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Wikipedia.
Additional Links: Wikipedia: CopyrightsThe goal of Wikipedia is to create an information source in an encyclopedia format that is freely available. The license we use grants free access to our content in the same sense as free software is licensed freely. That is to say, Wikipedia content can be copied, modified, and redistributed so long as the new version grants the same freedoms to others and acknowledges the authors of the Wikipedia article used (a direct link back to the article satisfies our author credit requirement). Wikipedia articles therefore will remain free forever and can be used by anybody subject to certain restrictions, most of which serve to ensure that freedom. To fulfill the above goals, the text contained in Wikipedia is licensed to the public under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). The full text of this license is at Wikipedia:Text of the GNU Free Documentation License.
The text of the GFDL is the only legally binding document; what follows is our interpretation of the GFDL: the rights and obligations of users and contributors. IMPORTANT: If you want to use content from Wikipedia, first read the Users' rights and obligations section. You should then read the GNU Free Documentation License. Users' rights and obligationsIf you want to use Wikipedia materials in your own books/articles/web sites or other publications, you can do so, but you have to follow the GFDL. If you are simply duplicating the Wikipedia article, you must follow section 2 of the GFDL on verbatim copying, as discussed at wikipedia:verbatim copying. If you create a derivative version by changing or adding content, this entails the following:
The latter two obligations can be fulfilled in part by providing a conspicuous direct link back to the Wikipedia article hosted on this website. You also need to provide access to a transparent copy of the new text.
Example noticeAn example notice, which complies correctly with the GFDL, for an article that uses the Wikipedia article Foo might read as follows:
("Foo" and the Wikipedia URL must of course be substituted accordingly.) Alternatively you can distribute your copy of Foo along with a copy of the GFDL (as explained in the text) and list at least five (or all if fewer than five) principal authors on the title page (or top of the document).
Fair use materials and special requirementsOccasionally, Wikipedia articles may include images, sounds, or text quotes used under the U.S. Copyright law "fair use" doctrine. In this case, the material should be identified as from an external source (on the image description page, or history page, as appropriate). As "fair use" is specific to the use that you contemplate it is best if your describe the fair use rationale for such specific use either in hidden text in the article or on the image description page. Remember what is fair use for Wikipedia may not be considered a fair use for your intended use of the content in another context. For example, if we include an image under fair use, you must ensure that your use of the article also qualifies for fair use (this might not be the case, for example, if you were using a Wikipedia article for a commercial use that would otherwise be allowed by the GFDL and the fair use would not be allowed under that commerical use). Wikipedia does use some text under licenses that are compatible with the GFDL but may require additional terms that we do not require for original Wikipedia text (such as including Invariant Sections, Front-Cover Texts, or Back-Cover Texts). When using these materials, you have to include those invariant sections verbatim.
Image guidelinesImages and photographs, like written works, are subject to copyright. Someone owns them unless they have been explictly placed in the public domain. Images on the internet need to be licensed directly from the copyright holder or someone able to license on their behalf. In some cases, fair use guidelines may allow a photograph to be used.
TaggingImage description pages can be tagged with a special tag to indicate the legal status of the images. It is unclear what should happen if different images have been uploaded with different copyright statuses.
Original work by Wikipedia editorAwesome. You rock!
Photographs of old works of artAdd guidelines here. examples: Mona Lisa, Michelangelo's David
Famous photographsAdd guidelines here. examples: the Hindenburg disaster, Charles Lindbergh, etc.
Government photographsThe United States government cannot own copyright, but even so, not all photographs on .gov and .mil sites are public domain. And governments outside the US often do retain copyright (for example, Crown Copyright in the United Kingdom). Also, most state governments in the United States do not place their work into the public domain and do in fact own the copyright to their work. Please be careful to check ownership information before copying.
Celebrity photographsThis is based on the image guidelines at IMDB, so it especially applies to celebrity photographs, but also can apply to other pictures. Legitimate photographs generally come from three different places with permission.
Contributors' rights and obligationsIf you contribute material to Wikipedia, you thereby license it to the public under the GFDL (with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts). In order to contribute, you therefore must be in a position to grant this license, which means that either
In the first case, you retain copyright to your materials. You can later republish and relicense them in any way you like. However, you can never retract the GFDL license for the versions you placed here: that material will remain under GFDL forever. In the second case, if you incorporate external GFDL materials, as a requirement of the GFDL, you need to acknowledge the authorship and provide a link back to the network location of the original copy. If the original copy required invariant sections, you have to incorporate those into the Wikipedia article; it is however very desirable to replace GFDL texts with invariant sections by original content without invariant sections whenever possible.
