Knowledge:Example requests for permission

102: 1008:. It should be borne in mind that if you choose to allow Knowledge to use the stated , it will remain copyrighted to you; however, the said licence stipulates that third parties must be permitted to reuse the licensed work so long that they retain the licence of this work and any derivatives from it. Consequently, you may wish to consider carefully whether you are prepared to compromise some of your rights granted to you by copyright law by licensing your work as suggested. 32: 1146:

BY-SA for short). This means that although you retain the copyright and authorship of your own work, you are granting permission for others to use, copy, and share your materials freely, and even potentially use them commercially, so long as they do not try to claim the copyright themselves, or try to prevent others from using or copying them freely (e.g., "share-alike"). You can read this license in full at

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commercially with the image concerned if they wish, provided there is appropriate attribution and that any modifications are released under an identical license. (Exceptions may be made if there is no possibility of such an image being available by other means, but that is not practical here - we don't have the capability to take good quality publicity photographs of the Deepwater Horizon ourselves.)

754:. The article is now awaiting review by an oil-topic expert. In the course of this, I realized we do not have a photograph of the Deepwater Horizon itself, nor any diagrams of the block 102 geology and the like. Although many images of the Horizon exist online, these are all copyrighted and therefore our in-house policies forbid us including them with any article or news report we may produce. 1027: 379: 1094:

license". Essentially, the copyright holder of any image that we use must irrevocably permit anyone else to use it, modify it, or sell it, with the only permissible requirements being that the author be named and that any modifications be released under an identical license. (Exceptions may be made if there is no image available that meets these criteria, but that is not the case here.)

858:. We gather information from many sources, and government Web sites are often particularly useful. As a unique and highly visible project, we freely and publically release our work, that it may benefit mankind. To this end, we punctiliously respect copyright, and have studied the terms of the Crown copyright carefully. 1190:

but grants permission for others to use, copy, and share your materials freely, and even potentially use them commercially, so long as they do not try to claim the copyright themselves, or try to prevent others from using or copying them freely (e.g., "share-alike"). You can read the complete license at

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If the reply is in the affirmative, I send the following message. Note that I repeat the file name in case they forget it from my first message. The content under the final heading " File name on Wikimedia Commons" is to increase the chance that a downloader will attribute the copyright holder – it's

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It is to that noble end that I make this request. However, for Knowledge to use your material, you must agree to the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (often referred to as CC BY-SA). In essence, CC BY-SA allows you to retain the copyright and authorship of your work,

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I am an editor of Knowledge, a multilingual project to create a complete and accurate encyclopedia by open editing. We gather information from all types of sources, but the web sites of government bodies, institutes of higher learning, and other non-profit organizations are often particularly useful.

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If they don't respond, I send a polite hastener 3 or 4 weeks later. Once I've sent the second message, if they haven't let me know they have changed the licence within, say, a week, I check the Flickr page to see whether it has been changed. If so, I send a brief thank-you message. If the image file

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If you were to agree to make your photo available under specified conditions, the easiest way to do that is to change your copyright notice on the Flickr page from "All rights reserved" to one of the licences accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation. I can give you more information about that, including

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REPLACE WITH YOUR CASE) under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license (CC BY-SA), a license which permits others to reuse your image as long as they provide proper attribution to you. Your credit would be attached to the image, along with a link back to either your Flickr profile or

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is a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization, that is collaboratively edited by volunteers from around the world. Our goal is to create a comprehensive knowledge base that may be freely distributed and available at

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I enjoyed your (excellent/informative/colorful) (drawings/images/art/photographs/whatever) at your website (----). However, we can only use your material if you are willing to grant permission for it to be used under terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC

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I am aware that there are many publicity images of you available, but since Knowledge aims to be reproducible even for profit and even in nations where generous United States "fair use" provisions in copyright law are inapplicable, we cannot use an image that is not released under a so-called "free

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With your permission, we would then credit you for your work in the image's permanent description page, noting that it is your work and is used with your permission, with a permanent link back to your website for any reader of the articles in which it appears. We also invite your input in any other

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Knowledge is likely to be a major website visited - more than likely the major website - outside your own, for the Horizon, and one of the major sources for information on the Tiber find. In both cases the article would benefit from a usable good quality image of the Deepwater Horizon and any other

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We choose the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License because it is the best available tool for ensuring that our encyclopedia is and can remain free for all to use, and for providing credit to everyone who donates text and images. It may or may not be compatible with your

