Wikipedia:Copyrights

To support our vibrant community, we provide the essential infrastructure and organizational framework for the development of multilingual wiki projects and their editions (as explained on our Wikimedia Projects page) (hereby referred to as "Projects") and other endeavors which serve this mission. We strive to make and keep educational and informational content from the Projects available on the internet free of charge, in perpetuity.

We welcome you ("you" or the "user") as a reader, or contributor of the Projects, and we encourage you to join the Wikimedia community. Before you participate, however, we ask that you please read and agree to the following Terms of Use ("Terms of Use").

The community – the network of users who are constantly building and using the Projects and/or their websites (hereby referred to as "Project Websites") – is the principal means through which the goals of the mission are achieved. The community contributes to and helps govern our Projects and Project Websites. The community also undertakes the critical function of creating and enforcing policies for the specific Project editions (such as the different language editions for the Wikipedia Project or the Wikimedia Commons multilingual edition).

You, the user, are welcome to join as a contributor, editor, or author, but you should follow the policies that govern each of the independent Project editions, including the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC), which apply to all Project editions. The largest of our Projects is Wikipedia, but we host other Projects too, each with different objectives and work methods. Each Project edition has a team of contributors, editors or authors who work together to create and manage the content on that Project edition. You are welcome to join these teams and work with them to improve these Projects. Since we are dedicated to making content freely accessible to the public, content you contribute is made available under a free license or released in the public domain.

Please be aware that you are legally responsible for all of your contributions, edits, and reuse of Wikimedia content under the laws of the United States of America and other applicable laws (which may include laws where you or the subject of your contributions are located). This means it is important that you exercise caution when posting, modifying or reusing content. In light of this responsibility, we have some rules about what you cannot do, most of which are either for your own protection or for the protection of other users like yourself. Please keep in mind that the content we host is for general informational purposes only, so if you need expert advice for a particular question (such as medical, legal, or financial issues), you should seek the help of an appropriate professional. We also include other important notices and disclaimers, so please read these Terms of Use in their entirety.

For clarity, other organizations, such as local Wikimedia chapters and associations, that may share in the same mission are nevertheless legally independent and separate from the Wikimedia Foundation. Unless otherwise stated by the Foundation as an authorized party on a given Project's Website, those other organizations have no responsibility for the operations of the Project's Website or its content.

As used throughout the rest of the Terms of Use, our services consist of: The Project Websites we host, technological infrastructure that we maintain, and any technical spaces that we host for the maintenance and improvement of our Projects.

Because of our unique role, there are a couple of things you should be aware of when considering our relationship to you, the Projects, and other users:

1. We do not take an editorial role: Because the Projects are collaboratively edited, the vast majority of the content that we host is provided by users, and we do not take an editorial role. This means that we generally do not monitor or edit the content of the Project Websites, and we do not take any responsibility for this content. Similarly, unless we have expressly stated otherwise, we do not endorse any opinions expressed via our services, and we do not represent or guarantee the truthfulness, accuracy, or reliability of any submitted community content on the Projects.
2. You are responsible for your own actions: You are legally responsible for your edits and contributions on the Projects, your reuse of content on the Projects, your use of the APIs, and your use of our services more generally. For your own protection you should exercise caution and avoid taking any actions that may result in criminal or civil liability under any applicable laws. For clarity, applicable law includes at least the laws of the United States of America and the State of California. For other countries, this is determined on a case-by-case basis. Although we may not agree with such actions, we warn users—particularly the editors, contributors, and authors—that non-U.S. authorities may seek to apply other country laws to you, including local laws where you live or where you view or edit content. We generally cannot offer any protection, guarantee, immunity or indemnification against the application of such laws.

1. The Projects' content is for general informational purposes only: Although our Projects host a great deal of information that pertains to professional topics, including medical, legal, or financial issues, this content is presented for general informational purposes only. It should not be taken as professional advice. Please seek independent professional counseling from someone who is licensed or qualified in the applicable area in lieu of acting on any information, opinion, or advice contained in one of the Project Websites.