Using copyrighted work from othersIf you use part of a copyrighted work under "fair use", or if you obtain special permission to use a copyrighted work from the copyright holder under the terms of our license, you must make a note of that fact (along with names and dates). It is our goal to be able to freely redistribute as much of Wikipedia's material as possible, so original images and sound files licensed under the GFDL or in the public domain are greatly preferred to copyrighted media files used under fair use. See Wikipedia:Boilerplate request for permission for a form letter asking a copyright holder to grant us a license to use their work under terms of the GFDL. Never use materials that infringe the copyrights of others. This could create legal liabilities and seriously hurt the project. If in doubt, write it yourself. Note that copyright law governs the creative expression of ideas, not the ideas or information themselves. Therefore, it is perfectly legal to read an encyclopedia article or other work, reformulate it in your own words, and submit it to Wikipedia. (See plagiarism and fair use for discussions of how much reformulation is necessary in a general context.)
Linking to copyrighted worksLinking to copyrighted works is usually not a problem, as long as you have made a reasonable effort to determine that the page in question is not violating someone else's copyright. If it is, please do not link to the page. Whether such a link is contributory infringement is currently being debated in the courts, but in any case, linking to a site that illegally distributes someone else's work sheds a bad light on us.
If you find a copyright infringementIt is not the job of rank-and-file Wikipedians to police every article for possible copyright infringement, but if you suspect one, you should at the very least bring up the issue on that page's talk page. Others can then examine the situation and take action if needed. The most helpful piece of information you can provide is a URL or other reference to what you believe may be the source of the text. Some cases will be false alarms. For example, if the contributor was in fact the author of the text that is published elsewhere under different terms, that does not affect their right to post it here under the GFDL. Also, sometimes you will find text elsewhere on the Web that was copied from Wikipedia. In both of these cases, it is a good idea to make a note in the talk page to discourage such false alarms in the future. If some of the content of a page really is an infringement, then the infringing content should be removed, and a note to that effect should be made on the talk page, along with the original source. If the author's permission is obtained later, the text can be restored. If all of the content of a page is a suspected copyright infringement, then the page should be listed it on Wikipedia:Possible copyright infringements and the content of the article replaced by the standard notice which you can find there. If, after a week, the page still appears to be a copyright infringment, then it may be deleted following the procedures on the votes page. In extreme cases of contributors continuing to post copyrighted material after appropriate warnings, such users may be blocked from editing to protect the project.
If you are the owner of Wikipedia-hosted content being used without your permissionIf you are the owner of content that is being used on Wikipedia without your permission, then you may request the page be immediately removed from Wikipedia by following this link. You can also contact our Designated agent to have it permanently removed, but it may take up to a week for the page to be deleted that way (you may also blank the page but the text will still be in the page history). Either way, we will, of course, need some evidence to support your claim of ownership.
Wikipedia: Text of the GNU Free Documentation LicenseThe GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) is a copyleft license for free content, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU project. The official text of version 1.2 of the license text can be found at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html. The license is designed for software documentation and other reference and instructional materials. It stipulates that any copy of the material, even if modified, carry the same license. Those copies may be sold but, if produced in quantity, have to be made available in a format which facilitates further editing. Wikipedia is the largest documentation project to use this license. The Debian-legal group considers that the GFDL is "non-free", since it fails the Debian Free Software Guidelines [1] [2].
Secondary SectionsThe license explicitly separates any kind of "Document" from "Secondary Sections", which may not be integrated with the Document, but exist as front-matter materials or appendices. Secondary sections can contain information regarding the author's or publisher's relationship to the subject matter, but not any subject matter itself. While the Document itself is wholly editable, and is essentially covered by a license equivalent to (but bothways incompatible with) the GNU General Public License, some of the secondary sections have various restrictions designed primarily to deal with proper attribution to previous authors. Specifically, the authors of prior versions have to be acknowledged and certain "invariant sections" specified by the original author and dealing with his or her relationship to the subject matter may not be changed. If the material is modified, its title has to be changed (unless the prior authors give permission to retain the title). The license also has provisions for the handling of front-cover and back-cover texts of books, as well as for "History", "Acknowledgements", "Dedications" and "Endorsements" sections.
Using the GFDLFor a document to be covered by the GFDL, one must include a specific copyright and license notice.