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If you are willing to contribute your image under the terms of CC BY-SA, you can change the license by going to the image's Flickr page and under the "Taken" date, clicking on the currently applied license and selecting "Attribution-ShareAlike". Knowledge accepts only freely-licensed pictures like

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We understand that we may use your material "free of charge in any format or medium provided it is reproduced accurately and not used in a misleading context" provided that "the source of the material identified and the copyright status acknowledged." Our question centers on the relation between

775:. Be assured if you do not grant permission or provide such an image, we will not use one without permission. You are under no obligation to release any material under such licenses, but I thought that for public-relations purposes, you might want to consider it given Knowledge's great popularity. 707:

We can only use your materials if you are willing to grant permission for this under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This means that anyone will have the right to share and, where appropriate, to update your material. You can read this license in

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Please note that your contributions may not remain intact as submitted; this license, and the collaborative nature of our project, also entitles others to edit, alter, and update them at will, i.e., to keep up with new information, or suit the text to a different purpose. However, the license also

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We can only use your material if you are willing to grant permission for it to be used under terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This means that although you retain the copyright and authorship of your own work, you are granting permission for all others

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You'll be attributed as the copyright owner on the image's page in Wikimedia Commons. As a personal preference, I would also like to include your name in the file title. Along with a more comprehensive description (which is Wikimedia Commons's preference), the file title I have in mind would be:

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Detail in the first message is minimal – you'll see I don't even describe Knowledge: everyone has come to know what Knowledge is. But I do include two statistics that people are usually amazed by: the number of English Knowledge articles (i.e., more than 6 million) and the number of visits to the

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We choose the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License because we consider it the best available tool for ensuring our encyclopedia can remain free for all to use, while providing credit to everyone who donates text and images. This may or may not be compatible with your

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Normally, we ask permission for images, sound and other multimedia files to be used under the terms of a Creative Commons License. This means that although you retain the copyright and authorship of your own work, you are granting permission for all others (not just Knowledge) to use, copy, and

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Please do note that your contributions may not remain intact as submitted; this license, as well as the collaborative nature of our project, also entitles others to edit, alter, and update them at will, i.e., to keep up with new information, or suit the text to a different purpose. However, the

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I am one of the many volunteer editors of the English Knowledge (en.wikipedia.org), the 💕. Knowledge is among the most-visited sites on the Internet, ranking near the top ten according to the estimates of Alexa Internet (alexa.com), and it is likely that many people visit our article about you

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If you licensed one or more of your documents under this license, you would retain full copyright. However, we would be licensed to distribute the material, as would future users of it. We would distribute your work free of charge. However, future commercial distribution could occur. This is

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The license stipulates that any copy of the material, even if modified, must carry the same license. Consequently, we may not inherit the Crown copyright restrictions. For example, although I might copy a work under the Crown copyright accurately, honestly, and with attribution, under the GFDL a

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Since Knowledge aims to be a repository of images and information that anyone can use, even in nations where generous United States "fair use" provisions are inapplicable, we can only use images that are released under a so-called "free license", which permits anyone else to use, modify, or deal

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Normally we ask permission for material to be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This means that although you retain the copyright and authorship of your own work, you are granting permission for all others (not just Knowledge) to use,

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We choose the Creative Commons licensing for images, sound and other multimedia files because we consider it the best available tool for ensuring our projects can remain free for all to use, while providing credit to everyone who donates for images, sound and other multimedia files in a less

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The license does stipulate that any copy of the material, even if modified, must carry the same license. This guarantees that if licensed in this manner, no copy of your work could be made proprietary. That means that no one who distributes the work can ever restrict future distribution.

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I use this on Flickr to request that users change their license to CC-BY-SA. Having a Flickr user send you the declaration of consent through Flickr mail may not be enough proof for VRT, but having them change the license is enough proof. After they have changed the license, you can use

557:) is an encyclopedia that is collaboratively edited by volunteers from around the world. Our goal is to create a comprehensive knowledge base that is not only available at no charge, but is also freely distributed. It is one of many projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. 1824: 1574:

Everybody is in a hurry now. Many people don't want to spare the time to read through a licensing request that's 500+ words long, and some have told me they prefer not to click on hyperlinks "cold". The approach I've developed starts with a Flickr message of only about 150 words.