Certain activities, whether legal or illegal under the applicable law, may be harmful to other users and violate our rules, and some activities may also subject you to liability. Therefore, for your own protection and for that of other users, you may not engage in such activities on, or otherwise using, our Projects. These activities include:

Harassing and Abusing Others

• Engaging in threats, stalking, spamming, vandalism, or harassment as described in the UCoC;
• Transmitting chain mail, junk mail, or spam to other users;
• Posting or modifying content with the intention to seriously harm others, such as deliberate inducements to self-harm, or deliberate triggering of epilepsy.

Violating the Privacy of Others

• Infringing the privacy rights of others under the laws of the United States of America or other applicable laws (which may include the laws where you live or where you view or edit content);
• Soliciting personally identifiable information for the purposes of harassment, exploitation, or violation of privacy, or for any promotional or commercial purpose not explicitly approved by the Wikimedia Foundation; and
• Soliciting personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 18 years, or under the age of majority where you are if higher than 18 years, for an illegal purpose or violating any applicable law regarding the health or well-being of minors.

Engaging in False Statements, Impersonation, or Fraud

• Intentionally or knowingly posting content that constitutes libel or defamation under the laws of the United States of America;
• Posting or modifying content with the intent to deceive or mislead others;
• Attempting to impersonate another user or individual, misrepresenting your affiliation with any individual or entity, hiding your affiliation with any individual or entity when disclosure is required by these terms or local Project policy, or using the name or username of another person with the intent to deceive; and
• Engaging in fraud.

Committing Infringement of Intellectual Property Rights

• Infringing copyrights, trademarks, patents, or other proprietary rights under the applicable law.

Misusing Our Services for Other Illegal Purposes

• Posting child pornography or any other content that violates applicable law concerning child pornography or child sexual abuse material, or encouraging, grooming, or advocating for others to create or share such material;
• Posting or trafficking in obscene material that is unlawful under applicable law; and
• Using the services in a manner that is inconsistent with applicable law.

Engaging in Disruptive and Illegal Misuse of Facilities

• Posting or distributing content that contains any viruses, malware, worms, Trojan horses, malicious code, or other device that could harm our technical infrastructure or system or that of other users;
• Engaging in automated uses of the Project Websites that are abusive or disruptive of the services, violate acceptable usage policies where available, or have not been approved by the Wikimedia community;
• Disrupting the services by placing an undue burden on an API, Project Website or the networks or servers connected with a particular Project Website;
• Disrupting the services by inundating any of the Project Websites with communications or other traffic that suggests no serious intent to use the Project website for its stated purpose;
• Knowingly accessing, tampering with, or using any of our non-public areas in our computer systems without authorization; and
• Probing, scanning, or testing the vulnerability of any of our technical systems or networks unless all the following conditions are met:

• such actions do not unduly abuse or disrupt our technical systems or networks;
• such actions are not for personal gain (except for credit for your work);
• you report any vulnerabilities to the relevant developers (or fix it yourself); and
• you do not undertake such actions with malicious or destructive intent.

Paid Contributions Without Disclosure

• You must disclose each and any employer, client, intended beneficiary and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation. You must make that disclosure in at least one of the following ways:

• a statement on your user page,
• a statement on the talk page accompanying any paid contributions, or
• a statement in the edit summary accompanying any paid contributions.

• In addition, if you make a public posting off the Projects advertising editing services on Wikipedia in exchange for compensation of any kind, you must disclose all Wikipedia accounts you have used or will use for this service in the public posting on the third-party service.
• Applicable law, or Project-specific policies and Foundation policies and guidelines, such as those addressing conflicts of interest, may further limit paid contributions or require more detailed disclosure. For example, infringing Wikimedia Trademarks (defined hereinafter at Section 6) to advertise paid editing services, removing disclosures on previously adequately disclosed paid edits, or logged-out paid editing in a manner that makes adequate disclosure a practical impossibility violate this section.
• A Wikimedia Project community may adopt an alternative paid contribution disclosure policy which may supplement or replace this section. If a Project adopts an alternative disclosure policy, you may comply with that policy instead of the requirements in this section (titled "Paid Contributions Without Disclosure") when contributing to that particular Project.