Wikipedia and GFDLAll Wikipedia articles are licensed to the public under the GNU Free Documentation License. See Wikipedia:Copyrights for the details. The local copy of the license, as required by the terms of the GFDL, is at Wikipedia:Text of the GNU Free Documentation License.
Materials for which commercial redistribution is prohibitedMaterials for which commercial redistribution is prohibited can not be used in a GFDL-licensed document, e.g. a Wikipedia article, because the license does not exclude commercial re-use. However in some specific cases, commercial re-uses may be fair use and in that case such materials do not need to be licensed to fall within the GFDL if such fair use is covered by all potential subsequent uses. One good example of such liberal and commercial fair use is parody.
Wikipedia: Text of the GNU Free Documentation LicenseVersion 1.2, November 2002 Copyright (C) 2000,2001,2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed. 0. PREAMBLEThe purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others. This License is a kind of "copyleft", which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software. We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free software, because free software needs free documentation: a free program should come with manuals providing the same freedoms that the software does. But this License is not limited to software manuals; it can be used for any textual work, regardless of subject matter or whether it is published as a printed book. We recommend this License principally for works whose purpose is instruction or reference.
1. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONSThis License applies to any manual or other work, in any medium, that contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed under the terms of this License. Such a notice grants a world-wide, royalty-free license, unlimited in duration, to use that work under the conditions stated herein. The "Document", below, refers to any such manual or work. Any member of the public is a licensee, and is addressed as "you". You accept the license if you copy, modify or distribute the work in a way requiring permission under copyright law. A "Modified Version" of the Document means any work containing the Document or a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with modifications and/or translated into another language. A "Secondary Section" is a named appendix or a front-matter section of the Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or authors of the Document to the Document's overall subject (or to related matters) and contains nothing that could fall directly within that overall subject. (Thus, if the Document is in part a textbook of mathematics, a Secondary Section may not explain any mathematics.) The relationship could be a matter of historical connection with the subject or with related matters, or of legal, commercial, philosophical, ethical or political position regarding them. The "Invariant Sections" are certain Secondary Sections whose titles are designated, as being those of Invariant Sections, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License. If a section does not fit the above definition of Secondary then it is not allowed to be designated as Invariant. The Document may contain zero Invariant Sections. If the Document does not identify any Invariant Sections then there are none. The "Cover Texts" are certain short passages of text that are listed, as Front-Cover Texts or Back-Cover Texts, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License. A Front-Cover Text may be at most 5 words, and a Back-Cover Text may be at most 25 words. A "Transparent" copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy, represented in a format whose specification is available to the general public, that is suitable for revising the document straightforwardly with generic text editors or (for images composed of pixels) generic paint programs or (for drawings) some widely available drawing editor, and that is suitable for input to text formatters or for automatic translation to a variety of formats suitable for input to text formatters. A copy made in an otherwise Transparent file format whose markup, or absence of markup, has been arranged to thwart or discourage subsequent modification by readers is not Transparent. An image format is not Transparent if used for any substantial amount of text. A copy that is not "Transparent" is called "Opaque". Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain ASCII without markup, Texinfo input format, LaTeX input format, SGML or XML using a publicly available DTD, and standard-conforming simple HTML, PostScript or PDF designed for human modification. Examples of transparent image formats include PNG, XCF and JPG. Opaque formats include proprietary formats that can be read and edited only by proprietary word processors, SGML or XML for which the DTD and/or processing tools are not generally available, and the machine-generated HTML, PostScript or PDF produced by some word processors for output purposes only. The "Title Page" means, for a printed book, the title page itself, plus such following pages as are needed to hold, legibly, the material this License requires to appear in the title page. For works in formats which do not have any title page as such, "Title Page" means the text near the most prominent appearance of the work's title, preceding the beginning of the body of the text. A section "Entitled XYZ" means a named subunit of the Document whose title either is precisely XYZ or contains XYZ in parentheses following text that translates XYZ in another language. (Here XYZ stands for a specific section name mentioned below, such as "Acknowledgements", "Dedications", "Endorsements", or "History".) To "Preserve the Title" of such a section when you modify the Document means that it remains a section "Entitled XYZ" according to this definition. The Document may include Warranty Disclaimers next to the notice which states that this License applies to the Document. These Warranty Disclaimers are considered to be included by reference in this License, but only as regards disclaiming warranties: any other implication that these Warranty Disclaimers may have is void and has no effect on the meaning of this License.
