Commons:Project scope/Update 2013/Must be freely licensed or public domain

Scope Review 2013 links: Discuss stage 2 of this review Translation Help your community by translating the review Background Main review page: Background and process FAQ Links to current rules Project Scope Photographs of identifiable people Discussion: Introductory Scope wording Aim of Wikimedia Commons Excluded educational content Discussion: Files Must be a media file Must be an allowable free file format Must be freely licensed or public domain Licensing terms Evidence Precautionary principle 'Realistically useful for an educational purpose' PDF and DjVu formats Discussion: Pages, galleries and categories General pages, galleries and categories User pages, galleries and categories Discussion: Areas of particular concern Censorship "Neutral point of view" Discussion: Identifiable people Lead Legal issues Consent Moral issues Identification Examples Removal requests Other image sources Other proposals Other proposals

Must be freely licensed or public domain

Wikimedia Commons accepts only free content, in other words files that are either freely licensed or which are in the public domain. A file is considered public domain if either all copyright has expired or if the copyright owner(s) has voluntarily placed the content of the file into the public domain by irrevocably renouncing all copyright. A file which is ineligible for copyright protection is also considered public domain.

Any file hosted here must normally be freely licensed or public domain according to both the law of the United States and according to the law of the source country, if different: see Commons:Licensing.