Wikibooks:Fair use policy

Fair Use of both text and images is a legal grey area where you must use judgement and personal opinion as to if something qualifies as fair-use or not.

What is Fair Use

Generally the term fair use applies to personal use of copyrighted material. One common example of fair use is to be able to copy music on a vinyl album or compact disc onto your home computer or portable MP3 player. This still doesn't give you permission to share these computer files with your friends, however.

Instructors are also given special permission to copy some materials in limited quantities for direct instructional purposes. This is known as educational fair use and should not be an excuse for material used on Wikibooks.

Problems with Fair use

We suggest you to avoid fair use materials and use them only if you can find a good reason and cannot substitute them. Generally, more and more media is available at Wikimedia Commons - common repository of free media for all Wikimedia Projects and use of Commons should be a normal procedure.

Fair use law is exclusive to United States and coutries with similar law system. In most of European countries works that fall into fair use in the US cannot be used at all or the number of conditions when fair use applies is substantially smaller. When you use fair use images in your book, many people from other countries won't be able to print it.

What is Permitted on Wikibooks

To simplify the process of trying to determine if something qualifies as fair-use here on Wikibooks, only content which meets the following criteria will be allowed to stay on Wikibooks. We are not lawyers here and are not prepared to stay on the leading edge of legal theories and the latest court judgements and case law. The only real alternative is to simply ban fair use content on Wikibooks altogether, which has been done for some Wikimedia projects due to the complex issues involved.

Fair Use Text

Permitted Fair Use on Wikibooks for Text:

• Very short excerpts from a much larger work, usually just a few words or a single sentance or two.

Fair Use Images

Permitted Fair Use on Wikibooks for Images:

• Coat of Arms, Flags, Seals, etc. of administrative entities, political authorities and institutions

  These items are often protected by crown copyright or other similar legal protections, where copyright does not expire.

• Coins, Banknotes, Stamps

  These images should also be resized, partially covered, or otherwise changed to avoid counterfeiting laws.

• Company Logos and trademarks

  Logos are permissible only for modules that are specifically about the company or product whose trademark is being used. Under no condition should endorsement be implied by the use of the logo, which would be an inappropriate use.

• Software Screenshots

What is not accepted on Wikibooks

• Large amount of text copied from other websites
• Images used for decorational purpose

External References about Fair Use

• Article on Wikipedia