Cary Cook
Joined 7 May 2011
Latest comment: 11 years ago by Guy Macon in topic Answer to your question
Answer to your question
edit(Answer by Guy Macon to question asked off-wiki)
On 16 Dec 2012 23:36 (UTC), Cary Cook wrote:
Are photos in Wikipedia all public domain?
I want to use some of them (often reduced and/or cropped) on [a personal web site].
I spent half an hour trying to figure out where to post this question in Wikipedia itself, and probably posted it in the wrong area. Even if it is answered, I will probably never be able to find it again.
- Short answer:
- You can almost always use the images, but see below for possible restrictions.
- Long answer:
- First, let's assume you are referring to the English Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org). Some Wikipedias such as the Japanese Wikipedia (jp.wikipedia.org) have different rules.
- Second, not everything on Wikipedia is licensed the same way. Let's look at some examples:
- First example:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_drive
- Click on the image labeled "Animation showing a six-position Geneva Drive in operation".
- That should bring you to
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Geneva_mechanism_6spoke_animation.gif
- There is a bunch of info about that file, but what you are looking for is the "Permission (Reusing this file)" info in the blue box.
- It says "I, the copyright holder of this work, release this work into the public domain." and "I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions"
- So that image is 100% free to use.
- You will see a lot of images like this - it is the second most common license on Wikipedia
- Second example:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University_Press
- Click on oval logo on the right.
- That should bring you to
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Harvard_University_Press_logo.png
- Note that even though this is on Wikipedia it is NOT free to use.
- Wikipedia uses it under the fair use exception to US copyright law.
- You would have to follow the fair use rule if you wanted to use it.
- Furthermore, Wikipedia doesn't know of a free replacement (if we did we would have used that).
- You will
mostlysometimes see this on logos and trademarks.
- Third example:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodecahedron
- Click on the image on the right.
- That should bring you to
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:POV-Ray-Dodecahedron.svg
- or
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dodecahedron.gif
- depending on where you clicked.
- These files are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license (CC-BY-SA), the most common license on Wikipedia. (The “BY” stands for “By Attribution”.)
- This means that you can freely use the image, but you must attribute it to
Wikipediathe original author (this can be on a separate page or under the image) and if you modify it (including lowering the resolution) the result is still licensed under CC-BY-SA. That's the only restriction. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en for details.
- Other helpful hints:
- Here is a search page for CC-licensed files: http://search.creativecommons.org/
- Here is a form to help you CC-license your own work: http://creativecommons.org/choose/
- You can easily find where you asked a question by clicking on the "my contributions" link at the top of this page.
- If you ask a question here, I will see it the next time I log in (I monitor this page for any changes) and answer. I usually check Wikipedia more often than I check email -- I get a lot of email.
- I am going to post a standard welcoming template below that has a lot of useful information. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:54, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
- Guy's points are basically right, but I would make a couple of small quibbles. First, there are plenty of fair-use images that are neither logoes nor trademarks (for example, images of deceased persons when a
fair-usefree image can't be found, stills from South Park, lots of others). So be careful and check. - Second, when you reuse an image that has a license like CC-BY-SA or other license requiring attribution, it's not Wikipedia you need to attribute it to, but rather the actual copyright holder, the one who originally licensed it. Almost nothing on Wikipedia is copyright to Wikipedia itself. --Trovatore (talk) 23:28, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
- Trovatore is correct. I have corrected my comments above. Correction much appreciated. (Note to self: next time, smoke crack after editing Wikipedia...)-Guy Macon (talk) 00:43, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
- Guy's points are basically right, but I would make a couple of small quibbles. First, there are plenty of fair-use images that are neither logoes nor trademarks (for example, images of deceased persons when a
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