Training modules/dashboard/slides/10913-copyright

Copyright

Photo by Tom Murphy VII, CC-BY-SA

Everything on Wikipedia is free to use. That means anything you put on Wikipedia has to be free to share, too. Copyrighted materials, including lengthy passages from books, illustrations, and photographs, don't belong on Wikipedia. This is true even if you cite the material and give proper credit to the author.

The exception is for work that is so old, it's not under copyright anymore — we call this "public domain." Some works are released to the public under a free license. Those are allowed, too.

In those cases, you still have to make sure you cite the source of the information, and show where the author has released it under a free license (that is, link directly to the license).

Note, however, that lengthy quotations usually aren't appropriate, anyway. It's best to paraphrase the information into your own words.