2. VERBATIM COPYINGYou may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and the license notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced in all copies, and that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License. You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. However, you may accept compensation in exchange for copies. If you distribute a large enough number of copies you must also follow the conditions in section 3. You may also lend copies, under the same conditions stated above, and you may publicly display copies.
3. COPYING IN QUANTITYIf you publish printed copies (or copies in media that commonly have printed covers) of the Document, numbering more than 100, and the Document's license notice requires Cover Texts, you must enclose the copies in covers that carry, clearly and legibly, all these Cover Texts: Front-Cover Texts on the front cover, and Back-Cover Texts on the back cover. Both covers must also clearly and legibly identify you as the publisher of these copies. The front cover must present the full title with all words of the title equally prominent and visible. You may add other material on the covers in addition. Copying with changes limited to the covers, as long as they preserve the title of the Document and satisfy these conditions, can be treated as verbatim copying in other respects. If the required texts for either cover are too voluminous to fit legibly, you should put the first ones listed (as many as fit reasonably) on the actual cover, and continue the rest onto adjacent pages. If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more than 100, you must either include a machine-readable Transparent copy along with each Opaque copy, or state in or with each Opaque copy a computer-network location from which the general network-using public has access to download using public-standard network protocols a complete Transparent copy of the Document, free of added material. If you use the latter option, you must take reasonably prudent steps, when you begin distribution of Opaque copies in quantity, to ensure that this Transparent copy will remain thus accessible at the stated location until at least one year after the last time you distribute an Opaque copy (directly or through your agents or retailers) of that edition to the public. It is requested, but not required, that you contact the authors of the Document well before redistributing any large number of copies, to give them a chance to provide you with an updated version of the Document.
4. MODIFICATIONSYou may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely this License, with the Modified Version filling the role of the Document, thus licensing distribution and modification of the Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of it. In addition, you must do these things in the Modified Version:
You may add a section Entitled "Endorsements", provided it contains nothing but endorsements of your Modified Version by various parties--for example, statements of peer review or that the text has been approved by an organization as the authoritative definition of a standard. You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front-Cover Text, and a passage of up to 25 words as a Back-Cover Text, to the end of the list of Cover Texts in the Modified Version. Only one passage of Front-Cover Text and one of Back-Cover Text may be added by (or through arrangements made by) any one entity. If the Document already includes a cover text for the same cover, previously added by you or by arrangement made by the same entity you are acting on behalf of, you may not add another; but you may replace the old one, on explicit permission from the previous publisher that added the old one. The author(s) and publisher(s) of the Document do not by this License give permission to use their names for publicity for or to assert or imply endorsement of any Modified Version.
5. COMBINING DOCUMENTSYou may combine the Document with other documents released under this License, under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified versions, provided that you include in the combination all of the Invariant Sections of all of the original documents, unmodified, and list them all as Invariant Sections of your combined work in its license notice, and that you preserve all their Warranty Disclaimers. The combined work need only contain one copy of this License, and multiple identical Invariant Sections may be replaced with a single copy. If there are multiple Invariant Sections with the same name but different contents, make the title of each such section unique by adding at the end of it, in parentheses, the name of the original author or publisher of that section if known, or else a unique number. Make the same adjustment to the section titles in the list of Invariant Sections in the license notice of the combined work. In the combination, you must combine any sections Entitled "History" in the various original documents, forming one section Entitled "History"; likewise combine any sections Entitled "Acknowledgements", and any sections Entitled "Dedications". You must delete all sections Entitled "Endorsements."
6. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTSYou may make a collection consisting of the Document and other documents released under this License, and replace the individual copies of this License in the various documents with a single copy that is included in the collection, provided that you follow the rules of this License for verbatim copying of each of the documents in all other respects. You may extract a single document from such a collection, and distribute it individually under this License, provided you insert a copy of this License into the extracted document, and follow this License in all other respects regarding verbatim copying of that document.
7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKSA compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an "aggregate" if the copyright resulting from the compilation is not used to limit the legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit. When the Document is included in an aggregate, this License does not apply to the other works in the aggregate which are not themselves derivative works of the Document. If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these copies of the Document, then if the Document is less than one half of the entire aggregate, the Document's Cover Texts may be placed on covers that bracket the Document within the aggregate, or the electronic equivalent of covers if the Document is in electronic form. Otherwise they must appear on printed covers that bracket the whole aggregate.
