User talk:Chinmay7

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Hello Chinmay7, welcome to Wikipedia. I would suggest throwing in a user page of some sort. For the map, well, it comes from Commons. No, I don't know who did the map, but I do know we have a license to use it. If you look down the bottom of the page it says "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License". If we did not have such a license commons would remove it. That rules out it being stolen from someone's creative work or its being used against the copyright law. We can use it. The publisher is commons and although we do not know the name of the artist he/she has given us permission to use it. That permission probably gives everyone in the world the right to use it, but you can look up the kinds of licenses commons allows on commons. If you are going to use it on Wikipedia, you don't need any special attribution. If elsewhere, you can always give commons as a source. As you have surmised you can't just go around using pictures you see on the Internet. But, this issue has already been addressed by commons, so if they are OK with it then we are OK with it. If you really must have the artist's name, commons help desk might be able to help you.Dave (talk) 05:22, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

PS There is of course a possibility that the artist lied, that he/she is passing off stolen work as his/her own. Wikimedia frowns on that sort of thing. How do you protect yourself from a bald-faced lie? I wish I knew. But, we have to have a commons, we have to have pictures, and Wikimedia has made every reasonable effort to protect creative work. If it were me I would feel safe in using it. Of course, everything I say here is strictly my personal opinion, for which you did ask. Ciao.Dave (talk) 05:29, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Welcome.Dave (talk) 09:12, 10 December 2009 (UTC)