualifies as fair-use may be appropriate.
Unauthorized use of copyrighted material under an invalid claim of fair use constitutes copyright infringement and is illegal. Media which are mistagged as fair use or are a flagrant copyright violation can be removed on sight. Editors who notice correctable errors in fair use tags or fair use rationales are urged to fix them, if able. Voluntarily fixing such problems is helpful to Wikipedia, though many errors may be impossible to fix. Frequent uploading of non-fair use non-free material can be justification for banning a Wikipedia user.
For details, or to ask questions about a specific instance, please see Wikipedia:Non-free content.
See also:
Wikipedia:Copyrights#Image guidelines
Wikipedia:Image copyright tags
Wikipedia:Logos
