Free content must allow anyone to use, share, and modify the work for any purpose, even commercially. Some restrictions are allowed: Free content can require people to give credit to the author and share any changes under the same conditions (sometimes called copyleft).
Common cases for free and non-free content are listed. If your case is not listed, you can ask for help at media copyright questions.
Free
Your own work: If you created an entirely original work, you should release it under one of the free cases below.
Note: If you've published your work somewhere else before, you should read about donating copyrighted materials before uploading.
Public domain: Public domain works have no copyright restrictions at all, so they are free. Because Wikipedia's servers are located in the United States, U.S. copyright law is used to determine if a work is free content for Wikipedia. (It may still be copyrighted in other countries.) Works are in the public domain if they meet one of these conditions:
Copyright expired: Very old works are in the public domain. Just how old depends on different factors (detailed at Wikipedia's page on public domain).
Explicitly released: Some people want to "donate" their work by releasing it into the public domain. This can be a simple statement like, "This is in the public domain," or a more formal declaration, such as CC0. Wikipedia uses a lot of work published the United States federal government because it has been explicitly released into the public domain.
Not eligible for copyright: A work usually has to be original or creative enough to be copyrighted. Simple text and shapes are usually not considered original enough for copyright.
Some Creative Commons licenses: CC licenses allow others to use the work under conditions given by the creator. Only Attribution ("CC-BY") and Attribution-ShareAlike ("CC-BY-SA") licenses are free.
Free and open-source software: Screenshots of software released under free licenses are free.
No clear license: In most countries, copyright is automatically granted to people who publish their work. You should assume that a work is not free unless permission is clearly granted.
Other Creative Commons Licenses: Not all CC licenses are free. Only Attribution ("CC-BY") and Attribution-ShareAlike ("CC-BY-SA") licenses are free, so content released under other CC licenses is non-free.
Restrictions: A work with restrictions on reuse can still be free content, but common restrictions that make a work non-free are non-commercial use only and Wikipedia use only.
