CHiPs Wiki:Copyrights

"CHiPs", "CHiPs" Patrol, and "CHiPs" '99 are all registered trademarks of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. "CHiPs" Online is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by MGM. "CHiPs" Online is intended for personal and non-profit use only.

"CHiPs" Online offers no suggestion that the work presented on this web page is "official" or produced or sanctioned by the owner of the aforementioned trademarks. "CHiPs" Online will take all steps necessary to ensure that any usage of trademarked items in no way confuses the audience of this site as to its origin. "CHiPs" Online makes no claim to own "CHiPs" or any of the names related to it. Images that are displayed on this site are copyrighted to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (in the case of screen shots and similar pictures) or to the creator of the image (for fan-made artwork). Visitors may download any pictures displayed on this site for personal use, as long as they are not used for profit, and proper credit is given.

"CHiPs" Online content

Text content

Anyone is free to use the text content of "CHiPs" Online in web sites, articles, or other publications, provided you follow the guidelines of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License, which establishes the following requirements:

• you may not use the works for commercial purposes,
• you must acknowledge the authorship of the original article, and
• for any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work.

If you are simply duplicating the "CHiPs" Online article, the second and third obligations can be fulfilled by providing a conspicuous direct link back to the "CHiPs" Online article hosted on this web site.

If you create a derivative version by changing or adding content, you need to both acknowledge authorship and provide access to the original copy of the text.

Important: The content of this web site does NOT apply to the original works and trademarked names! The "CHiPs" titles and associated names are the sole property of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The administrators of "CHiPs" Online believe that the operation of this web site falls under the definition of "fair use" under United States copyright laws.

Images and other media

Images that are displayed at "CHiPs" Online remain the property of their original creators, and are only included on this web site for purposes of illustration under fair use guidelines. Unless the original author of the image expressly grants permission, images do not fall under the scope of the Creative Commons License. In all cases, the images must be uploaded to our database, accompanied by a specific note with:

• credit for the original author of the image or other media file (if the file is a fan-created work) including a link where the original author may be contacted, or
• the original source of the image or other media file (if the file is derived from an official "CHiPs" work, e.g. screen shots and sound bytes).

You must also include information about:

• whether the file is uploaded to "CHiPs" Online with express permission of the author, or under fair use rules, and
• the source of the file, being a specific episode, movie, book, other official work, a web site, or any other medium.

Contributors' rights and obligations

If you contribute material to "CHiPs" Online, you thereby license it to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. In order to contribute, you therefore must be in a position to grant this license, which means that either

• you own the copyright to the material, for instance because you produced it yourself, or
• you acquired the material from a source that allows the licensing under a Creative Commons or similar license, for instance because the material is in the public domain or is itself published under Creative Commons License.

In the first case, you retain copyright to your materials. You can later republish and relicense them in any way you like. In the second case, if you incorporate external Creative Commons License materials, as a requirement of the CCL, you need to acknowledge the authorship and provide a link back to the network location of the original copy.

Using copyrighted work from others

If you use part of a copyrighted work under "fair use," or if you obtain special permission to use a copyrighted work from the copyright holder under the terms of our license, you must make a note of that fact (along with names and dates). It is our goal to be able to freely redistribute as much of "CHiPs" Online's material as possible (within the limits of copyright law), so original images and sound files licensed under the Creative Commons License or in the public domain are greatly preferred to copyrighted media files used under fair use.

Never use materials that infringe the copyrights of others. This could create legal liabilities and seriously hurt the project. If in doubt, write it yourself.

Note that copyright law governs the creative expression of ideas, not the ideas or information themselves. Therefore, it is perfectly legal to read an encyclopedia article or other work, reformulate it in your own words, and submit it to "CHiPs" Online.

If you find a copyright infringement

It is not the job of rank-and-file members of "CHiPs" Online to police every article for possible copyright infringement, but if you suspect one, you should at the very least bring up the issue in that page's comments section. Others can then examine the situation and take action if needed. The most helpful piece of information you can provide is a URL or other reference to what you believe may be the source of the text.

Some cases will be false alarms. For example, if the contributor was in fact the author of the text that is published elsewhere under different terms, that does not affect their right to post it here under the Creative Commons License. Also, sometimes you will find text elsewhere on the Web that was copied from "CHiPs" Online. In both of these cases, it is a good idea to make a note in the talk page to discourage such false alarms in the future.

If some of the content of a page really is an infringement, then the infringing content should be removed, and a note to that effect should be made on the comments page, along with the original source. If the author's permission is obtained later, the text can be restored.

In extreme cases of contributors continuing to post copyrighted material after appropriate warnings, such users may be blocked from editing to protect the project.

Belief of copyright infringement

"CHiPs" Online requests that in the case that the owner or owners of a copyrighted work feel that their work is being illegally infringed upon, they provide a full list of all items which they believe are infringing, along with the reasoning behind the belief that those items are infringing to "CHiPs" Online's designated agent. In addition, please provide the name of a person, along with their mailing address and e-mail address if possible, for a reply or follow-up letters.