Copyright Policy

This policy was by the Board on 22 April 2012 . (approved revision, subsequent changes) Changes to this policy are subject to board approval, and should be proposed either on the talk page or the Engine room

Approval history: 22 April 2012 - Initial adoption (approved revision)

Wikimedia UK is committed to conducting its business in an open and transparent manner. In general, Wikimedia UK will publish information under a free license, unless there is a compelling reason not to do so.

All Wikimedia UK publications, policies, and Board minutes (other than in-camera minutes) will be made available on the Wikimedia UK wiki and released under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 licence. (See link below) Where possible, they will be made available in an openly-licenced format (e.g. html, wikitext, .odt, or Scribus) in preference to a closed or proprietary format (eg .pdf).

Other documents and media produced on behalf of Wikimedia UK, whether by staff, trustees or other volunteers, ought to be made publicly available under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 licence unless there is a compelling reason not to. Such reasons might include (but are not limited to);

• Compliance with the Data Protection Act and our Donor Privacy Policy
• Commercial confidentiality, whether with suppliers or partner organisations
• Personal information about staff, trustees or volunteers (including the identities of volunteers who chose to participate anonymously or pseudonymously)
• Substantial risk of misinterpretation or misunderstanding (e.g., brief meeting minutes lacking context)
• Trademarks or other identifying marks which cannot be freely licenced.

Where one or more of these concerns applies, staff and trustees should ask whether the same information can be presented in an open format in a way that avoids these concerns, e.g. by redaction or in a summarised format.

Staff and trustees should include volunteers and the community widely in developing documents where possible and appropriate. Where a document is not developed openly, only the final version need be published under an open licence.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

This may be a useful link to understand what rights have been protected CC-BY-SA 3.0 licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________