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COM:CREDIT
This page is an
essay
; it contains the advice and/or opinions of one or more Commons contributors.
It is
not
a Commons
policy
or
guideline
, and editors are not obliged to follow it. Please update the page as needed, or discuss it on the
talk page
.
The
credit line
or
attribution line
holds information that the author of the work requests all users to include with the work, as a condition of use enforced by the license. Specifically widely used
Creative Commons
CC-BY licenses and GFDL licenses require all users of the work to attribute the author.
Although the term "credit line" is used here, the required attribution need not be specified as a credit line, neither is the format of the attribution specified.
Some works might have specific instructions from the author on how they would like their work to be attributed. Those requests must be honored, as long as they fall within what is required by the license, and should be honored, if reasonable, otherwise. If the author did not give explicit instructions, you must still attribute to the author and the minimal and suggested forms of attribution can be found below.
Credit lines required by license
Creative Commons
CC-BY and CC-BY-SA licenses
According to
Creative Commons
CC BY and CC BY-SA licenses, reusers must attribute the work by providing a credit line.
Section 4b
(
Section 4c
in CC BY-SA 3.0) of full license provides the details. Included below are the most relevant fragments:
If You Distribute
[]
the Work or any Adaptations or Collections, You must, unless a request has been made
[not to]
, keep intact all copyright notices for the Work and provide, reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing:
- (i) the name of the Original Author (or pseudonym, if applicable) if supplied, and/or if the Original Author and/or Licensor designate another party or parties (e.g., a sponsor institute, publishing entity, journal) for attribution ("Attribution Parties") in Licensor's copyright notice, terms of service or by other reasonable means, the name of such party or parties;
- (ii) the title of the Work if supplied;
- (iii) to the extent reasonably practicable, the
URI
, if any, that Licensor specifies to be associated with the Work, unless such URI does not refer to the copyright notice or licensing information for the Work;
In other words, unless author or licensor asks not to be credited, reusers distributing files found at Wikimedia Commons must provide credit line with license and author. Also author might request for credit line to include: other "Attribution Parties" (like
Wikimedia Commons
),
URI
(like
web pages
), or title. Reusers can choose format of the credit line "
reasonable to the medium or means
" as long as all required components are present.
Example
Credit lines
in minimal format:
CC-SA licenses
License
|
Author
|
Source
|
Credit line
|
Notes
|
{{
cc-sa-1.0
}}
|
John Doe
|
Own work
|
CC-SA-1.0
|
Minimum information required by the license
|
Note that attribution in accordance with best practices may be demanded by law in many European countries (cf "moral rights"), regardless of any general waivers such as CC-SA.
CC-PD licenses
CC Licenses not requiring attributions:
{{Cc-zero}}
. Please consider using an optional
courtesy credit line
.
Note that attribution in accordance with best practices may be demanded by law in many European countries (cf "moral rights"), regardless of any general waivers such as CC-zero.
The Free Art Licence considers it vital to announce the image is free and under a copyleft licence, which is linked to (or the URL spelled out in print). This is in addition to information on the author, the title of the work, the date of the work, any other authors contributing to the work and the location of the original work(s). The following format is required:
- [Name of the author, title, date of the work. When applicable, names of authors of the common work and, if possible, where to find the originals]
.
- Copyleft: This is a free work, you can copy, distribute, and modify it under the terms of the
Free Art License
For example:
- "Cherry Blossom Grove on the National Mall"
ⓒ Vcelloho 2009. From
Wikimedia Commons
.
- Copyleft: This is a free work, you can copy, distribute, and modify it under the terms of the
Free Art License
GNU Licenses
License
|
Author
|
Source
|
Credit line
|
Notes
|
{{
self
|cc-by-sa-3.0|GFDL}}
{{
GFDL
|migration=relicense}}
|
John Doe
|
Own work
|
ⓒ John Doe / Wikimedia Commons /
CC-BY-SA-3.0
/
GFDL
|
|
{{
GFDL
}} only (now called {{
GFDL
|migration=opt-out}})
{{GFDL-1.2}}
|
John Doe
|
Own work
|
Copyright (c) John Doe.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".
|
You also have to include
full text
of the license.
|
Courtesy credit lines
Public Domain media do not require a
credit line
or any kind of attribution; however, reusers are encouraged to attribute the author (if known) and inform users that the work was released into the
public domain
. (Public domain works are not under copyright, and thus should typically avoid the use of the ⓒ symbol.) Below are suggested formats for the reusers:
Automatic handling of attribution by reusers
API:Imageinfo does offer image license info with
iiprop=extmetadata
- see for example
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&titles=File:Gull%20portrait%20ca%20usa.jpg&prop=imageinfo&iiprop=metadata%7Ccommonmetadata%7Cextmetadata
with useful data in
Credit
and
AttributionRequired
entries.
See also