You can offer as many licenses for a file as you want as long as at least one of them meets the criteria for free licenses above. This cartoon demonstrates the utility of including a Creative Commons license. Please read the section about public domain below.įor an explanation of the justification for this licensing policy, see Commons:Licensing/Justifications. See Commons:Derivative works.Ĭommons also allows works that are not protected by copyright (i.e.
Models, masks, toys, and other objects which represent a copyrighted work, such as a cartoon or movie character (rather than just a particular actor, regardless of a specific role).
Scans or reproductive photographs of copyrighted artwork, especially book covers, album/CD covers, etc.
However, screenshots of software under the GPL or a similar free software license are generally considered to be OK.
Media licensed exclusively under non-commercial only licenses (like CC BY-NC-SA) are not accepted either. Wikimedia Commons does not accept fair use justifications: see Commons:Fair use.
If you are a re-user looking for information on how to use Commons content in your own work, see Commons:Reusing content outside Wikimedia. It aims to help uploaders decide whether an image or other media file is acceptable on Wikimedia Commons. This page gives non-lawyers an overview of complicated copyright laws through an example-based tutorial.