This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Санта Клаус (talk | contribs) at 10:20, 10 February 2008 (Undid revision 182683945 & adding arabic interwiki). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 10:20, 10 February 2008 by Санта Клаус (talk | contribs) (Undid revision 182683945 & adding arabic interwiki)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)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 most copyright and copyleft licenses, such as GNUFDL and CC-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. 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.