Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission

This page is about editors who would like to get permission to use other people's work in Wikipedia. For information on using Wikipedia content in your own work, please see Reusing Wikipedia content.

To use copyrighted material on Wikipedia, it is not enough that we have permission to use it on wikipedia alone. That's because Wikipedia itself states all its material may be used by anyone, for any purpose. So we have to be sure all material is in fact licenced for that purpose, whoever provided it.

To do this, we must often email or contact the copyright holders and ask them to allow us to use it under the GFDL or a GFDL-compatible license, which would be compatible with how we want to use it. See Wikipedia:Copyrights for more.

The main legal thing that is important to explain to potential contributors: they would be agreeing that their picture (or text) can be used freely by Wikipedia AND its downstream users, and that such use might include commercial use, for which the contributor is not entitled to royalties or compensation. Wikimedia itself is a non-profit organization, and any money raised from the re-use of Wikimedia content would go to furthering our aims—buying new servers to keep the websites running efficiently, producing print runs, making Wikipedia available on CD/DVD for schools and developing countries. However, not all of those who re-use our content are so high-minded.

This means that a contributor's work might appear in print or digital versions of this encyclopedia that are sold in stores. It might appear in WikiReaders, or other specialized subsets of the full text—teacher curriculum packets, publicity brochures, other uses we haven't thought of yet. It will certainly be used by other websites that legally copy our content.

About half the people we ask, say "yes", especially if its explained that the licence terms mean it is wider appreciated and that we do not want to use all their material, but just one image or item. See Wikipedia:Example requests for permission for more.

This page explains what must be done, if you want to use content that's copyrighted, whether you know who produced it or you don't.

More

It sometimes happens that users post text from other websites claiming to have permission to do so. Sometimes, images from other websites are uploaded and claimed to be under a free license (GFDL, public domain, {{No rights reserved}}, or others.) If the external website does not have any indication that such claims are well-founded, it sometimes is a good idea to try to verify such claims by contacting a representative of that website directly. You should, however, basically assume good faith and judge for yourself whether a claim made appears credible or indeed does warrant following up with an attempt to have it confirmed.

If the poster or uploader claims to be the copyright holder and website owner him- or herself, leave them a message on-Wiki telling them to include a license statement on their website that says that the text or image in question is indeed published under the claimed license. That's the easiest way to confirm such a claim. If they don't do that, or claim to have permission from some third party (usually the original author or photographer), contact them or the third party via e-mail.

If you yourself have found an image and want to contact the photographer or copyright holder up-front to secure permission before uploading the image, you should also follow these guidelines.

How to ask for permission

See also: Wikipedia:Example requests for permission

Search the external website and try to find a contact address. Most websites give an e-mail address of the webmaster; if the author of the text or the photographer of an image is known, try to contact the author or photographer directly. In general, do not send an inquiry to an e-mail posted on Wikipedia: if you have reason to question a license claim made on Wikipedia, you also have reason to wonder whether contact data given on Wikipedia is correct. Try to find a contact address off the Wiki. Send them an e-mail explaining the situation and asking for their permission. If authorship is unclear, ask them to confirm that the text or image is indeed theirs.

For text

Text in Wikipedia articles must be licensed under the terms of the Gnu Free Documentation License. When asking for permission, you should explain that this means that

1. The text or image may be freely redistributed and used.
2. It may be freely modified, and modified versions may also be freely redistributed and used.
3. Any redistribution must include the full text of the GFDL itself.
4. In all cases, the GFDL requires proper attribution of the author(s).
5. The GFDL allows commercial re-uses.

You may also choose to explain that the author does not give up any of his or her rights: he or she is still free to publish the text elsewhere or to license the same text to other parties under any other license. You may also want to mention that the requirement to include the full text of the GFDL with any redistribution makes stand-alone commercial reuse of the item unlikely in practice.

For images

For images, you are not limited to the GFDL: any free license will do. If the photographer's identity is unclear (for instance, if an image was uploaded stating the photographer's name and claiming a free license, but the image cannot be found on the web), ask them to confirm that the image is theirs. In any case, ask them to confirm the claimed license. For the GFDL, point out the points mentioned above. Any free license must allow modification, redistribution, and use for any purpose, including commercial purposes and also of modified versions. The only restrictions allowable are proper attribution of the creator and the requirement that derivative works are similarly licensed.

When permission is confirmed

Once you have received a confirmation that permission has been given, you should forward it to the Wikimedia PR department at the e-mail address "permissions AT wikimedia DOT org", where it will be securely archived. Forward both your request and the answer received to that e-mail address, preferrably together as one message (e.g., as attachments to one message of yours that would say that you received such-and-such release of which article or image).

You should add a note to the effect that permission has been confirmed on the article's talk page (not in the article itself) or on the image description page, but avoid disclosing unnecessary personal details such as email addresses or telephone numbers. You may wish to use the {{confirmation}} template for this purpose.

See also: Wikipedia:copyrights, Wikipedia:Possible copyright infringements, new editors claiming copyright thread on Wikilegal-l

Typical request letter for confirmation

Dear [NAME]

I am writing to confirm whether permission is granted to use a page from your website under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GFDL ). A user with the [IP xxx/ username xxx] has pasted in text from your website [WEBSITE ADDRESS] to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The text concerns [TOPIC OF PAGE] and the original submission can be viewed at [Address of Pre-copyvio boilerplate version].

This user claims on the talk page [TALK PAGE ADDRESS] to *[have permission to use this material/ be the original author of the material], but for the page to remain on our site, we need further evidence that this is the case.

The article will be deleted in seven days time if permission is not confirmed, though it can be undeleted at a later date if you choose to respond later to state that such use is allowed.

Thank you for your time. I look forward to your response.

Yours faithfully,

[NAME]

*delete as appropriate