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I am an (editor/administrator) of Knowledge (wikipedia.org), a multilingual project to create a complete, accurate, and open-content encyclopedia. Volunteers from around the world collaboratively edit Knowledge, which is one of many projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation

1449:. This may or may not be compatible with your goals in creating the materials available on your Flickrstream. Please be assured that if permission is not granted, your materials will not be used at Wikimedia Commons — we have a very strict policy against copyright violations. 1452:

With your permission, we will credit you for your work in the image's permanent description page, noting that it is your work and is used with your permission, and we will provide a link back to your website. Please explicitly state under which license you grant permission.

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1321:. This may or may not be compatible with your goals in creating the materials available on your website. Please be assured that if permission is not granted, your materials will not be used at Wikimedia Commons — we have a very strict policy against copyright violations. 570:(not just Knowledge) to use, copy, and share your materials freely—and even potentially use them commercially—as long as they do not try to claim the copyright themselves, or try to prevent others from using or copying them freely. You can read this license in full at: 1726:

The final step I take is to send the photographer a message with a link to the Wikimedia Commons page and, if I have already inserted it into an article, the Knowledge page. I don't tell them this beforehand – just in case I forget. It's another opportunity to show

1185:, as Knowledge content. Knowledge is a multilingual open-content encyclopedia that strives for complete and reliable content. Volunteers from around the world collaboratively create content, but Knowledge depends upon <article/photography/art/diagram/chart: --> 450:

I am a volunteer editor of Knowledge. I would like to include a photo of in the Knowledge article at . However, Knowledge can only include such a photo if it is released under a Creative Commons "Attribution-ShareAlike" license or a similar free license listed at

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At present you have "All rights reserved" shown for the photo. Wikimedia Commons accepts images under either of two licences or a Public Domain Declaration. Under all three options the image would be attributed to you, and you would retain ownership of copyright.

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the Crown copyright and our own. We maintain copyright over the material we create, but license its use under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), which was designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for free works. You can find the license text at

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The Wikimedia Commons is a repository of free content images, sound and other multimedia files. Like Knowledge, it is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. It provides a common resource repository to all the various Wikimedia sister projects in any language.

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Your organisation has on its website content which would undoubtedly enhance communication with our target audience; in order to do so, I should like to ask for your authorisation to use such content, namely the located at , under the terms of Knowledge's

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I have been looking for an image of a ____________ for a while to illustrate Knowledge's article on ______________. Good images of ____________ are rare; yours titled would be ideal for this article, which was read by ____ readers during the past month.

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I am one of the many volunteers who write and edit articles in Knowledge, of which there are now more than 6 million in the English language alone. I do this because I'm inspired by the aim of founder Jimmy Wales "to democratise knowledge".

1058:(alternatively, the salutation can be 'Dear Mr./Mrs./Ms. Surname' if the surname of the person to whom the letter is being sent is known, in which case the complementary closing must be 'Yours Sincerely,' as opposed to 'Yours Faithfully,') 1429:

These licenses expressly protect creators from being considered responsible for modifications made by others, while ensuring that creators are credited for their work. There is more information on our licensing and copyright policy at

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This license expressly protects creators from being considered responsible for modifications made by others, while ensuring that creators are credited for their work. There is more information on our licensing and copyright policy at

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If you do agree to grant permission, we will credit you for your work in the resulting article's references section, by stating it was based on your work and is used with your permission, and by providing a link back to your website.

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I am one of the many volunteer editors of the English Knowledge (en.wikipedia.org), the 💕. Knowledge is among the top 5 visited sites on the Internet, and its sister site Wikinews (en.wikinews.com) is a well-viewed news source.

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Attribution ("CC BY"): this licence lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build on your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. Knowledge says most people choose this. More info:

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That said, allow me to reiterate that your material will be used to the noble end of providing a free collection of knowledge for everyone; naturally enough, only if you agree. If that is the case, please copy the form at

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while doing research for free online image repository Wikimedia Commons (which stores images for the free online encyclopedia Knowledge, among other projects of the Wikimedia Foundation), and thought your image <URL:

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We wish to copy material from the Web sites of Her Majesty's Government and relicense it under the GFDL. We would be grateful if you could provide us with the official position of the Stationery's Office on this matter.

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The first message is simply a "will you or won't you?" question. Only if the photographer agrees do I send the second message with the necessary licensing detail. By then they are committed to reading and digesting it.

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goals in creating the materials available on your website. Please be assured that if permission is not granted, your materials will not be used at Knowledge — we have a very strict policy against copyright violations.