For more information, please read our FAQ on disclosure of paid contributions.

We reserve the right to exercise our enforcement discretion with respect to the provisions in section 4 of these Terms of Use. Where required, enforcement of these terms may include actions not listed in the Wikimedia Foundation Office Action Policy. If enforcement is required in new circumstances, we will make an effort within at most one (1) year to update the Office Action Policy to catalog the new type of action.

Marketing Company Mediations

Undisclosed editing by users receiving compensation creates an unreasonable burden on volunteer editors who investigate and enforce community policies. Therefore, for violations of this section related to undisclosed paid editing, you agree to submit to binding "Med-Arb" (a "Marketing Company Mediation") as described in section 14 of these Terms of Use.

You agree to the following licensing requirements:

1. Text to which you hold the copyright: When you submit text to which you hold the copyright, you agree to license it under:
   • Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License ("CC BY-SA 4.0"), and
   • GNU Free Documentation License ("GFDL") (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts).Reusers may comply with either license or both. The only exception is if the Project edition or feature requires a different license. In that case, you agree to license any text you contribute under the particular license prescribed by the Project edition or the feature. Please note that these licenses do allow commercial uses of your contributions, as long as such uses are compliant with the terms of the respective licenses. Where you own Sui Generis Database Rights covered by CC BY-SA 4.0, you waive these rights. As an example, this means facts you contribute to the projects may be reused freely without attribution.
2. Attribution: Attribution is an important part of these licenses. We consider it giving credit where credit is due – to authors like yourself. When you contribute text, you agree to be attributed in any of the following fashions:
   1. Through hyperlink (where possible) or URL to the article to which you contributed (since each article has a history page that lists all contributors, authors and editors);
   2. Through hyperlink (where possible) or URL to an alternative, stable online copy that is freely accessible, which conforms with the relevant license, and which provides credit to the authors in a manner equivalent to the credit given on the Project Website; or
   3. Through a list of all authors (but please note that any list of authors may be filtered to exclude very small or irrelevant contributions).
3. Importing text: You may import text that you have found elsewhere or that you have co-authored with others, but in such case you represent and warrant that the text is available under terms that are compatible with CC BY-SA (or, as explained above, another license when exceptionally required by the Project edition or feature). For a list of compatible licenses, see Creative Commons. You shall not import content that is available solely under GFDL. You agree that, if you import text under a CC license that requires attribution, you must credit the author(s) in a reasonable fashion. Where such credit is commonly given through page histories (such as Wikimedia-internal copying), it is sufficient to give attribution in the edit summary, which is recorded in the page history, when importing the text. The attribution requirements are sometimes too intrusive for particular circumstances (regardless of the license), and there may be instances where the Wikimedia community decides that imported text cannot be used for that reason.
4. Non-text media: Non-text media on the Projects are available under a variety of different licenses that support the general goal of allowing unrestricted reuse and redistribution. When you contribute non-text media, you agree to comply with the requirements for such licenses as described in our Licensing Policy, and also comply with the requirements of the specific Project edition or feature to which you are contributing. Also see the Wikimedia Commons Licensing Policy for more information on contributing non-text media to Wikimedia Commons.
5. No revocation of license: Except as consistent with your license, you agree that you will not unilaterally revoke or seek invalidation of any license that you have granted under these Terms of Use for text content or non-text media contributed to the Projects or features, even if you terminate use of our services.
6. Public domain content: Content that is in the public domain is welcome. It is important however that you confirm the public domain status of the content under the law of the United States of America as well as the laws of any other countries as required by the specific Project edition. When you contribute content that is in the public domain, you warrant that the material is actually in the public domain, and you agree to label it appropriately.
7. Re-use: Reuse of content that we host is welcome, though exceptions exist for content contributed under "fair use" or similar exemptions under applicable copyright law. Any reuse must comply with the underlying license(s). When you reuse or redistribute a text page developed by the Wikimedia community, you agree to attribute the authors in any of the following fashions:
   1. Through hyperlink (where possible) or URL to the page or pages that you are reusing (since each page has a history page that lists all contributors, authors and editors);
   2. Through hyperlink (where possible) or URL to an alternative, stable online copy that is freely accessible, which conforms with the license, and which provides credit to the authors in a manner equivalent to the credit given on the Project Website; or
   3. Through a list of all authors (but please note that any list of authors may be filtered to exclude very small or irrelevant contributions). If the text content was imported from another source, it is possible that the content is licensed under a compatible CC BY-SA license but not GFDL (as described in "Importing text," above). In that case, you agree to comply with the compatible CC BY-SA license and do not have the option to relicense it under GFDL. To determine the license that applies to the content that you seek to reuse or redistribute, you should review the page footer, page history, and discussion page. In addition, please be aware that text that originated from external sources and was imported into a Project may be under a license that attaches additional attribution requirements. Users agree to indicate these additional attribution requirements clearly. Depending on the Project, such requirements may appear, for example, in a banner or other notations pointing out that some or all of the content was originally published elsewhere. Where there are such visible notations, reusers should preserve them. For any non-text media, you agree to comply with the applicable license under which the work has been made available (which can be discovered by clicking on the work and looking at the licensing section on its description page or reviewing an applicable source page for that work). When reusing any content that we host, you agree to comply with the relevant attribution requirements as they pertain to the underlying license or licenses.
8. Modifications or additions to material that you reuse: When modifying or making additions to text that you have obtained from a Project Website, you agree to license the modified or added content under CC BY-SA 4.0 or later (or, as explained above, another license when exceptionally required by the specific Project edition or feature). When modifying or making additions to any non-text media that you have obtained from a Project website, you agree to license the modified or added content in accordance with whatever license under which the work has been made available. With both text content and non-text media, you agree to clearly indicate that the original work has been modified. If you are reusing text content in a wiki, it is sufficient to indicate in the page history that you made a change to the imported text. For each copy or modified version that you distribute, you agree to include a licensing notice stating which license the work is released under, along with either a hyperlink or URL to the text of the license or a copy of the license itself.

