వికీపీడియా:Copyright violations

For the closely related problem of close paraphrasing, see Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing

"Wikipedia:CV" redirects here. For Courtesy vanishing, see Wikipedia:Courtesy vanishing.

One of the most important aspects of Wikipedia is that its text (not media; but we will get to that) may be freely redistributed, reused and built upon by anyone, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA) and, except where otherwise noted, the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts). Contributors agree to release their original content under both licenses when they submit it, and material from public domain sources or other compatibly licensed sources may also be used in accordance with the copyright policy, provided correct attribution is given.

However, copying material without the permission of the copyright holder from sources that are not public domain or compatibly licensed (unless it's a brief quotation used in accordance with Wikipedia's non-free content policy and guideline) is likely to be a copyright violation. Even inserting text copied with some changes can be a copyright violation if there's substantial linguistic similarity in creative language or structure (this can also raise problems of plagiarism). Such a situation should be treated seriously, as copyright violations not only harm Wikipedia's redistributability, but also create legal issues.

The situation for images and other media is slightly different, as a wider variety of licenses is accepted. But, in short, media which is not available under a suitable free license and which does not meet the non-free content criteria, should be assumed to be unacceptable. See Wikipedia:Image use policy and Wikipedia:Non-free content for details of this and Wikipedia:Guide to image deletion for some suggested steps for handling problems with images or other files.

Copyright infringing material should also not be linked to.

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Information for copyright owners

If you are a copyright owner or represent a copyright owner, and you believe that Wikipedia is infringing your copyright, we can assist you best via e-mail. You may contact info-en-cwikimedia.org with an informal request; please cite the exact URL (the "address" or "location" of the page as shown by your web browser, beginning with http://en.wikipedia.org/...), and provide enough information to substantiate your claim of copyright ownership. Be aware that correspondence is answered by a small number of volunteers, and an immediate reply may not be possible.

If you prefer to use the process of a formal OCILLA request, you should send it to the Wikimedia Foundation's designated agent.

If you are a copyright owner who would like to license content for reuse, please see Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials.

Resources

Policies, guidelines and information pages

• Wikipedia:Copy-paste: an information page with a simple explanation of Wikipedia's various copyright policies
• Wikipedia:Cv101: a simple guide to addressing copyright problems
• Wikipedia:Copyrights: official copyright policy
• Wikipedia:FAQ/Copyright: FAQ explaining various aspects of copyright policy
• Wikipedia:Non-free content: policy and guideline on including non-free content
• Wikipedia:Public domain: guideline on identifying public domain content
• Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks: information on what to do if another source is misusing Wikipedia's content
• Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia: guideline on copying content from one Wikipedia page to another
• Wikipedia:Plagiarism: guideline on plagiarism
• Wikipedia:Guide to image deletion: an overview of various processes for handling problem files
• Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials: information on how to donate copyrighted materials you own
• Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission: information on how to request permission from copyright holders

Noticeboards

• Wikipedia:Copyright problems: the board for reporting problem articles
• Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations: the board for requesting investigation of serial infringers
• Wikipedia:Possibly unfree files: the board for reviewing copyright status of images
• Wikipedia:Non-free content review: the board for reviewing usage of non-free files
• Wikipedia:External links/Noticeboard: the board for reviewing the appropriateness of external links

Other resources

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Copyright Cleanup: a Wikipedia project for copyright cleanup
• Signpost dispatch on plagiarism
• Duplication Detector - A tool used to compare any two web pages to identify text which has been copied from one to the other. Either, neither, or both pages may be current or old revisions of a Wikipedia article.

Templates

• {{backwardscopy}}: template used on talk page to provide notice of reverse copying
• {{copyvio}}: replaces the page with a copyright violation banner
• {{db-copyvio}}: tags a copyright violation page for speedy deletion
• {{copy-paste}}: adds notice to a page that the contents may be a copyright violation
• {{copyvioel}}: places a banner that the page may contain external links to copyright violations
• {{copyvio link}}: inline citation to tag a specific external link which may go to a copyright violation
• {{cclean}}: template used on talk page to provide notice of removed copyrighted content
• {{Uw-copyright}}: template used on contributor talk page to alert to removal (not tagged deletion) of copyrighted text
• {{Uw-copying}}: template used on contributor talk page to alert to process for copying content from one Wikipedia article to another
• {{dual}}: a template used on an article's face to note the import of text under CC-By-SA and GFDL

• evidence should be documented at the talk page of the article, unless the license is clear at the source

• {{CCBYSASource}}: a template used on an article's face to note the import of text under CC-By-SA only

• evidence should be documented at the talk page of the article, unless the license is clear at the source