8. TRANSLATIONTranslation is considered a kind of modification, so you may distribute translations of the Document under the terms of section 4. Replacing Invariant Sections with translations requires special permission from their copyright holders, but you may include translations of some or all Invariant Sections in addition to the original versions of these Invariant Sections. You may include a translation of this License, and all the license notices in the Document, and any Warranty Disclaimers, provided that you also include the original English version of this License and the original versions of those notices and disclaimers. In case of a disagreement between the translation and the original version of this License or a notice or disclaimer, the original version will prevail. If a section in the Document is Entitled "Acknowledgements", "Dedications", or "History", the requirement (section 4) to Preserve its Title (section 1) will typically require changing the actual title.
9. TERMINATIONYou may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except as expressly provided for under this License. Any other attempt to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Document is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.
10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSEThe Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU Free Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns. See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/. Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this License "or any later version" applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that specified version or of any later version that has been published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the Document does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. CopyleftCopyleft is the application of copyright law to ensure public freedom to manipulate, improve, and redistribute a work of authorship and all derivative works. In copyleft, the copyright holder grants an irrevocable license to the recipient of a copy, permitting the redistribution (including sale) of possibly modified further copies, under the condition that all those copies carry the same license and are made available in a form which facilitates modification. Copyleft is one of the key features in free software/open source licences, and is the licenses' legal framework to ensure that derivatives of the licensed work stay free/open. If the licensee fails to distribute derivative works under the same license he will face legal consequences - the license is terminated, leaving the licensee without permission to copy, distribute, display publicly, or prepare derivative works of the software. Other free software licenses, such as those used by the BSD operating systems, the X Window System and the Apache web server, are not copyleft licenses because they do not require the licensee to distribute derivative works under the same license. A longstanding issue of debate is which class of license provides a larger degree of freedom. This debate hinges on complex issues such as the definition of freedom and whose freedoms are more important. It is sometimes argued that the copyleft licenses attempt to maximize the freedom of all potential recipients in the future, while non-copyleft free software licenses maximize the freedom of the initial recipient. The copyleft concept was invented by Richard Stallman in 1984 for the distribution of computer software, although it is now also being used for other types of material. The term "copyleft" came from a message contained in Tiny BASIC, a free distributed version of Basic written by Dr. Wang in the late 70's. The program listing contained the following phrases "All Wrongs reserved" and "CopyLeft", Free software licenses that use copyleft include the GNU General Public License, the GNU Lesser General Public License, the Mozilla Public License, and the Q Public License. Copyleft licenses for materials other than software include the Open Content License, and the GNU Free Documentation License. The latter is being used for the content of Wikipedia. The Free Art license is a license that can be applied to any work of art. Copyleft licenses are sometimes called viral copyright licenses because any works derived from a copylefted work must themselves be copylefted. This term is considered derogatory, as it compares copylefted works to harmful computer viruses. However, the analogy between copyleft and computer viruses is not close; as advocates of copyleft point out, computer viruses infect computers without the awareness of the user, whereas the copyleft actually grants the user certain permissions to distribute modified programs, which is otherwise not allowed under copyright law or by most proprietary licenses. Furthermore, copyright itself would be "viral" in this sense, since any works derived from a copyrighted work must have permission from and obey any conditions set by the original copyright holder. The view that copyleft licenses are viral is mainly supported by Microsoft. They say that if your product uses GPLed code, your product automatically escapes your control, becomes GPLed right away and you can't do anything about it. This is not true since the GPL (and all other copyleft licenses) are licenses and not contracts. To make it clear, let's compare it to a fishing license : - You accept the license by buying it, since you can't legally fish otherwise. - You accept the copyleft license by distributing the software since you can't distribute it otherwise. - If you break the terms of the fishing license (fishing more than your quota, for example), you can lose it and be fined. The only thing that can be claimed from you is money. - If you break the term of the copyleft license, you can be fined, pay damages to the copyright holder of the misused code and attorney fees. Then, you must make a choice : either remove the code from your software and write your own (since you still have no right to use it) or make your software copyleft (and have the right to use it). Microsoft, in describing the GPL as a "viral license" may also be referring to an idea that as any new programmer decides to release something new with the GPL this seems to create a postive network effect, whereby gradually over time there will be an ever expanding amount of copylefted code which is easy to reuse in newer more advanced programs, while people working on non copyleft programs will have to "reinvent the wheel" on their own programs. The concept of copyleft arose when Stallman was working on a Lisp interpreter. Symbolics asked to use the Lisp interpreter, and Stallman agreed to supply them with a public domain version of his work. Symbolics extended and improved the Lisp interpreter, but when Stallman wanted access to the improvements that Symbolics had made to his interpreter, Symbolics refused. Stallman then proceeded to create a software license that would prevent this behavior. Copyleft-like ideas are increasingly being suggested for patents, such as open patent pools that allow royalty-free use of patents contributed to the pool under certain conditions (such as surrendering the right to apply for new patents that are not contributed to the pool). Copyleft is also starting to inspire the arts with movements like the Libre_Society and open-source record_labels emerging. Wikipedia: Verbatim CopyingWikipedia does not give legal advice. See also wikipedia:copyrights There are two means to reuse Wikipedia articles:
For the purposes of this discussion, Wikipedia is considered to be a Collection of Documents, where each Document comprises:
Other content, such as the sidebar links, the Wikipedia logo, and so forth, are not considered part of the Document, though you may consider them to be "cover pages" for the Document. An article's talk page is not considered part of the Document. A verbatim copy of a Wikipedia Document is copying that qualifies under section 2 (verbatim copying) of the GFDL.