However, we also recognize that not every takedown notice is valid or in good faith. In such cases, we strongly encourage users to file counter-notifications when they appropriately believe a DMCA takedown demand is invalid or improper. For more information on what to do if you think a DMCA notice has been improperly filed, you may wish to consult the Lumen Database website.

If you are the owner of content that is being improperly used on one of the Projects without your permission, you may request that the content be removed by filing a notice under the DMCA. To make such a request, please email us at legal@wikimedia.org or snail mail our designated agent.

Alternatively, you may make a request to our community, which often handles copyright issues faster and more effectively than the process prescribed under the DMCA. In that case, you can post a notice explaining your copyright concerns. For a non-exhaustive and non-authoritative list of the relevant processes for the different Project editions, visit the Copyright Problems page. Before filing a DMCA claim, you also have the option of sending an email to the community at info@wikimedia.org.

It is possible to notify us of illegal content, or content that violates our Terms of Use (including all policies and other documents incorporated by reference) for other reasons by contacting us directly. However, you can typically make a request directly to the Project's community: this may be more efficient, and is more consistent with our Projects' aim to empower the user community.

Each Project will usually provide "Help" or "Contact" pages for further guidance, or specific tools for reporting issues. Alternatively – if in doubt – you can ask members of the community for help, by sending an email to info@wikimedia.org or a more language-specific address from the Volunteer Response Team page. Please note that these mailboxes are monitored by users of the Projects, not the Foundation. As a result, they should not be threatened or issued with legal demands.

