Wookieepedia:Copyrights

Star Wars, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace; Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones; Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith; Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope; Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back; Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi; the Star Wars Expanded Universe; and all logos, characters, artwork, stories, information, names, and other elements associated thereto, including but not limited to the Death Star and Wookiees, are the sole and exclusive property of Lucasfilm Limited.

Wookieepedia is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Lucasfilm Limited or any of its subsidiaries, employees, or associates. Wookieepedia offers no suggestion that the work presented on this web page is "official" or produced or sanctioned by the owner or any licensees of the aforementioned trademarks. Wookieepedia will take all steps necessary to ensure that any usage of trademarked items in no way confuses the audience of this site as to its origin. Wookieepedia makes no claim to own Star Wars or any of the copyrights or trademarks related to it. Images that are displayed on this site are copyrighted to Lucasfilm Limited or another partner of Lucas Licensing, or to the creator of the image. Visitors may download any pictures displayed on this site for personal use, as long as they are not used for profit, and proper credit is given.

Wookieepedia content
The license Wookieepedia uses grants free access to our content in the same sense as free software is licensed freely. This principle is known as copyleft. That is to say, Wookieepedia 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 Wookieepedia article used (a direct link back to the article satisfies our author credit requirement). Wookieepedia 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 Wookieepedia is licensed to the public under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). The full text of this license is at Text of the GNU Free Documentation License.


 * Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts.
 * A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".
 * Content on Wookieepedia is covered by disclaimers.

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 Wookieepedia, first read the Users' rights and obligations section. You should then read the GNU Free Documentation License.

IMPORTANT: The content licensing of this website does NOT apply to the original works and trademarked names! The Star Wars titles and associated names are the sole property of Lucasfilm Limited. The administrators of Wookieepedia believe that the operation of this website falls under the definition of "fair use" under United States copyright laws.

Users' rights and obligations
If you want to use Wookieepedia 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 Wookieepedia article, you must follow section two 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:
 * your materials in turn have to be licensed under GFDL,
 * you must acknowledge the authorship of the article (section 4B), and
 * you must provide access to the "transparent copy" of the material (section 4J). (The "transparent copy" of a Wookieepedia article is its wiki text.)

You may be able to partially fulfill the latter two obligations by providing a conspicuous direct link back to the Wookieepedia article hosted on this website. You also need to provide access to a transparent copy of the new text. However, please note that the Wikimedia Foundation makes no guarantee to retain authorship information and a transparent copy of articles. Therefore, you are encouraged to provide this authorship information and a transparent copy with your derived works.

Example notice
An example notice, for an article that uses the Wookieepedia article Palpatine might read as follows:


 * This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikicities article "Palpatine".

("Palpatine" and the Wookieepedia URL must of course be substituted accordingly.)

Alternatively you can distribute your copy of "Palpatine" 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 requirements
All original Wookieepedia text is distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License. Occasionally, Wookieepedia articles may include images, sounds, or text quotes used under the U.S. Copyright law "fair use" doctrine. As Wookieepedia intends to be a comprehensive encyclopedia of Star Wars canon, most images used on Wookieepedia will be non-free. In rare instances when non-official images are used, it is preferred that these be obtained under the most free (libre) license (such as the GFDL or public domain) practical.

The material used 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 Wookieepedia 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 Wookieepedia article for a commercial use that would otherwise be allowed by the GFDL and the fair use would not be allowed under that commercial use).

Wookieepedia does use some text under licenses that are compatible with the GFDL but may require additional terms that we do not require for original Wookieepedia 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 guidelines
Images that are displayed at Wookieepedia remain the property of their original creators, and are only included on this website for purposes of illustration under fair use guidelines. Every image has an owner, unless that image has been explicitly placed in the public domain. Unless the original author of the image expressly grants such permission, images do not fall under the scope of the GNU Free Documentation License. In all cases, images must be uploaded to our database rather than linked from other servers (see Inline linking), and must be accompanied by a copyright tag.

Tagging
Image description pages must be tagged with a special tag to indicate the legal status of the images, as described at Image copyright tags. Duplicate images will be erased, with the older image being retained in the case of identical images or the higher quality image being retained in other cases. If the two images have different copyright tags, an administrator will determine the appropriate tag to apply to the remaining image. Untagged images may be deleted by an administrator at any time.

Proper tag format will include: " Subject of image, Name of image source (being a specific movie, book, video game, other official work, a website, or any other medium), and any additional information or links."

Promotional images
This is based on the image guidelines at The Internet Movie Database, so it especially applies to celebrity photographs, but also can apply to other pictures. Legitimate photographs generally come from three different places with permission.


 * 1) The studios, producers, magazine publisher, or media outlet that originally created the image.
 * 2) Agencies that represent the originator of the image or the image creator themself (the latter especially for comic and magazine artists).
 * 3) Submissions from the celebrity himself or herself or a legal representative of the celebrity.

Original images
Wookieepedia intends to be a comprehensive encyclopedia of Star Wars canon, and use of unofficial images is discourages unless it cannot otherwise be avoided. When a fan-created image is used, it is preferable for it to be released under the GFDL like text content on Wookieepedia.

Fair use images
All other image postings are assumed to be allowed under fair use, and must be tagged as such.

Contributors' rights and obligations
If you contribute material to Wookieepedia, 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
 * you own the copyright to the material, for instance because you produced it yourself, or
 * you acquired the material from a source that allows the licensing under GFDL, for instance because the material is in the public domain or is itself published under GFDL.

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 Wookieepedia 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 others
If 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 Wookieepedia'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 Wookieepedia. (See plagiarism and fair use for discussions of how much reformulation is necessary in a general context.)

Linking to copyrighted works
Linking 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 infringement
It is not the job of rank-and-file Wookieepedians 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 Wookieepedia. 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 on Copyright problems 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 infringement, 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 Wookieepedia-hosted content being used without your permission
If you are the owner of content that is being used on Wookieepedia without your permission, then you may request the page be immediately removed. See Copyright problems, or contact an administrator directly. If you feel the situation is serious enough to warrant it, you may also contact our host's 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). In any case, please provide the name of a person, along with their mailing address and e-mail address if possible, for a reply or follow-up letters, and we will, of course, need some evidence to support your claim of ownership.

This page is a derivative work from Wikipedia:Copyrights incorporating elements of Memory Alpha:Copyrights.