Wikipedia:Standard license violation letter

Note: All text on this page is dedicated by its authors to the public domain

All text on this page is dedicated by its authors to the public domain.

The model letters set out below are meant to be sent to web sites (and their service providers) in order to explain the requirements of the CC-BY-SA and GFDL, and to urge compliance. This page is part of Wikipedia:Mirrors and Forks. The original letters on this page were based on User:MyRedDice/Abacci Letter. Prior to sending out one of these letter please read the Non-compliance process guideline at Wikipedia's Mirrors and forks. A general consensus supports this process.

Note:

• These letters are intended for material that is dually licensed under CC-BY-SA and GFDL, as most of Wikipedia's articles are (since June 15, 2009). If an article is only licensed under CC-BY-SA (look at the footer and talk page of the article), you should instead send a Standard CC-BY-SA violation letter.

Warning:

• You can only file a lawsuit (or file a DMCA take down notice) if you hold a significant copyright interest in one or more articles.

To Website Owners

Letters for website that acknowledges Wikipedia as a source

Dear <WEBSITE OWNER>:

I have noticed that you are making use of English Wikipedia articles as part of your website, <WEBSITE>. One example is <URL>, which includes material from the Wikipedia article "<ARTICLE>", which is located at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/<ARTICLE>. Wikipedia encourages the redistribution of its content. We also appreciate you citing Wikipedia as a source. However, it is also necessary to comply with our licensing terms of reuse. Failure to do so is a copyright violation. Most of Wikipedia's content, including the text you are using, is dually licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA 3.0) and the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts). The texts of these licenses, the relevant legally binding documents, can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CCBYSA and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License. Wikipedia offers advice about how to comply with these licenses. This can be found in detail at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights. If you wish to reuse Wikipedia's text, you must specifically mention the license under which you are displaying it. You may choose one or both of the licenses used by Wikipedia itself.

If you wish to license the material under CC-BY-SA, at the bottom of every page that uses Wikipedia material, you can include text similar to, "This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article (put article name here); it is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the CC-BY-SA." You should link the text "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License" to a copy of the text of the CC-BY-SA. Also, we strongly recommend that you link back to the original Wikipedia article; the alternative is to list all authors of the article on your own server.

If you wish to license the material under GFDL, at the bottom of every page that uses Wikipedia material, you can instead include text similar to, "This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article (put article name here); it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL." You should link the text "GNU Free Documentation License" to a copy of the text of the GFDL on your own server. Also, we strongly recommend that you link back to the original Wikipedia article; this is a means to comply with certain GFDL requirements.

Thank you for your cooperation.

<SENDER>

Letter for website that does not acknowledge Wikipedia as a source

Dear <WEBSITE OWNER>:

I have noticed that you are making use of English Wikipedia articles as part of your website, <WEBSITE>. One example is <URL>, which includes material from our article "<ARTICLE>", which is located at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/<ARTICLE>. We encourage you to reuse our content. But in return, we require that you please comply with our terms of reuse, as copyright law requires you to do. We have worked hard to build our encyclopedia, and our terms help make sure that reusers will give us credit. Most of our content, including the text you are using, is dually licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA 3.0) and the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts). The texts of these licenses, the relevant legally binding documents, can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CCBYSA and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License. We offer advice about how to comply with these licenses. See https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_use#Information_for_re-users for this advice. If you wish to reuse our text, you must specifically mention the license under which you are displaying it. You may choose one or both of the licenses used by Wikipedia itself.

If you wish to license the material under CC-BY-SA:

1. At the bottom of every page that uses Wikipedia material, please include text similar to: "This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article <put article name here>; it is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the CC-BY-SA."

2. Please link the text "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License" to a copy of the text of the CC-BY-SA.

3. Also, please link back to the original Wikipedia article; otherwise, you would be legally required to list all authors of the article on your own server.

If you wish to license the material under the GFDL:

1. At the bottom of every page that uses Wikipedia material, please instead include text similar to: "This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article <put article name here>; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL."

2. Please link the text "GNU Free Documentation License" to a copy of the text of the GFDL on your own server.

3. Also, we strongly recommend that you kindly link back to the original Wikipedia article; this is a way of complying with certain GFDL requirements.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask me.

We thank you for your cooperation.

<SENDER>

If you are a significant contributor to the text

This is based on, but significantly modified from, a letter sent by DES in 2005.

Dear <Site Operator>:

I am pleased to see that your website, <SITE>, uses content from Wikipedia (<https://en.wikipedia.org/>), the free encyclopedia. This is the sort of reuse that those who contribute to Wikipedia, as I do, wish to promote.

However, you must follow the licensing terms which govern all Wikipedia text. Most of Wikipedia's content, including the text you are using, is dually licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA 3.0) and the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts). The text of these licenses, the relevant legally binding documents, can be found at <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CCBYSA> and <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License>. Wikipedia does offer advice about how to comply with these licenses. This can be found in detail at <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights>.

First, I would like to point out that when you use content from Wikipedia you should include a link back to the source Wikipedia article as is suggested at that page. Additionally, you should also include a CC-BY-SA notice, a GFDL notice, or both. You could, for example, add the text "This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license", and provide a link to a copy of the CC-BY-SA. Text such as "This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia" is a good way to acknowledge the general source of the text.

