- Attribution (copyright)
In
copyright law, attribution is the requirement to acknowledge or credit the author of a work which is used or appears in another work. Attribution is required by mostcopyright andcopyleft licenses, such asGNUFDL andCC-by .Attribution is often considered the most basic of requirements made by a license, as it allows an author to accumulate a positive reputation that partially repays their work and prevents others from claiming fraudulently to have produced the work. It is also regarded a decent sign of respect to acknowledge the creator and thus give him/her credit for the work.
Typically, the only way a person may copy content without providing proper attribution is to ask for explicit permission.Fact|date=June 2008 According to US law, attribution is not required for a work in the
public domain , since the creator has given up ownership of the work. Most European copyright laws, however, advocate that the creator of a work should always be attributed, even after copyright has expired, as a sign of respect.Also, in many jurisdictions, the creator's
moral rights , which typically include a right to attribution, can only be waived for specific uses. The result of this is that even if creators in those jurisdictions donate their work to the public domain, attribution (or specific permission not to attribute) will still be required for every copy.ee also
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Acknowledgment (creative arts)
*Credit (creative arts)
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