If you contact the Foundation with a problem, we will typically explore whether and how existing community-led mechanisms can investigate and, where appropriate, resolve it.

In an unusual case, the need may arise, or the community may ask us, to address an especially problematic user or especially problematic content because of significant Project disturbance or dangerous behavior. In such cases, we reserve the right, at our sole discretion (or where legally compelled), to:

• Investigate your use of the Projects or our services (a) to determine whether a violation of these Terms of Use, Project edition policy, or other applicable law or policy has occurred, or (b) to comply with any applicable law, legal process, or an appropriate governmental request;
• Detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, false or unverifiable information, security, or technical issues or respond to user support requests;
• Refuse, revert, disable, or restrict access to contributions of any user who violates these Terms of Use;
• Ban a user from editing or contributing or block a user's account or access for actions violating these Terms of Use, including repeat posting of unlawful material under applicable law in line with human rights principles;
• Take legal action against users who violate these Terms of Use (including reports to law enforcement authorities); and
• Manage otherwise the Project websites in a manner designed to facilitate their proper functioning and protect the rights, property, and safety of ourselves and our users, licensors, partners, and the public.

Those Foundation moderation activities may be informed or performed by software (such as traffic flood ("Denial of Service") protection). In those cases human review is normally available, upon request.

In the interests of our users and the Projects, in the extreme circumstance that any individual has had their account or access blocked under this section, they are prohibited from creating or using another account on or seeking access to the same Project, unless we provide explicit permission. Without limiting the authority of the community, the Foundation itself will not ban a user from editing or contributing or block a user's account or access solely because of good faith criticism that does not result in actions otherwise violating these Terms of Use or community policies.

The Wikimedia community and its members may also take action when so allowed by the community or Foundation policies applicable to the specific Project edition, including but not limited to warning, investigating, blocking, or banning users who violate those policies. You agree to comply with the final decisions of dispute resolution bodies that are established by the community for the specific Project editions (such as arbitration committees); these decisions may include sanctions as set out by the policy of the specific Project edition.

Especially problematic users who have had accounts or access blocked on multiple Project editions may be subject to a ban from all of the Project editions, in accordance with the Global Ban Policy. In contrast to Board resolutions or these Terms of Use, policies established by the community, which may cover a single Project edition or multiple Projects editions (like the Global Ban Policy), may be modified by the relevant community according to its own procedures.

The blocking of an account or access or the banning of a user under this provision shall be in accordance with Section 13 of these Terms of Use.

If you believe we have not satisfactorily acted on a problematic content report, or if you have been subjected to a Foundation moderation action that you wish to challenge, you may be able to submit an appeal. Other information about routes of appeal may also be explained to you at the time, or in Project-specific help pages.

We reserve the right to suspend (temporarily, or permanently) our handling of reports or other correspondence from users or third parties, whether about allegedly illegal or otherwise problematic content or conduct, or requesting appeals against moderation actions, if such correspondence was made in bad faith, repetitive, unfounded, and/or abusive. In appropriate circumstances, your email address may even be blocked on our email system(s), and you will then need to contact us at our postal address if you wish to further correspond with us during that block. For less serious cases (e.g. up to three polite emails about one or more meritless complaints), this is likely to be temporary. More frequent or more abusive communications are more likely to lead to permanent measures.

To ensure that disputes are dealt with soon after they arise, you agree that regardless of any statute or law to the contrary, any claim or cause of action you might have arising out of or related to use of our services or these Terms of Use must be filed within the applicable statute of limitations or, if earlier, one (1) year after the pertinent facts underlying such claim or cause of action could have been discovered with reasonable diligence (or be forever barred).

