How do you upload a pic to wikipedia?

What kind of license do I need to upload a screenshot from a movie clip that is on Youtube.com, to Wikipedia?

• I am an American. I want to add a pic that I made- a highlighted screenshot of a movie clip that is on Youtube that I can upload to a Wikipedia article, but I need a license to upload ...show more

• Answer:

  Honestly, the best advice I can offer is don't. Just don't. Here are the reasons: First, you need to become an "autoconfirmed" user (a user with a registered account at least four days old and with at least ten previous edits). This is but the beginning of the odyssey. By the time you work your way through the blizzard of "help" and policy pages on Wikipedia regarding uploading images and copyrights, it is fairly likely that your image will be deleted, unless you state that you actually own the copyright to the image. Even if you are the owner (being the original creator is one way), it still may be deleted. Some brief tips to save you some grief: if the image is actually copyrighted by another, it will have to qualify as "fair use" in order to be used on Wikipedia ("fair use" basically means use of a limited sample for illustration or comment). Since you are dealing with a movie still, this would generally come under fair use rules; cropping or highlighting the image would not change that. Wikipedia's fair use policy is not easy to comply with, and even if your image does, it still may deleted by a "free culture" zealot who is ideologically offended by "non-free" (English: non-donated or non-public domain) images. Also, you would have to find some image host acceptable to Wikipedia. The usual host for Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, specifically forbids the upload of fair use images. Even if you are the owner of the copyright, you will need to make clear that you are DONATING the image, not just to Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation, but to the entire world. There are also a number to hoops to jump through here. If you find this overwhelming and not worth the trouble, you are far from the first to come to that conclusion. It is not for nothing that the New York Times refers to Wikipedia as a pictorial desert.