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

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

Precautionary principle

Commons' users aim to build and maintain in good faith a repository of media files which to the best of our knowledge are free or freely-licensed. The precautionary principle is that where there is significant doubt about the freedom of a particular file, it should be deleted.

Also, arguments that amount to "we can get away with it", such as the following, are against Commons' aims:

1. "The copyright owner will not bother to sue or cannot afford to."
2. "The copyright owner will never find out."
3. "The copyright owner will not mind/should be pleased that we have disseminated their work."
4. "Nobody knows who the copyright owner is, so it really doesn’t matter."
5. "The file is obviously common property. It can be found all over the internet and nobody has complained."