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[edit] Copyright violations and plagiarism on wikiHow

Plagiarism is never acceptable. We should honor other people's copyrights. Not everyone wants to contribute their content to wikiHow and freely license it under a Creative Commons license and we should honor their wishes.

When you suspect plagiarism or a copyright violation on wikiHow, do the following:

1. Assume good faith. Many contributions are done with permission of the copyright holder. This is especially true when the author links back to their website where the original copy can be found.
2. Contact the author / editor and ask them to confirm that they are using the submission with the permission of the original author by leaving a note to that effect on the discussion page. If the author is not a registered user on the site, we can contact them by sending an email to the website we believe the page might be copied from. Here is a template for the letter: WikiHow:Boilerplate Request for Copyright Permission. If the copyright holder responds affirmatively to this request for permission, please copy the permission into the discussion page. If the copyright holder fails to respond to the request, please put the page up for deletion since it is a likely copyright violation.
3. If an author or copyright holder claims that work on wikiHow violates their copyrights, and was submitted to wikiHow without their permission, and they can prove that it does. We should delete it ASAP. If on the other hand an author, willingly submits their work to wikiHow and then changes their mind and wants their contributions removed, we do not need to grant that request.
4. If the page is clearly a copyright violation, mark the page for deletion by using the {{copyvio|Source URL of copyrighted material}} template. It will then be deleted by an admin.

[edit] Finding Copyright Violations

When you see a new page in non-wikiHow format that appears to be a copy and paste job from another source, your copyright violation suspicions should rise. One way to check if the page was stolen from another website is to do a "Google Test" to it. You can do this by taking 10-20 words from the page and putting quotes on the beginning and end and submitting it to Google. If an exact copy of that document exists on the web, Google will likely find it for you. You can then completely rewrite the page or contact the webmaster to make sure the page was shared on wikiHow with permission as described above.

[edit] Image Copyrights

wikiHow will not display images that violate copyright laws. Therefore we will only allow images that fall into one of the following categories:

• Images created by the person who is submitting them under our Terms of Use
• Images which are already freely licensed (eg. GFDL, CC-BY, CC-BY-SA) and contain attribution links back to the original work.
• Images that are in the public domain (e.g. creator has been dead for 70 years, US government creations, etc.)
• Copyrighted works where the copyright holder has explicitly allowed us to re-licensee under our Creative Commons license and Terms of Use.
• Copyrighted images which fit a very narrow definition of fair use. This is rarely allowed on wikiHow.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of images one finds on other websites or on search engines are not freely licensed and are not appropriate for use on wikiHow. Images that do not have correct copyright licensing information should be deleted.

Editors who notice others uploading non-licensed photos to wikiHow are requested to send them the {{license}} template to inform them of this policy. In addition, please recommend all beginning editors to use the wikiHow Find Free Photos on wikiHow feature when looking for photos.