Wikisource:Reusing Wikisource content

If you want to use Wikisource's works and content in your own books/articles/web sites or other publications, you can do so, although some content may be licensed rather than in the public domain. If the content is licensed, you must comply with the terms of that licence when reusing the content.

Neither the Wikimedia Foundation nor the authors of material on Wikimedia sites provide legal advice. It is the responsibility of the reuser to determine how a licence applies to the intended reuse or whether the public domain status is accurate and applicable.

Works

Public domain works

Public domain works held on Wikisource may be reused by anyone for any reason. The transcription of a work on Wikisource does not create a new copyright so if the original work has entered the public domain the transcription here is also public domain.

However, it is recommended that reusers of Wikisource's public domain works double check the public domain status of that work before reusing it. Wikisource attempts to check that the licences used for its works are correct and that works described as in the public domain really are so, but we cannot guarantee that this is always accurate. If you reuse work that turns out to still be under copyright, the legal responsibility is your own.

Additionally, the public domain status used by works on Wikisource is based on United States law. Copyright laws vary greatly between different countries. What is public domain in one country may still be under copyright in another. If you are reusing materal outside the United States, it would be wise to double check the copyright laws of your country to see how they apply to you.

Licensed works

Some works on Wikisource are licensed under some form of compatible licence (see the list), such as Creative Commons or GFDL. Each licence has its own terms and restrictions on how the material can be reused.

Most relevant licenses require attribution (credit the original author of the material you reused), and some require that you also license your derivative work under the same license as the original. Others place no restrictions at all and attempt to give you the same freedom for a licensed work as you would for a public domain one. Only the text of the specific license will tell you for certain what terms apply in each case.

Original Wikisource content

Content in namespaces other than the main or page namespaces is usually original to Wikisource. This work is covered by a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0) licence. Content may be reused as long as reuse complies with the terms of this licence.