Attribution Generator

This tool makes it easy to reuse images from Wikipedia and the free media archive Wikimedia Commons.

Please note: The current English version of the Attribution Generator is based on a near-verbatim translation of the initial German text snippets, which were drafted with the copyright law of Germany in mind. Especially the parts explaining legal concepts might thus differ from the copyright law situation of other countries.

In many cases images on Wikipedia and the free media archive Wikimedia Commons are protected by copyright. However most of them have been released under free licenses by their rights holders, especially under Creative Commons licenses. Some are even free of any rights, in the public domain. Free licenses facilitate an easy re-use as long as the respective license requirements are honoured. An additional permission from rights holders is then not necessary. This tool is designed to help comply with the license conditions and simplify the use of freely licensed content. The tool automatically compiles all relevant license information in to a so-called license notice that has to be published or displayed as closely to the image as reasonably possible (depending on the publication type the license notice can also be placed at another common position e.g. within picture credits in a book or in the opening or final credits of a video). The tool leads you through a short dialogue and compiles all the information that is relevant for generating a correct license notice for your individual use case. After having answered these few questions you can quickly and easily copy the license notice in various formats and paste it into your publication. Currently, the tool covers the re-use in digital and printed works, being the most frequent forms of use. Other uses (e.g. exhibitions, broadcasts, live performances) remain unconsidered for the time being.

We would like to thank Dr. Till Jaeger, specialist lawyer for copyright and media law (JBB Rechtsanwälte in Berlin) for his generous support.

Which licenses are supported?

The tool supports images from Wikipedia and the free media archive Wikimedia Commons that are released under Creative Commons licenses. The following licenses, including their ported versions, are supported:

• CC 0
• CC BY 2.0 DE
• CC BY 3.0 DE
• CC BY 3.0 Unported
• CC BY 4.0 International
• CC BY-SA 1.0 (generic)
• CC BY-SA 2.0 DE
• CC BY-SA 3.0 DE
• CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported
• CC BY-SA 4.0 International
• CC BY 1.0 (generic)
• CC BY 2.0 (generic)
• CC BY 2.5 (generic)
• CC BY-SA 2.0 (generic)
• CC BY-SA 2.5 (generic)

This tool is designed to facilitate the compliant re-use of certain copyright-protected images. However, it can never cover all use cases and characteristics, and thus cannot replace qualified legal advice by a lawyer.

Wikimedia Deutschland – Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
Tempelhofer Ufer 23/24
10963 Berlin
E-Mail: info@wikimedia.de
Website: https://wikimedia.de
Telephone: +49 (0)30-577 11 62-0
Fax: +49 (0)30-577 11 62-99

Executive Directors: Franziska Heine, Dr. Christian Humborg
Listed in the associations register of the district court of Berlin-Charlottenburg, VR 23855. Person responsible for content pursuant to § 55 Abs. 2 RStV: Dr. Christian Humborg (Address see above).

The complete source code of the Attribution Generator is available under the GNU General Public Licence (GPL v3). The source code is available on GitHub, where it can be viewed, downloaded, modified and republished. All texts of this tool are available under the Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike 4.0 International license and can be reused, modified and republished subject to the conditions of that license.

Privacy Policy

On wikimedia.de you will find all information about what happens to your personal data when you visit this or other Wikimedia Deutschland websites.

This tool is hosted on Wikimedia Labs. Read the Terms of Use on https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikitech:Labs_Terms_of_use.

This tool helps you to generate a correct license notice for freely licensed images. Such a license notice is needed in case you want to republish or reuse a freely licensed image in a way that requires, under copyright law, permission from the copyright holder. A publication in the legal sense happens e. g. when posting images on your blog or in social networks as well as using images in a printed work intended for public dissemination. If you intend to use the image in a purely private context amongst your family and friends you are not bound by any conditions imposed by license requirements. Thus, a license notice is not required. However, we would suggest to provide a license notice anyways as it can be very hard for non-lawyers to assess the boundaries of purely private use. Private use, in its common meaning, is for instance sending an image via email to your friends or using a printed image for decorational purposes in your own home.

Further legal exceptions to the strict requirement of obtaining permission from the copyright holder apply for the reuse within the scope of.scientific publications or as quotes. In such cases you are free to choose whether you want to comply only with the statutory requirements (e.g. standard requirement to name the source of a quote) or with the Creative Commons license conditions.