Wikipedia:Copying text from other sources

In almost all cases, . Doing so is a copyright violation and may constitute plagiarism. Always write the articles in your own words and cite the sources of the article. Copyright violations are often speedily deleted.

As a general rule, do not copy text from other sources. Doing so usually constitutes both a copyright violation and plagiarism (exceptions are discussed below). This general rule includes copying material from websites of charity or non-profit organizations, educational, scholarly and news publications, and all sources without a copyright notice. If a work does not have a copyright notice, assume it to be under copyright-protection.

In case of uncertainty, please ask at or for input from other editors.

If you have published content on another user-generated website, they may have required you to grant them exclusive license, in which case you cannot contribute it here. Sometimes even when sites do not require exclusive license, such as IMDb, it may not be possible for you to use the content here as it may not be possible to verify that you are the individual who placed it there.

No. Superficial change of copyright-protected text is not enough. . If the way in which a source has said something is important, please employ quotation.

Brief quotations of copyrighted text may be used to illustrate a point, establish context, or attribute a point of view or idea. Use of copyrighted text must be in compliance with policy. This means that the quotation must not be replaceable with free text (including one that the editor writes), must be minimal, must have contextual significance and must have previously been published.

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