Specifically, your page <Specific Address> uses content from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARTICLE NAME>. I was a contributor to this article, and text that I wrote appears on your site. Since it appears without linking the original article or specifically attributing me (and the other authors), or linking to the text of the CC-BY-SA or GFDL under which I released my contributions, the existence of this page violates my copyright, as well as those of all other contributors.

Please add the required links and acknowledgments to all parts of your <Title> site that use Wikipedia content promptly. Thank you.

Sincerely, <Wikipedia User's Name>

Followup

Dear <insert name of site owner>,

We have previously contacted you about your web site <insert site name and URL here>, which uses Wikipedia content licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA) and GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts). An example is <URL>, which is based on the Wikipedia article <ARTICLE> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/<ARTICLE>). The text of the CC-BY-SA can be found at <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CCBYSA>. The text of the GFDL can be found at <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License>.

To use that content without copyright infringement you must comply with our licensing requirements. We recommend you start by doing both of the following:

1. Include a readily readable link to the article in the Wikipedia from which the content came.
2. Linking to a copy of the CC-BY-SA and/or the GFDL. You may link to both, but must link to one.

A notice of this form is suggested, for the article called <ARTICLE>. It can be modified to reflect which license you choose to use:

 This article is licensed under the <a href="ccbysa.html">
 Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License</a>. It uses material from the 
 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/<ARTICLE>">Wikipedia article "<ARTICLE>"</a>.

Please promptly change your site to comply with the requirements and let us know that you have done so or tell us your schedule for doing so, so that we can let the copyright holders know that no further action is necessary.

Thank you,
<Your name here>

To Service Providers

Letter to service provider of non-compliant website

To Whom It May Concern:

<SITE NAME> (<SITE URL>), a site using <PROVIDER>, is copying Wikipedia articles in violation of the terms of Wikipedia's license. One example is <URL>, which includes material from the Wikipedia article "<ARTICLE>", which is located at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/<ARTICLE>. Wikipedia encourages the redistribution of its articles. However, distributors must comply with Wikipedia's licensing requirements. Wikipedia's text is dually licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CCBYSA> and GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License>. Text reused from Wikipedia must be released under one or both of these licenses. Failure to meet licensing requirements is copyright infringement, a breach of <PROVIDER>'s Terms of Service (<TOS URL>). Only the text of the CC-BY-SA and GFDL are legally binding, but Wikipedia has recommendations for compliance. The website should first note that Wikipedia contributors created the article; there should also be a link back to the article on Wikipedia. There should be a CC-BY-SA or GFDL notice, such as "This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article (put article name here); it is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the CC-BY-SA." "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License" should be linked to a copy of the CC-BY-SA. We have already attempted to contact <SITE OWNER>, the owner of <SITE NAME>, about these issues. However, <SITE NAME> is still not in compliance. I am writing to ask you to contact <SITE OWNER> to demand compliance with the CC-BY-SA. If he refuses, or you are unable to reach him, you should disable the website for copyright infringement. I hope I can count on your cooperation in this and future matters.

Sincerely,

<SENDER>

DMCA takedown notice

Warning: This notice includes the sentence "I swear under penalty of perjury that I am the copyright holder of the above works". As such, please only use this notice if you have made a significant contribution to the article in question, as doing so otherwise may constitute a felony under U.S. law.

(SENDER'S NAME)
(SENDER'S POSTAL ADDRESS)
(SENDER'S EMAIL ADDRESS)

Dear (RECIPIENT'S NAME),

I am delighted to see that your service provider, (ISP NAME), hosts a website, (SITE NAME) at <SITE URL>, which uses content from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/), the free encyclopedia. This is just the sort of application that Wikipedia wishes to promote. While the copyright to Wikipedia content is retained by its authors, this content is dually licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License [CC-BY-SA] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CCBYSA> and GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License>, both of which authorize duplication without special permission, provided certain terms are followed.

However, (SITE NAME) does not currently comply fully with the terms of either license. For instance, the duplicated content must link to one or both of the CC-BY-SA license and the GFDL, and must attribute its original source. As a result, (SITE NAME) includes unauthorized duplicates of Wikipedia content. Moreover, I have been unable to reach the site maintainers. Multiple requests have been sent to (SITE EMAIL) regarding this oversight without response; the last such request is appended below.

As you are the Designated Agent for (ISP NAME), I am sending you this formal takedown request as a last resort. The following articles, among others (including most of the content duplicated from Wikipedia), are being made available for copying through downloading from the listed URLs, without authorization from the copyright owners.

I personally hold copyright in the following articles:

1. (ARTICLE NAME)
Original: <ARTICLE URL AT WIKIPEDIA>
Infringing copy: <ARTICLE URL AT MIRROR>
Date found: (DATE)

2. (List others in same format)

I am giving notice of these activities pursuant to Section 512 of Title 17 of the U.S. Code (https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#512). The information in this notice is accurate; I have a good faith belief that this use of the material is not authorized by me, any agent of mine, or the law. I swear under penalty of perjury that I am the copyright holder of the above works. Please act quickly to remove the materials described above until they comply with this law and the CC-BY-SA.

Please advise regarding what actions you take.

Yours sincerely,

(SENDER'S NAME)

See also

• Wikipedia:Standard CC-BY-SA violation letter