Webpage copiesFor verbatim copying on the internet (IE, setting up mirrors of Wikipedia), the following restrictions apply:
TitleYou may not change the Title. In this document, the title is Wikipedia:Verbatim copying.
Title PageThe "Title Page" is the text just below the title, before the start of the article proper. This is currently "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia", but was previously (briefly) "Find out how you can help support Wikipedia's phenomenal growth", etc. Where Wikipedia has imported text from a third party, such as Nupedia, the Title Page may additionally extend to some italicised block text immediately after the title.
Main TextYou may not add, remove, or change any content or links within the Main Text itself, except:
Here are the legally questionable bits:
History SubunitAs the GFDL was never intended for wiki articles, things get complicated. Some allege that the "page history" link is the history subunit and that you should include this "by reference" by linking to it. However, the "page history" is not in the correct format for the GFDL, is missing information that would be required under the GFDL if it were the history subunit, and is not "Entitled" History. Further, there has been no official declaration from either Bomis or the Wikimedia foundation that the "page history" is intended to represent the history subunit. As a result, some allege that you may ignore the "page history" for the purposes of verbatim copying. If the text includes a section Entitled "History", then you should of course copy that along with the rest of the body text.
License and Copyright StatementHere you have more freedom, chiefly because Wikipedia's current License and Copyright Statement is itself questionable. However:
Aggregation and cover pagesUnder section 7 (aggregation with independant works) you may aggregate the Document with other separate and independent documents or works. There are two forms of aggregation worth noting:
The use of embedding as a form of aggregation is dubious because it could equally be considered to be the creation of a derivative work. You can support the "aggregation" interpretation by designing your webpage to logically seperate the verbatim copy of the Wikipedia page from the rest of your content, by use of colour, lines, and other markup. You could also consider brief headers and footers on a HTML page to be "cover pages", as discussed in section 3, though again this is legally questionable. The GFDL states that "copying with changes limited to the covers [...] can be treated as verbatim copying [...]". If you aggregate Wikipedia content with your own content, you may claim a compilation copyright for the whole. This means that others cannot copy the whole without your permission. The GFDL forbids you from using the compilation copyright to restrict the rights of users of the Wikipedia parts of your aggregation.
Printable copiesIf you distribute a Wikipedia article in printed form, you cannot "link" to a local copy of the GFDL. Instead, you must additionally print out a copy of Wikipedia:Text of the GNU Free Documentation License for each copy of the Wikipedia article you distribute, and distribute them together. We recommend you distribute the "printable version" of the article, and the text of the GFDL. If you are distributing a selection of Wikipedia articles in printed form, you must include one copy of the GFDL in each selection. As with webpage copying, there are potential issues to do with the "page history", which some allege counts as the history subunit. However, printing the entire page history would be unreasonable, so we recommend that you do not do so.
Copying in quantityIf you are copying more than 100 copies, then section 3 (copying in quantity) comes into play. Chiefly this means that you must include either:
Relying on Wikipedia is legally questionable because pages on Wikipedia may be deleted from public view, or Wikipedia as a whole may be taken down for legal or financial reasons. However, it is clearly the easiest solution. If you choose not to rely on Wikipedia, download the database, strip it of any content that you are not redistributing, and either distribute it with your copies, or else host it on a webserver for a year. Alternatively, if you are only copying a handful of pages, it may be easier to just host the HTML of the pages you are copying.
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