MediaWiki:Registered licensing exceptions

In general, all media uploaded to this site are under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license (cc-by-sa).

Exceptions can only be created by project administrators. They should normally be discussed in advance. Valid exceptions are various public domain media and large collections of images that can only be used under a non-commercial license.

There should be no Creative-Commons-Non-commercial template that can then be added to any page!

Public Domain

The first general exception is that some material may be in the Public domain. To mark a media file as being in the public domain, add one of the following templates to the media description page by pasting text like

{{PD-self}}

into the edit window (click on "edit" when viewing the media file in the wiki).

• {{PD-self}} creates:

I, the copyright holder of this work, release this work into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In some countries this may not be legally possible; if so: I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law. Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse

• {{PD-old}} creates:

This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. This applies to Australia, the European Union and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years. You must also include a United States public domain tag to indicate why this work is in the public domain in the United States. Note that a few countries have copyright terms longer than 70 years: Mexico has 100 years, Colombia has 80 years, and Guatemala and Samoa have 75 years, Russia has 74 years for some authors. This image may not be in the public domain in these countries, which moreover do not implement the rule of the shorter term. Côte d'Ivoire has a general copyright term of 99 years and Honduras has 75 years, but they do implement the rule of the shorter term.

This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights.

• {{PD-ineligible}} creates:

This file is ineligible for copyright and therefore in the public domain, because it consists entirely of information that is common property and contains no original authorship.

More such templates may be required over time.

Creative Commons Zero

To explicitly waive ones right and released the work into the public domain (as opposed to stating that the work IS in the public domain). This is especially recommended where the right on the work are doubtful (low originality of simple icons) and are not intended to be pursued, even if they may exist in some legislations.

• {{Cc-zero}} creates:

Creative Commons attribution share-alike non-commercial

In certain situations, large media collections may be uploaded under a cc-by-sa-nc non-commercial license.

We welcome if you want to contribute a large collection of media under a non-commercial license, but because of the high societal costs of the non-commercial license we do not offer it for single file uploads. The non-commercial restriction forbids use by Wikipedias, Wikiversity and many other projects, and is safe to use only for very limited uses and organisations. Especially, contrary to common expectation, non-profit organisations that have any form of income, including membership fees, may expect law suits about using materials dedicated as CC by-nc-sa for advertisement purposes, advertising not only their cause but also their organisation with the goal of convincing people to enter into membership. Therefore there is no general cc-by-sa-nc template for individually uploaded files.

The exceptions should become listed here to be approved:

• Template:Collection of images from Sorbus in Bayern by N. Meyer, L. Meierott, H. Schuwerk and O. Angerer
• Template:Collection of images contributed by Rolf Wißkirchen under CC-by-nc-sa