Memory Alpha:Copyrights

Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: Enterprise are all registered trademarks of CBS Corporation. Memory Alpha is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by CBS. Memory Alpha is intended for personal and non-profit use only.

Memory Alpha offers no suggestion that the work presented on this web page is "official" or produced or sanctioned by the owner of the aforementioned trademarks. Memory Alpha will take all steps necessary to ensure that any usage of trademarked items in no way confuses the audience of this site as to its origin. Memory Alpha makes no claim to own Star Trek or any of the names related to it. Images that are displayed on this site are copyrighted to Paramount Pictures (in the case of screen shots and similar pictures) or to the creator of the image (for fan-made artwork). Visitors may download any pictures displayed on this site for personal use, as long as they are not used for profit, and proper credit is given.


 * Please note that Memory Alpha does not share the standard license used by wikis hosted on Wikia.

Text content
Anyone is free to use the text content of Memory Alpha in web sites, articles, or other publications, provided you follow the guidelines of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License, which establishes the following requirements: If you are simply duplicating the Memory Alpha article, the second and third obligations can be fulfilled by providing a conspicuous direct link back to the Memory Alpha article hosted on this website.
 * you may not use the works for commercial purposes,
 * you must acknowledge the authorship of the original article, and
 * for any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work.

If you create a derivative version by changing or adding content, you need to both acknowledge authorship and provide access to the original copy of the text.

Important: The content of this website does NOT apply to the original works and trademarked names! The Star Trek titles and associated names are the sole property of Paramount Pictures. The administrators of Memory Alpha believe that the operation of this website falls under the definition of "fair use" under United States copyright laws.

See also: Why Memory Alpha doesn't use the GFDL

Images and other media
Images that are displayed at Memory Alpha remain the property of their original creators, and are only included on this website for purposes of illustration under fair use guidelines. Unless the original author of the image expressly grants permission, images do not fall under the scope of the Creative Commons License. In all cases, the images must be uploaded to our database, accompanied by a specific note with: You must also include information about:
 * credit for the original author of the image or other media file (if the file is a fan-created work) including a link where the original author may be contacted, or
 * the original source of the image or other media file (if the file is derived from an official Star Trek work, e.g. screen shots and sound bytes).
 * whether the file is uploaded to Memory Alpha with express permission of the author, or under fair use rules, and
 * the source of the file, being a specific episode, movie, book, other official work, a website, or any other medium.

See also: Image use policy

Contributors' rights and obligations
If you contribute material to Memory Alpha, you thereby license it to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. In order to contribute, you therefore must be in a position to grant this license, which means that either In the first case, you retain copyright to your materials. You can later republish and relicense them in any way you like. In the second case, if you incorporate external Creative Commons License materials, as a requirement of the CCL, you need to acknowledge the authorship and provide a link back to the network location of the original copy.
 * you own the copyright to the material, for instance because you produced it yourself, or
 * you acquired the material from a source that allows the licensing under a Creative Commons or similar license, for instance because the material is in the public domain or is itself published under Creative Commons License.

Using copyrighted work from others
If you use part of a copyrighted work under "fair use," or if you obtain special permission to use a copyrighted work from the copyright holder under the terms of our license, you must make a note of that fact (along with names and dates). It is our goal to be able to freely redistribute as much of Memory Alpha's material as possible (within the limits of copyright law), so original images and sound files licensed under the Creative Commons License or in the public domain are greatly preferred to copyrighted media files used under fair use.

Never use materials that infringe the copyrights of others. This could create legal liabilities and seriously hurt the project. If in doubt, write it yourself.

Note that copyright law governs the creative expression of ideas, not the ideas or information themselves. Therefore, it is perfectly legal to read an encyclopedia article or other work, reformulate it in your own words, and submit it to Memory Alpha.

If you find a copyright infringement
It is not the job of rank-and-file members of Memory Alpha to police every article for possible copyright infringement, but if you suspect one, you should at the very least bring up the issue in that page's comments section. Others can then examine the situation and take action if needed. The most helpful piece of information you can provide is a URL or other reference to what you believe may be the source of the text.

Some cases will be false alarms. For example, if the contributor was in fact the author of the text that is published elsewhere under different terms, that does not affect their right to post it here under the Creative Commons License. Also, sometimes you will find text elsewhere on the Web that was copied from Memory Alpha. In both of these cases, it is a good idea to make a note in the talk page to discourage such false alarms in the future.

If some of the content of a page really is an infringement, then the infringing content should be removed, and a note to that effect should be made on the comments page, along with the original source. If the author's permission is obtained later, the text can be restored.

If all of the content of a page is a suspected copyright infringement, then the page should be discussed on the possible copyright infringements page. If, after a week from the date on which the discussion was started, the page still appears to be a copyright infringement, then it may be deleted from the database.

In extreme cases of contributors continuing to post copyrighted material after appropriate warnings, such users may be blocked from editing to protect the project.

Belief of copyright infringement
Memory Alpha requests that in the case that the owner or owners of a copyrighted work feel that their work is being illegally infringed upon, they provide a full list of all items which they believe are infringing, along with the reasoning behind the belief that those items are infringing to Memory Alpha's designated agent. In addition, please provide the name of a person, along with their mailing address and e-mail address if possible, for a reply or follow-up letters.

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