Copying material from Wikipedia into organizational website
Dipanwita Kali
(Querist) 04 November 2009
This query is : Resolved
Hello,
I would like to know if contents from wikipedia can be copied as is from wikipedia? Contents can be diagrams, paragraphs.
I got the below information on the internet. But if someone can tell me in layman's terms WHAT EXACTLY NEEDS TO BE DONE TO PROTECT MYSELF FROM COPYRIGHT VIOLATION BEFORE TAKING CONTENT FROM WIKI, it would be great.
Wikipedia's textual content is copyrighted, but you may reuse it under the terms of our licensing requirements, summarized below.
Text in Wikipedia, excluding quotations, has been released under the GNU Free Documentation License (or is in the public domain), and can therefore be reused only if you release any derived work under the GFDL. This requires that, among other things, you attribute the authors and allow others to freely copy your work. (This is a summary, see the licence text for the exact details.)
If you are unwilling or unable to use the GFDL for your work, use of Wikipedia content is unauthorized. Small quotations of Wikipedia content, with its source attributed, may be permissible under the "fair use" clause of U.S. copyright law. See Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia for information about the proper citation of articles. No permission is needed to create a hyperlink to Wikipedia or its articles.
Images used in Wikipedia may have their own, completely independent licensing scheme. Looking at an image's description page by clicking on the image itself should ideally tell you the copyright status of the image. Many images are either in the public domain or licensed under copyleft licenses (such as the GFDL), but many are copyrighted and used on Wikipedia under the "fair use" clause of U.S. copyright law.