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If you agree, we will credit you for your work in the resulting article's references section by stating that it was based on your work and is used with your permission, and by providing a web link back to <website:

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The license expressly protects authors "from being considered responsible for modifications made by others" while ensuring that authors get credit for their work. There is more information on our copyright policy at:

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I personally thank you for helping further Knowledge's goal of public education and outreach; Knowledge faces a limited availability of freely licensed media, and your time and generosity are tremendously appreciated.

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I acknowledge that I grant anyone the right to use the work in a commercial product and to modify it according to their needs, provided that they abide by the terms of the license and any other applicable laws.

1425:. You could also change the license in Flickr to an Attribution Creative Commons (CC BY 2.0) or Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0) license by clicking on "All rights reserved" at <URL: --> 578:

expressly protects authors "from being considered responsible for modifications made by others" while ensuring that those authors get credit for their work. There is more information on our copyright policy at:

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A while (or maybe a while and a half) ago, I sent this letter to HMSO. Feel free to fold, spindle, or mutilate it at will. The reply, by the way, was negative: in the opinion of HM Government, Knowledge may

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to transfer the image to the Commons. Sometimes they will reply and change the license, sometimes they will reply and refuse to change it, and sometimes you get no response (usually from inactive Flickrers).

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If you have a letter that has worked in requesting permission, please add it to this page, or work the text that you think was effective into the existing letters. Make sure you get the author to contact

934:. In order for us to do so, it would be necessary for you to license your work under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA). You can find the license text at 929:. As a unique and highly visible project, we freely and publicly release our work, that it may benefit humankind. To this end, we deeply respect copyright, and are careful to prevent any infringement. 647:

copy, and share your materials freely — and even potentially use them commercially — so long as they do not try to claim the copyright themselves, nor prevent others from using or copying them freely.

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Knowledge page on which I'll link their image (I get this by clicking "Page information" under the "Tools" heading in the page sidebar, then noting "Page views in the past 30 days" in the top table).

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I am aware that I always retain copyright of my work, and retain the right to be attributed in accordance with the license chosen. Modifications others make to the work will not be attributed to me.

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Due to the large number of ambiguous answers to enquiries concerning permission for reuse for an image (such as "I allow Knowledge to reuse my photos"), it is advisable to ask the author to use the

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A little help here? Need something very professional, suitable for sending to larger organizations (news orgs, political parties, etc.), perhaps with a signable & mailable form to send back?

550:, which I found while researching for the free online encyclopedia "Knowledge"; I thought that your information on the subject might be worthy of inclusion in our living and growing document. 1105:). You are under no obligation to release any material under such licenses, but I thought that for public-relations purposes, you might want to consider it given Knowledge's great popularity. 1631:

Thank you very much for getting back and agreeing to my request that you license your photo titled so that I can upload it to Wikimedia Commons, Knowledge's media repository. I'm delighted!

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share your materials freely — and even potentially use them commercially — so long as they do not try to claim the copyright themselves, nor prevent others from using or copying them freely.

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share your materials freely — and even potentially use them commercially — so long as they do not try to claim the copyright themselves, nor prevent others from using or copying them freely.

643:) is a 💕 that is collaboratively edited by volunteers from around the world. Our goal is to create a comprehensive knowledge base that may be freely distributed and available at no charge. 1667:

Attribution–Share Alike ("CC BY-SA"): this contains the same provisions but also requires anyone who modifies your work to licence their new creation under the identical terms. More info:

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Hello. I am a volunteer editor from Knowledge. I am working on the ARTICLE NAME article which currently has no pictures. I am emailing you to request that you license one of your images (

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in your field, and we invite your active collaboration in writing and editing articles on this subject and any others that might be attractive to you. If you are interested, please see:

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The template has been updated, Flickr uses 2.0 CC not 4.0 for instance and instructions how to change the license. Make sure all factors such as these are up to date when you use it.

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cumbersome manner than the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), which we also accept and was designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for free works and can be found at <

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cumbersome manner than the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), which we also accept and was designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for free works and can be found at <

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If you do agree to grant permission for use, we will credit you, state the image was based on your work and is used with your permission, and provide a link back to your website.

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I am an editor of the Knowledge, a multilingual project to create a complete and accurate open content encyclopedia. The English-language version may be viewed on the Web at

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goals in creating the materials available on your website — that is your choice. Please be assured that if you do not grant permission, your <copyrighted?/original?: -->

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We invite your collaboration in writing and editing articles on this subject and any others that might interest you. Please see the following article for more information.

