Fair Use Policy on Wikipedia: What You Can and Can't Use

When you see a photo of a movie poster, a song snippet, or a book cover on Wikipedia, you might wonder: Isn’t that copyright infringement? It’s not—thanks to the fair use policy, a legal exception that allows limited use of copyrighted material without permission for purposes like commentary, education, or news reporting. Also known as fair dealing, it’s the only way Wikipedia can include certain media that simply can’t be replaced with freely licensed content. This isn’t a free pass. Every image, clip, or excerpt used under fair use has to pass strict tests: it must be necessary, minimal, directly tied to the article’s topic, and not replace the original work.

Wikipedia’s fair use policy, a set of community-driven guidelines that define when copyrighted material can be used on Wikipedia is enforced by editors, not lawyers. That means it’s messy, inconsistent, and constantly debated. For example, album covers are allowed because they’re essential for identifying music articles—but screenshots from TV shows are often removed unless they’re directly analyzed in the text. The Wikipedia Library, a program that gives editors access to paywalled academic sources and archives helps reduce the need for fair use by providing free legal access to journals and newspapers. But for things like logos, film stills, or rare historical photos, there’s often no other option. That’s why the fair use policy, a critical but fragile part of Wikipedia’s content ecosystem survives: it’s the bridge between legal reality and the goal of free knowledge.

But here’s the problem: fair use is a U.S. legal concept. Wikipedia is global. Editors from countries with no fair use laws often push back, calling it biased or legally risky. That’s why Wikipedia’s copyright rules, the broader framework that includes fair use, public domain, and Creative Commons licensing are constantly under review. Some editors want to eliminate fair use entirely. Others argue it’s the only way to document pop culture, politics, and history accurately. The tension shows up in edit wars, deletion discussions, and even in the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that supports Wikipedia and defends its legal rights’s own statements on AI and copyright. You won’t find a perfect solution here—but you will find a system that tries to balance legal limits with the public’s right to know.

What you’ll find below are real examples of how this policy plays out: how editors fight over a single screenshot, why some images get deleted overnight, and how tools like edit filters and pending changes help protect high-risk articles from misuse. These aren’t theoretical debates—they’re daily decisions that shape what millions of people see when they search for information. If you’ve ever wondered why Wikipedia looks the way it does, the answer starts with fair use.