Wikipedia:Media copyright questions

Media copyright questions

Welcome to the Media copyright questions noticeboard, a place for help with image copyright tagging, non-free content, and media-related questions. For all other questions, use Wikipedia:Questions.

If you have a question about a specific image, link to it like this: [[:File:Example.png]] (Note the colons around the word File.) If a question clearly does not belong on this page, reply to it using the template {{Mcq-wrong}} and leave a note on the poster's talk page. For copyright issues relevant to Commons, questions may be directed to Commons's copyright village pump.

How to add a copyright tag to an existing image

1. On the description page of the image (the one whose name starts File:), click "Edit this page".
2. From the page Wikipedia:File copyright tags, choose the appropriate tag:
   • For work you created yourself, use one of the ones listed under the heading "For image creators".
   • For a work downloaded from the internet, please understand that the vast majority of images from the internet are not appropriate for use on Wikipedia. Exceptions include images from flickr that have an acceptable license, images that are in the public domain because of their age or because they were created by the United States federal government, or images used under a claim of fair use. If you do not know what you are doing, please post a link to the image here and ask BEFORE uploading it.
   • For an image created by someone else who has licensed their image under an acceptable Creative Commons or other free license, or has released their image into the public domain, this permission must be documented. Please see Requesting copyright permission for more information.
3. Type the name of the tag inclusing the curly brackets (e.g.; {{Cc-by-4.0}}) in the edit box on the image's description page.
4. Remove any existing tag complaining that the image has no tag (for example, {{untagged}})
5. Click Publish changes.
6. If you still have questions, ask a question below.

Click here to start a new discussion

File:Avatar Seven Havens logo.png

I noticed that Zingo156 uploaded this to enwiki as a non-free logo, while I uploaded another version to Commons (File:Avatar Seven Havens title card (cropped).webp) on the belief that it is below COM:TOO US. Is it? Qzekrom (she/her • talk) 18:16, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Hi Qzekrom. You might want to ask at c:COM:VPC about this since it's the Commons file which is being claimed as being below c:COM:TOO US. If that file turns out to be OK for Commons, then the local file should be OK to relicense and move to Commons since the only difference between the two seems to be the black background. If the Commons file, on the other hand, ends up being deleted, then the local file should stay non-free. The Commons file could then be reuploaded locally to English Wikipedia as non-free, but that should only be done if there's a valid non-free use for the file. It's quite possible that the uploader of the non-free one simply didn't know about the Commons one you upoaded. The non-free was uploaded several hours after the Commons one, but the Commons file doesn't ever seem to have been used on English Wikipedia. The English Wikipedia article where the non-free is being used was only moved to the mainspace yesterday, and it had no logo (free or non-free) in the main infobox at that time. The uploader could've just assumed that no logo file existed, and that all logos need to be treated as non-free content. FWIW, the Commons file is being used on several other language Wikipedias and the non-free won't affect the file's use on those projects. -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:07, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

 Done, see c:COM:VPC#Avatar: Seven Havens logo Qzekrom (she/her • talk) 22:27, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Update: The consensus at COM:VPC seems to be that this is below TOO, but this consensus is quite weak; only one other person besides me has commented in that thread. I'm changing the image to {{PD-textlogo}} before the previous revisions get auto-deleted on August 1. Qzekrom (she/her • talk) 20:06, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

Christopher Morcom

Hi I'm aiming to bring the Christopher Morcom article to featured article status but I've been confused about whether this image is in the public domain or not. It was created in 1927 in England. I would really appreciate it if someone here could check whether it's in the public domain or not! Panamitsu (talk) 00:17, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

Comment Looks like this in the public domain. According to UK law copyright for images before 1945 lasts 50 years. AadamentAardvark (talk) 05:56, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

image use

can i use this image on Al Jazeera Media Network Astropulse (talk) 08:01, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

Hi Astropulse. I noticed your question about this file's removal on User talk:JJMC89#Is this removal correct? The The pic says you can use it on the English wiki. before I saw you asked essentially the same thing here at MCQ. Please see my response I added to JJMC89's user talk page for more details, but the bot was correct in removing the file. It would also be really quite hard to justify another use of the file the "Al Jazeera Media Network" article, particularly given the file's non-free use in the "Al Jazeera English" article itself is also quite questionable (at least in my opinion). -- Marchjuly (talk) 12:46, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

Request to Use Larger Media on Calls for autonomy in Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh

Hi DatBot keeps lowering it to a smaller resolution which inturn causes it not be cover page on the article please help me reslove this. Sarim Wani (talk) 12:19, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

Because File:Jammu and Kashmir State Flag with The Indian Flag.webp is not free-licensed, Wikipedia policy is that it must be at a lower resolution (Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria#3b). DMacks (talk) 12:24, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

Yes the policy you highlighted refers to minimal use not an mandatory resolution reduction, the article is very lengthy and worldly if this image was cover page it would greatly help summarise the article, therefore I request the community to consider an exemption from size reduction for this specific image. Sarim Wani (talk) 12:35, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

"Low-resolution, rather than high-resolution/fidelity/bit rate is used". I don't see how a set of flags "significantly increase readers' understanding of the article topic, and its omission would be detrimental to that understanding" at all (policy point #8), let alone needing to be at fairly high resolution. Seems more decorative/lead-thumbnail to me. DMacks (talk) 12:50, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

The North Korean anthem

Per a disputed non-free use rationale on I've decided to take it to here to query the copyright status of the work itself.

Aegukka was composed in 1945-1946, meaning that the anthem would be in the public domain in the US, provided it is in PD in its origin country (in this case, North Korea) before 2003 (when it signed the Berne Convention) , which is where the uncertainties begin - is it public domain in North Korea?

Copyright law was only established in North Korea in 2001, whereby it gives a 50 year time frame after any author's death for it to enter the public domain there. But the last collective author of the anthem died in 2002 - after the law, meaning that, on a basic level, it would not be in PD in North Korea until at least 2052.

But Article 32 of the DPRK Copyright Law says that 'A copyrighted work may be used without the permission of the copyright owner...when a copyrighted work needed for state management is copied, broadcast or used in compilation' , and Aegukka definitely fits into that category of 'state management'. But again, can this be viably proven, that any recordings of the anthem as a whole are 'needed for state management?'

And if that wasn't enough, in most countries, if a work was published before that country's copyright law, it is generally in PD. But what is to say that the DPRK follows that trend too?

So we now have three dilemmas surrounding the status of the North Korean anthem - all of which contradict each other in some way. Which is the way to go?

(P.S: Over on Commons they've also argued about the copyright status of Aegukka a year ago here and here - worth a read to wrap around points.

(Courtesy ping of @Blud522, who issued the initial dispute) In solidarity, Kristi ☎️ 17:26, 31 July 2026 (UTC)