Marketing Company Mediations As described in section 4 of these Terms of Use, you agree to resolve violations of the Paid Contributions without Disclosure in a Marketing Company Mediation at the Foundation's discretion. Marketing Company Mediations are binding mediations where, at the end of either a half or full day session, any disputed items that remain unresolved will be decided by the mediator in a legally binding decision. They will be conducted in meetings by teleconference or videoconference. If an in-person meeting is required, then the Marketing Company Mediation will take place in San Francisco County, California. The parties will split all fees and expenses related to the mediation/arbitration equally.

You agree, as part of a Marketing Company Mediation, to cooperate with the Foundation, including by timely providing any documentation in your possession relating to your undisclosed paid editing activities including the accounts used, articles affected, and clients who purchased such services.

Marketing Company Mediations are subject to and governed by the Federal Arbitration Act to the extent that the mediator becomes an arbitrator. The prevailing party shall be entitled to recover its attorneys' fees (including all fees necessary to determine the applicability of the Marketing Company Mediation and to enforce the binding result) and all costs relating to the investigation and enforcement of its rights. A party may be deemed "prevailing" even if it is not successful on every claim asserted.

If for some reason the entirety of these Marketing Company Mediation requirements are found to be unenforceable, you agree to resolve any disputes as described in the beginning of this section.

We are not responsible for the content, data, or actions of third parties, and you release us, our directors, officers, employees, and agents from any claims and damages, known and unknown, arising out of or in any way connected with any claim you have against any such third parties. No advice or information, whether oral or written, obtained by you from us or through or from our services creates any warranty not expressly stated in these Terms of Use.

Any material downloaded or otherwise obtained through your use of our services is done at your own discretion and risk, and you will be solely responsible for any damage to your computer system or loss of data that results from the download of any such material. You agree that we have no responsibility or liability for the deletion of, or the failure to store or to transmit, any content or communication maintained by the service. We retain the right to create limits on use and storage at our sole discretion at any time with or without notice. Some states or jurisdictions do not allow the types of disclaimers in this section, so they may not apply to you either in part or in full depending on the law.

Because it may be necessary to modify these Terms of Use from time to time, we will provide notice of such modifications and the opportunity to comment via the Project websites, and via a notification on WikimediaAnnounce-l. However, we ask that you please periodically review the most up-to-date version of these Terms of Use. Your continued use of our services after the new Terms of Use become official following the notice and review period constitutes an acceptance of these Terms of Use on your part. For the protection of the Wikimedia Foundation and other users like yourself, if you do not agree with our Terms of Use, you cannot use our services.

You agree that we may provide you with notices, including those regarding changes to the Terms of Use, by email, regular mail, or postings on the Projects or Project Websites.

If in any circumstance, we do not apply or enforce any provision of these Terms of Use, it is not a waiver of that provision.

You understand that, unless otherwise agreed to in writing by us, you have no expectation of compensation for any activity, contribution, or idea that you provide to us, the community, or the Projects or Project editions.

Notwithstanding any provision to the contrary in these Terms of Use, we (the Wikimedia Foundation) and you agree not to modify the applicable terms and requirements of any free license that is employed on the Projects or Project editions when such free license is authorized by these Terms of Use.

These Terms of Use were written in English (U.S.). While we hope that translations of these Terms of Use are accurate, in the event of any differences in meaning between the original English version and a translation, the original English version takes precedence.

If any provision or part of a provision of these Terms of Use is found unlawful, void, or unenforceable, that provision or part of the provision is deemed severable from these Terms of Use and will be enforced to the maximum extent permissible, and all other provisions of these Terms of Use will remain in full force and effect.

These Terms of Use went into effect on June 7, 2023. Previous versions of the terms:

• Terms of Use (2014–2023): effective from June 16, 2014, until June 7, 2023
• Terms of Use (2012–2014): effective from May 24, 2012, until June 16, 2014
• Terms of Use (2009): effective from 2009 until May 24, 2012

Please note that in the event of any differences in meaning or interpretation between the original English version of this content and a translation, the original English version takes precedence