In the digital age, Wikipedia is one of the world’s largest open knowledge repositories, where users can search for information with many illustrative images. Because of this convenience, many people often assume that images on Wikipedia are free and can be used freely, even for commercial purposes. So, do you need permission to take photos from Wikipedia for commercial use? The following VCD article will help you.
1. What is the commercial purpose in copyright?
Copyright is the right of an organization or individual to a work they have created or own, as explained in Clause 2, Article 4 of the 2005 Intellectual Property Law (amended 2009 Intellectual Property Law). In which, copyright to a work is formed from personal rights and property rights.
The term “commercial purpose” is used a lot in the provisions of intellectual property law in general and copyright law in particular. Simply put, “commercial purpose” is an act aimed at generating economic profit or other benefits. This activity includes acts such as buying, selling, distributing, providing services, investing, and other transactions with the goal of making a profit from the work. In most cases, using a work for commercial purposes requires permission and remuneration to the copyright owner, except in certain cases permitted by law.
2. Do you need permission to take photos from Wikipedia for commercial use?
According to the provisions of Article 4 of the current Intellectual Property Law: photographic works, works of applied art, video recordings, etc. are objects protected by copyright and related rights. Any use of a work must comply with the provisions on personal rights and property rights of the author and owner, except for cases falling under the limitations of copyright and related rights stipulated in Article 25, Article 32, Article 33 of this Law.
For images on Wikipedia, these works are uploaded by the user community under different license regimes, mainly Creative Commons (CC) or public domain (Public Domain). Each type of license stipulates its own conditions of use, including conditions related to commercial use.
- Public domain (Public Domain): Works whose protection period has expired or whose author/owner voluntarily renounced their rights. These works can be used for commercial purposes without permission.
- Creative Commons (CC) license: includes 4 elements:
- Attribution (BY): this is a mandatory element for all CC licenses.
- Non-commercial (NC): do not use the work for commercial purposes
- No Derivative (ND): do not allow modification of the original work.
- ShareAlike (SA): derivative works must carry the same license as the original work.
Based on 4 optional factors, the Creative Commons system has 7 standard licenses, including:
CC zero (CC0): Special license, content is in the public domain, licensees are allowed to do anything with that work.
CC – attribution (CC BY): allows sharing (copying, redistributing content in any medium or format), customization (mixing, transforming and building on that work for any purpose, including commercialization), as long as the author is properly credited.
CC – Attribution – Share Alike (CC BY-SA): Allowed to share, adapt, commercialize, as long as the author is properly credited; derivative works, if any, must have the same license as the original work.
CC – Attribution – Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC): Allowed to share, adapt, but not allowed to use the work for commercial purposes, must always acknowledge the correct credit to the author when using that product.
CC – Attribution – Non-Commercial – Share Alike (CC BY – NC – SA): Allowed to share, adapt, but not allowed to use for commercial purposes, derivative works, if any, must have the same license as the original work, must always acknowledge the correct credit to the author when using that product.
CC – Attribution – No Derivatives (CC BY – ND): Allowed to share (for commercial or non-commercial purposes), but not allowed to modify, must always acknowledge the correct credit to the author when using that product.
CC – Attribution – Non-commercial – No derivatives (CC BY – NC – ND): allowed to share, but not to use for commercial purposes, not to modify the work, must always acknowledge the author when using that product.
Therefore, the work can be exploited in which:
Carrying a Creative Commons license that allows commercial use (CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-ND): Users have the right to exploit for commercial purposes, provided that the author’s name, origin and compliance with the specific conditions of each type of license are clearly stated.
Carrying a restricted license (CC BY-NC or All Rights Reserved): Users are only allowed to exploit non-commercially; in case of commercial use, written consent from the author or copyright owner is required.
Incolusion, taking images from Wikipedia for commercial use is not automatically allowed but must be based on the specific license attached to the work.
Above is the article “Is permission required to use images from Wikipedia for commercial purposes?” that VCD sent to you. We hope this article is useful to you.
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