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I am seeking your permission to use your text either directly, or as a reference for my original writing on the subject. I'd like to include your materials in this article:

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while doing research for the free online encyclopedia Knowledge, and thought your website might be appropriate for inclusion in our articles concerning <subject: -->

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If you are able and would agree to provide a freely licensed photograph (it need not be newly created) for use on Wikimedia projects, please follow the instructions at

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while doing research for the free online encyclopedia Knowledge, and thought your image might be appropriate for inclusion in our articles concerning <subject: -->

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into the email by which you grant us permission to use your content, and make any necessary amendments before sending the email to our email response team ("VRT") at

910:'s letter above. Changes have been made to make it less specific to the particular situation that inspired the original letter, and more applicable to other cases. 1813: 1003:

Knowledge licenses all its content under the licence developed for purposes of free documentation by the Creative Commons, the text of which can be found at <

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We would like your permission to include resources created by your organization in our encyclopedia. Specifically, we are interested in copying <TITLE: -->

1554: 1090:) each day. Unfortunately, our article currently makes use of an image of you that might be considered unflattering due to its comparatively low quality. 172: 442: 463: 1819: 432: 310: 992:, an endeavour to build a fully-fledged multilingual encyclopaedia in an entirely open manner, to ask for permission to use your copyrighted material. 1758:

Dear Sir or Madam: I hereby assert that I am the creator and/or sole owner of the exclusive copyright of WORK "Bowen Panoramic of Front Entrance."

949:, or all of your copyrighted material, under the CC BY-SA. I can be contacted by email at , by telephone at (I am in time zone <TIME ZONE: --> 1540: 1456:

We invite your collaboration in writing and editing articles on this subject and any others that might interest you. Please see the articles <

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those with Creative Commons "Attribution" and "ShareAlike" licenses. Unfortunately we cannot accept the "NonCommercial" or "NoDerivs" variants.

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Here's how to change your copyright licence. It only involves choosing which licence you prefer, then invoking your decision with two clicks.

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We also invite your permission for use of all of your images, perhaps by changing your Photostream's license en masse by selecting all at <

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We invite your collaboration in writing and editing articles on this subject and any others that might interest you. Please see articles <

336: 510:. This means that anyone will have the right to share and, where appropriate, to update your material. You can read this license in full at: 424: 1855: 111:. Please help update this Knowledge page to reflect recent events or newly available information. Relevant discussion may be found on 1488: 1809: 1771:

I acknowledge that I cannot withdraw this agreement, and that the content may or may not be kept permanently on a Wikimedia project.

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I sincerely appreciate your consideration of this matter. Please advise me of your decision <by mail, email, telephone, etc.: -->

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I can be contacted by email at , by telephone at (I am in time zone UTC-7 — please call in your late afternoon), and by post at:

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You are obviously an expert (photographer/graphic artist/videographer/whatever). I hope you will consider accepting our request.

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from Commons to review the image. (Note: as not all license reviewers are active users, you may want to make your request at the

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I really liked your website! I found it very informative and useful. I'd love to use it in a project I'm involved with called

825:: This letter was written when Knowledge's content was licensed under GFDL. It should be modified to specify CC BY-SA if used. 1761:

I agree to publish that work under the free license Own work, all rights, released (Multi-license GFDL, CC-Y all versions).

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You can review all of the most current Wikimedia Commons and Knowledge compatible licenses in full at the "cc" links on <

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You can review all of the most current Wikimedia Commons and Knowledge compatible licenses in full at the "cc" links on <

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I'm an editor of the free online encyclopedia Knowledge. I was wondering if I could use the photograph of <something: -->

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You can also ask the author to release their work under a free license publicly, for example by changing the license on

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for requesting permission to re-use somebody else's content in Knowledge. To do this, they must re-license it under the

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Note: this is intended for use where a free image is available, and thus used, that may be unflattering to the subject.

197: 503:. To get a sense of the freedom of Knowledge, you could even edit this right now, even without formally registering. 1527: 1134:: This letter was written when Knowledge's content was licensed under GFDL. It has been modified to specify CC BY-SA. 765:

Example licenses that would permit us to use a better-quality image would be: the GNU Free Documentation License <

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We also invite your permission for use of all of your images, perhaps by changing your legal notice at <URL: -->

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Example licenses that would permit us to use a better-quality image would be: the GNU Free Documentation License (

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because users of our encyclopedia are authorized by the CC BY-SA to distribute it, or any part of it, for a fee.

566:. (To get a sense of the freedom of Knowledge, you yourself can edit this page without registration, right now.) 436: 1192: