Commons:Village pump/Copyright/Archive/2020/08

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File:Hughie Gallacher.jpg

According the description given for this photo on its source website, this is a photo taken from a game played on either February 10, 2016 or October 2, 2016. In either case, there's no way the photo could be {{PD-1923}} in the United States. The other copyright license added to the file's page is {{PD-UK-unknown}}, but the same photo can be seen used in other places online like here and here so I'm not sure how applicable that particular license is. The reason I came across this is because the Commons file was just uploaded using the same name as the non-free en:File:Hughie Gallacher.jpg uploaded to English Wikipedia. This caused the local English Wikipedia file to be flagged by a bot for a en:WP:F8 review. If this file's licensing is OK, the local non-free file most likely can be deleted per en:WP:F7. -- Marchjuly (talk) 08:05, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

PD-UK-unknown seems fine. (The game and photo was 1926, not 2016.) If you find that a human author was known for the photo before 1997, it would be different, but the Daily Mail did not identify an author in the link you gave even today. The U.S. tag is indeed incorrect. If the photo was 1925 it would be OK, but being 1926 meant it was just (barely) restored by the URAA. It had been PD in the UK since 1977, but it would have been restored in the UK on Jan 1 1996 and re-expired there in 1997. Unfortunately that encompassed the URAA date. Unless the photo was also published in the U.S. within 30 days and avoided the URAA that way, it will re-expire in the U.S. in 2022. Carl Lindberg (talk) 12:20, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for catching my mistake with the dates. I don't know why I mixed 2016 up with 1926. Does the file need a license for the US and the UK or does the {{PD-UK-unknown}} cover both? -- Marchjuly (talk) 13:11, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
PD-UK-unknown does not cover the U.S. case. So technically yes, the file fails the U.S. part of policy for another 1.5 years, even though it's fine for the country of origin part of policy. Carl Lindberg (talk) 13:37, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
Thank you Clindberg for clarifying the "PD-UK-unknown" license. I've started Commons:Deletion requests/File:Hughie Gallacher.jpg so perhaps things will be sorted out there. -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:17, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Using an image elsewhere...

Hi - can anyone check I have this right - if I wish to use this image outside wiki / web need to attribute to the author in this manner:

Andrei nacu at English Wikipedia / Public domain

Thanks - relatively new to wiki :)

This is the image link I'm wishing to use:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Roman_Roads_in_Britannia.svg — Preceding unsigned comment added by Roblongworth (talk • contribs) 14:25, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

  • Hey @Roblongworth: In this instance, assuming the licensing is correct, then no, you don't need to attribute anything, unless you live in a jurisdiction which does not have a legal mechanism for individuals to release works into the public domain. In which case, you may need to consult a lawyer. Otherwise, "public domain" comes with no strings attached.
Of course, if you want to attribute Wikimedia Commons as a resource for free media for public use, then no one is going to argue with you . We'd very much like for more people to use this resource we've helped to create. GMGtalk 14:38, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
Yes, you need to attribut the author of the work and your suggestion is correct. See 4 c in the license [[1]] " If You Distribute, ..., You must, ..., keep intact all copyright notices for the Work and provide, ...: (i) the name of the Original Author (or pseudonym, if applicable) ...". The right of the author to be attributed does not go away with a free licence. For your information the author have changed his/her user name [[2]] [[3]] and is now called Andrein. Please also note that two other authors have made original contributions to the file since it was uploaded to Commons. Please se comment about the license from m:User:StevenJ81 at Wikimedia in m:Talk:Requests for new languages/Wikivoyage Norwegian -- ツツ Dyveldi  ☯  15:38, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
@Dyveldi: The license on the linked image is public domain. Public domain does not have an attribution requirement. GMGtalk 15:45, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
Please read m:Talk:Requests for new languages/Wikivoyage Norwegian. Every edit on Wikipedia is published with the licence CC BY-SA 3.0. Recommend asking m:User:StevenJ81. -- ツツ Dyveldi  ☯  16:07, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
That is not correct. Please read the official Terms of Use applicable to all Wikimedia websites, section 7, paragraph d "Non-text media", which applies to non-text media on all Wikimedia websites, including en.wikipedia, and paragraph f "Public domain content", which applies to all types of content, including text and non-text. -- Asclepias (talk) 16:32, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
Under Norwegian law it is not possible to relinquish the right to be attributed. Copyright law seems to be both national and international, but the national regulations take into account the international rules so a lot of the regulations is pretty much the same. The original edits on English WP is deleted and additional information might be found there about the upload and if for instance the file originally was published someplace else. The edits there would have been published with the CC BY-SA 3.0. licence. In addition to it being polite to attribute the author. I understood m:User:StevenJ81 comment as I have said above. I have no further comments. -- ツツ Dyveldi  ☯  16:58, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
@Dyveldi: You cannot re-license public domain content. The license for contributions to Wikimedia projects covers textual contributions, and it doesn't even include all of them. Structured data contributions on Commons for example are licensed CC0. For media, you have to look at the particular license for the particular media. GMGtalk 20:59, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Batch process copyvios?

Hi,

this user has uploaded a number of pictures by another photographer who has obviously not been dead for 70 years. I have addressed her on her talk page of the German WP but she has not reacted.

My question now: Do we have to nominate each individual file for deletion, or is there some way to batch process this? --217.239.15.146 14:58, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for notifying. Taken care of. --Túrelio (talk) 15:29, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
Thanks! --217.239.15.146 16:25, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
@217.239.15.146: In general, groups of questionable images uploaded by the same person, and with identical rationale for dubious status, can be bulk nominated via Commons:Deletion requests/Mass deletion request. This is often preferable to nominating each file individually. --Animalparty (talk) 01:49, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Sesame Street GOV videos

Does being a PD-USGov work preclude protection of pre-existing elements when said elements make no claim of copyright there? I ask because the following videos use pre-existing characters, songs, and books from Sesame Street:

-BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 20:08, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

1924 Photo of Dushanbe

I'm improving the Dushanbe article on English Wikipedia, and while researching I came across a very interesting photo of a panorama of the city in 1924. I don't know much about copyright, but would the photo be in the public domain by now (and would a similar photo taken in 1932 be in the public domain as well)? This is a link to the page with the photo, and this is a link to the photo itself Zoozaz1 (talk) 04:16, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Although it is quite possible that these photos are actually in the public domain (in the United States and the country of origin), determining this with high confidence can be a surprisingly difficult task. It's important to try to gather as much of the information below as possible. You may want to consider uploading it to the English Wikipedia under their less restrictive policies instead, for reasons I'll describe below.

To check if it is still under copyright in the U.S., first consider the dates: you have sources saying 1924 for one photo and 1932 for the other. Consulting the Hirtle chart, it is evident that the place of publication and nationality of the publisher can matter. And there is even disagreement on whether publication online constitutes publication in a particular location. I won't enumerate all the possibilities here, but let us know if you think any of those cases or special cases are relevant. For now, can you be reasonably sure of the date, location and nationality of the first publication (hopefully with authorization of the copyright holder)? Following the chart, can you trace a path indicating that it is out of copyright in the U.S.?

That said, maybe we can assume for the purposes of discussion that these works were published domestically (and not in the U.S.) by a non-U.S. person, at around the time of their creation. If so, what was the jurisdiction at the time, and what were their copyright laws? Around 1924, it could have been one of a couple former Soviet republics (that were being administratively and substantively reorganized at the time), like the Bukharan People's Soviet Republic, Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic or Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic. Since none of these had directly adopted international copyright treaties, and neither did the USSR as a whole, it is possible that copyright law of the time poses difficulties. Even if we assume that the law of post-USSR successor states would apply retroactively, it might not be clear whether to apply that of Tajikistan or Uzbekistan—since both might be successors to the jurisdiction in place at the time the work was created, despite Dushanbe currently being in Tajikistan. (As far as I know, this isn't a universally settled question—but maybe there's an instructive example from WWII-era Poland, Germany and the USSR.) Let's assume it is Tajikistan, and apply its law. It is possible that 50 years since the death of the author have not elapsed, and the work could be in copyright still. Even if it is out of copyright in Tajikistan, did it become public domain before March 9, 2000 (the earliest date of Berne Convention/WTO/WIPO treaty accession for that state), or was its copyright in the U.S. restored by the URAA?

Current Commons consensus is to use conservative estimates of these uncertainties. By contrast, English Wikipedia allows upload if it is public domain in the U.S. (regardless of other countries), and also has some options for fair use of non-public-domain material. (You might have some luck there in asserting fair use on the grounds that the photos are representative of some particular historical aspect of Dushanbe, and no free alternative is likely to be available.) TheFeds 07:07, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the comprehensive response, copyright of Central Asian Emirates seems way too complicated for me. Anyway, I do not have any relation to the photo (or Tajikistan for that matter) besides seeing it on the web, so I don't know much more than you. However, in my research online about Dushanbe, Gafur Shermatov appears fairly regularly as a publisher of photos of old Dushanbe "Tajik historian Gafur Shermatov regularly publishes photos of old Dushanbe". The article with the photo was an interview with Shermatov, and along with the fact that other photos of the article were taken by Shermatov I would think it's likely that the 1924 photo was an unpublished photo given to Fergana News by Shermatov, a Russian newspaper. Would this mean the photo would be copyrighted? During the time photo was taken it was either in the Bukharan PSR or the Tajik ASSR. Zoozaz1 (talk) 00:45, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
I will also note that this photo on commons seems to be in a similar situation but is claimed to be in the public domain. Zoozaz1 (talk) 18:06, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

another fish photo

I got another one .... can we keep him pleeeeeeeeeeease?

This is similar to Commons:Village_pump/Copyright/Archive/2020/07#can_i_upload_this? ... the page is https://westernnativetrout.org/dolly-varden/ and it says that all of the photos were taken by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which means it's the US government, so I think the photos are public domain. I will crop out the watermark unless there is some rule saying that photos from the US gov't must remain entirely untouched. Thanks, Soap (talk) 00:20, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

If all credible evidence points to a photo being created by a Federal Government employee in the course of their duties, then {{PD-USGov}} (or in this case, the more specific {{PD-USGov-FWS}}) applies, barring theoretical but in practice very rare circumstances like a personal snapshot taken on a lunch break. Works created by the Federal Government are public domain, so you can do whatever you'd like to them: visual credits or watermarks are discouraged per Commons:Watermarks (not an actual policy), but in any case the author and source should be indicated in the file metadata/file description. --Animalparty (talk) 01:41, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
Okay Im glad to hear that. I published it as file:Dolly_Varden_in_hand.jpg. Since you implied cropping was okay, I cropped out a lot more than just the watermark. Also I changed it from PNG to JPG to cut down on load time. I shouldnt need to ask for help next time. Thanks, Soap (talk) 17:23, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

File:Sunil freeman 0593.JPG

This is a 2014 image which has just been added to the Wikipedia article en:Third-party and independent candidates for the 2020 United States presidential election. It doesn't seem to have been used anywhere else prior to that so perhaps nobody ever really looked at the license. It seems to be stating that the file has NC limitations placed upon its reuse. Such a license, however, seems to be expressly not allowed by COM:L. Is there something about this file's license which makes it OK for Commons? Is the "If you require a less restrictive commercial license please email me, to negotiate terms." considered a sort of COM:NCR? Does explicit attribution need to be given in the Wikipedia article for this file to be used or is it simply enough just to attributed the image in an edit summary or on the article's talk page? The uploader seems to have been indefinitely blocked so I'm bringing this up for discussion here instead of directly asking them on their user talk page. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:53, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Q1: "Is there something about this file's license which makes it OK for Commons?". A1: Yes. The fact that the file was uploaded before 2018 with the GFDL.
Q2: "Is the "If you require a less restrictive commercial license please email me, to negotiate terms." considered a sort of COM:NCR?" A2: No. It relates to copyright and, in itself, it's not a restriction.
Q3: "Does explicit attribution need to be given in the Wikipedia article for this file to be used or is it simply enough just to attribute the image in an edit summary or on the article's talk page?" A3: Neither. The attribution is in the file description page.
-- Asclepias (talk) 06:26, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for clarifying things Asclepias. Just one last question about your answer to Q1. Does that mean files uploaded with GDFL on or after 1 January 2018 are not OK? -- Marchjuly (talk) 08:40, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
Not exactly. It's GFDL as the only free license and the precise date is 15 October 2018. For details, please see No longer allow GFDL for some new uploads. -- Asclepias (talk) 13:05, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Youtube screenshot

This image seems to be a Youtube screenshot, so I doubt the license. Can someone please check? --217.239.15.102 23:38, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

It's fine, you can see the Creative Commons license on Youtube. From what I can tell the Youtube account appears genuine. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:41, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Use of court documents from California hosted by the Department of Justice

Hi! I am interested in determining if this document is in the public domain (PD), as well as whether individual photos in it are PD. In general I believe that documents released by the Department of Justice are PD. Though this particular document is labelled as from California, rather than the DoJ, I think this is usually not an issue either--California has very generous provisions.

The reason why I'm hoping to get a second opinion on this is that public records get tricky when they're court documents or related to criminal investigations (as I think this one is). Is this document in the PD? Are the included images?

If yes, then users on en.wp have expressed interest in using at least one image.

Thanks for your help. Jlevi (talk) 11:47, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Note that this question has been copied to Wikipedia:Media_copyright_questions#Use_of_court_documents_from_California_hosted_by_the_Department_of_Justice and so may be answered there. Jlevi (talk) 21:37, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Bandcamp licensing

File:The Secret History of the Moon thumbnail.jpg and File:The Secret History of the Moon artwork.jpg were each uploaded under a {{Cc-by-3.0}} license. The files were tagged with {{Npd}} and the uploader subsequently added a link to a bandcamp page which has a "Some right reserved" license visible on it. Does this license cover all content appearing on the page including images or is it just for the audio tracks. I asked a Commons admin about this and he wasn't totally sure and suggested a DR to try and resolve things. The file's uploader, on the other hand, seems quite sure that the license covers everything on the page. If this is the case, then I can go back and remove the npd tag; if not, then I can either leave the tag or start a DR about the files. -- Marchjuly (talk) 08:34, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

According to this and this, authors can mark the license to each track. If the licenses of all tracks are the same, then bandcamp puts the license at the album level, which is seen on that page. By that, it would seem to imply just the music is licensed. The graphic on the cover is from the video, which I do not see similarly licensed at youtube. I'm not sure if bandcamp lets you specify the license of the cover art and other bonus uploads, though. Maybe they do and those also need the same license for the album-level license to display. Or maybe it is implied by licensing all the music tracks, and also uploading the cover art there. I guess that's a long way of saying I'm not sure either. I don't think it qualifies for speedy deletion -- or even close as it's far from obvious. Worth a discussion at the very least; I would at least remove the npd tags, and start a DR if you think there is significant doubt on the cover art. Perhaps asking the author would also be a good idea. Carl Lindberg (talk) 13:34, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
​I appreciate you taking a look at this. When I mentioned to the uploader that Explicit (the Commons admin mentioned above that I asked to look at this) felt similarly, the uploader responded (also here) that the bandcamp license covered everything as per the intent of the copyright holder. The statements in the files' descriptions (here and here) say as much, but again it's not clear if that's what the bandcamp license actually covers. I could start a DR about this, but the uploader appears a bit frustrated (here) that so many of their uploads have been flagged for review so I'm hoping there might be another way to sort this out. -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:34, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
I removed the npd tags and started a discussion about this at Commons:Deletion requests/Secret History of the Moon files. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:08, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

copyright

Please check the copyright of these images

Thanks--Persia ☘ 19:00, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

@Persia: The actual copyright status of these images will probably vary widely based different parameters such as the country in which each image was originally published. Can you be more specific about which images you are interested in? – BMacZero (🗩) 20:12, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
@BMacZero: this picture--Persia ☘ 20:48, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Remaking a map from a previously deleted file

I'm planning to remake File:Cavite-Tagaytay-Batangas-Expressway01.jpg using OpenStreetMap as a base map instead of Google Maps (which was the case for the deleted file). Is it okay to upload the remaked map in Commons and if yes/no, why or why not? Looking forward to your responses. -Ianlopez1115 (talk) 10:51, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

@Ianlopez1115: Yes, it would be okay to create a map using OpenStreetMaps and upload it here. This is because OpenStreetMaps uses a free license for their maps that allows re-use by anyone. Google does not, reserving all rights to their maps. You just need to credit OpenStreetMaps on the page of your new file, in accordance with [4]. – BMacZero (🗩) 20:03, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Simple drawing to illustrate a building shape, based on the architect's drawing

(I asked this earlier in the Commons Helpdesk, and was advised to ask here instead.)

I have created a very simple outline drawing of the floorplan of a building (church), to illustrate the shape of the building which is otherwise difficult to describe. The original architect's drawing (obviously much more detailed and complicated) is from the 1970s, so about 40-50 years old in case that matters. Is it okay for me to upload my drawing for use in a Wikipedia article, or does it violate some copyright or policy because it's based on somebody else's work?

My drawing is here, and the original architect's drawing is here, so you can see how similar (or not) they are.

Any advice much appreciated! :) TIA, -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 16:22, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Ship's Bill of Lading

Are these things subject to copyright? I doubt it but who knows. Thanks.Crook1 (talk) 23:03, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

@Crook1: I think it's likely they would not be, because they are only recorded factual information, but if they are particularly ornate or include logos they might be. Do you have a link to a specific image you are considering? – BMacZero (🗩) 20:07, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
don't see any logos. Here it is. https://ibb.co/vc2v1Fc Crook1 (talk) 21:47, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
Nothing creative there. Well below the threshold of originality. Rodhullandemu (talk) 22:36, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, what would be appropriate copyright template for the image? Crook1 (talk) 17:29, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

File:Real Madrid CF.svg

Copyright violation property of Real Madrid Pincheira22 (talk) 19:21, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Deleted per [5]. I think the current (2001) design is similar enough to the 1997 design to not constitute a new work, but I think the modifications from the 1941 design exceed COM:TOO. The color change is not copyrightable, but the shape of the crown is substantially different. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:48, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

File:FIFA Best Awards.jpg

This image has been reported as copyright from the Draft:Tom Nolan page however the image was directly from Tom Nolans official website https://www.tnfreestyle.com/gallery.html where in bold he clearly states all images on his website are copyright free and free to use. This shows use of the image is well within all copyright laws so I would like to request this copyright complaint is removed against the image. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tnfan99 (talk • contribs) 00:07, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

@Tnfan99: It was deleted as a copyvio.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 22:14, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: The deletion occurred at my request since he had previously uploaded it as a CC-BY-SA-self. However, the link given above states that, and I quote, "Images are copyright free, please feel free to use", which should theoretically count as a {{PD-author}}, if a somewhat informal one. It is also worth noting that he has already reuploaded the image at File:Best awards copy.jpg, again under CC-BY-SA-self, but theoretically it could be kept if the {{PD-author}} license was applied properly. Nathan2055talk - contribs 17:04, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
@Tnfan99 and Nathan2055: I doubt Tom Nolan took that photo and has the right to state it is "copyright free". Please have the photographer post Commons:Licensing compliant permission for such work on their website or social media presence or send the photo and permission via OTRS with a carbon copy to you.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 05:46, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
Pinging @Pi.1415926535 as deleting Admin.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 05:51, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
Agreed with Jeff here. Permission from the photographer is needed. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 07:51, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
@Tnfan99, Jeff G., and Pi.1415926535: Given this discussion, I've gone ahead and tagged File:Best awards copy.jpg, File:Tom Nolan Man Utd .jpg, File:Tnfreestyle.jpg, File:20180924 164749762 iOS.jpg, and File:20170626 013313630 iOS.jpg as having no evidence of permission. If someone can get an email from Tom Nolan and/or the photographer verifying its license status, that can be forwarded to OTRS and the photos reuploaded. Otherwise, we just have to assume that they're still all rights reserved. Nathan2055talk - contribs 05:19, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
@Pi.1415926535 and Nathan2055: Thanks!   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 08:14, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Copyright of video call screenshots

Who should have the right to re-license these screenshots? The person who set up the camera (usually same person as the person depicted), the video call service provider, or the person who took the screenshot?

Examples: File:Mrs Olutu in red in MTV Shuga 2020.png File:Scientific Forum 2001 (01118923).jpg.

A similar situation is, very often the person speaking at a conference is projected onto a big screen at the same time. A photographer takes a picture including the big screen, like File:Nancy Pelosi at MSC 2020.jpg. Does this violate someone's copyright? What the big screen displays is obviously not the photographer's work, but since it's live, it's actually just like part of the photo magnified.

If we consider an analogous situation which involves no electronic but only mechanical modes of transmission (like mirrors, telescopes...), obviously neither the person depicted nor the equipment provider would enjoy any copyright in the photo produced. If we consider televised programmes, the television/broadcast companies own the rights of the footage transmitted, right? But it feels wrong to me that by this analogy Skype/Youtube/Zoom/Twitch... would get the copyright. :/ --RZuo (talk) 09:34, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

  • In the US and most other countries the copyright applies at the moment of locking the work into some sort of tangible thing. Something that exists non-transiently. Some courts went as far as to rule that snow sculptures are not covered by copyright (I think that goes too far, but it illustrates this particular point). I am sure that given that fact any temporary storage needed for transmitting the conference call would not be considered to be copyrightable. You could theoretically argue that this was "performance" which also has copyright, but placing a screen in a hall or having a person sit in another room and speak would be definitely scènes à faire and as such not copyrightable. ℺ Gone Postal (〠 ✉ • ✍ ⏿) 06:00, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
    • However, the person who takes a screenshot can argue that they hold copyright, if they have exercised their creativity in determining when to take a screenshot. Think about it this way, the video is running, if you just generate an algorithm that takes screenshots of each speaker at exactly 21 seconds from start, that is not copyrightable; however, if you stand there with a camera in front of the screen and think about what shot will be best, then you hold perhaps some copyright... maybe. Keep in mind that I am not a lawyer, so if somebody with a law degree will disagree with me, then I will definitely be wrong, but it does seem to be the case here. ℺ Gone Postal (〠 ✉ • ✍ ⏿) 06:06, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
      • A possible issue that comes to mind is if one of the call participants is operating a a camera and is also recording the video footage that is being captured by that camera. Would that mean that the video footage from that camera now exists in a tangible (and copyrighted) form? In particular, there is this previous VP/C discussion about Jumbotron display images and this other VP/C discussion which may be of interest. --Gazebo (talk) 06:46, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
        • True. But the question is this: Is the photograph of the screen a derivative work of that other copyrighted work, or are they both derivatives of a live transmission. So we can have (live transmission/pd)->(photograph/copyright) and (live transmission/pd)->(video recording/copyright). Or we get (live transmission/pd)->(video recording/copyright)->(photograph/derivative copyright). And in this case we really need a lawyer to comment on that. I cannot even attempt to approach this from all reasonale angles to predict the outcome. This really annoys me about the copyright law, it is a strict liability, which means that you are guilty even if you read the law, did everything possible to follow it, but just accidentally got it wrong; and yet it is written so vaguely that there is no chance to ever be 100% sure. At least we don't allow fair use, which is even worse hell-hole. ℺ Gone Postal (〠 ✉ • ✍ ⏿) 15:33, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

DRs in need of attention

The following DR has been open for more than two months: Commons:Deletion requests/File:Gwalior fort - panoramio - Gyanendrasinghchauha… (12).jpg.

There is another DR of a file (which is copied from Facebook): Commons:Deletion requests/File:Maharaja bijli pasi.jpg. That one has been open for nearly one month. So they need a bit of attention. Thanks. - NitinMlk (talk) 20:48, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

@NitinMlk: That's minor, Commons:Deletion requests/2019/12 still has contents.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 05:32, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: Oh, my bad. I should have waited till the next year. On a serious note, the two DRs pointed out by me are seemingly straightforward. In fact, the second one could be CSDed as well. But I guess the Commons admins are quite overburdened. - NitinMlk (talk) 19:00, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
@NitinMlk: I agree, and tagged both files.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 08:10, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
NitinMlk (talk) 20:35, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

File:DñaCasilda.jpg Public domain? Own work?

File:DñaCasilda.jpg says that it is the uploader's own work, but it doesn't seem to be the case. A comment left to me on the English Wikpedia states, "here's a different issue you might want to have a look at, and I'm not enough of an expert in this area to tell you. It's that really excellent infobox image. I love the image. But when I look at it on Commons, it's missing information (I think) about the copyright. Obviously, it's an old painting. You can tell by the texture on it that it came from another website. The uploader says it's their own work, but I have my doubts. Probably should get this settled if it's going to be used in the article." SL93 (talk) 23:07, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

I'm the one who left that message for SL93 on the DYK talk page at English Wikipedia. When the you look closely, the image looks as if it's being viewed through a screen netting, which would seem to be a tip off that it's a copy from some website. Besides which, this looks like a really good painting and might actually be the work of some renown painter. We should check it out. Maile66 (talk)
Whether it's copied from some website doesn't matter. Per COM:PD-Art, the only thing that matters is the copyright status of the original work. Because Spain's copyright term is 80 years, we can't quite use {{PD-old-assumed}} just yet, unless we can establish that the painting was definitely completed prior to August 1890. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 20:57, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Copyright on old charts at Stanford Library

I've just uploaded these files:

I've uploaded quite a few Admiralty Charts from Stanford, and when I checked the copyright status they have always showed as no known restrictions, as expected. I'd already uploaded these before I noticed that Stanford claims copyright on them and only allows non-commercial use. The originals are clearly out of copyright (PD-UKGov), and having read accounts of previous disputes my understanding is that faithful copies of PD material are also fully PD.

What is the policy on this? Delete them, add a note of Stanford's copyright claim, or do nothing? Copyright text is:

Property rights reside with the repository, Copyright © Stanford University. Images may be reproduced or transmitted, but not for commercial use. For commercial use or commercial republication, contact rumseymapcenter@stanford.edu This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. By downloading any images from this site, you agree to the terms of that license.

Thanks Kognos (talk) 16:03, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

@Kognos: If the original images are out of copyright, you are correct that faithful copies are as well. I believe we generally just disregard these types of claims if they are invalid. You could wrap the license template with {{PD-scan}} to emphasize the situation. – BMacZero (🗩) 20:20, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
@BMacZero: Thanks, I've added this template. Being a cautious person, I'm inclined to also add a note of the Stanford copyright text to the description. Is this frowned upon? Kognos (talk) 21:23, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
You could do something like this, more or less:
{{Licensed-PD-Art-two|PD-UKGov|PD-US-expired|rawphotolicense= *'''[https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)] by © Stanford University'''. }}
There is no Licensed-PD-scan wrapper template, so this is one from the PD-Art group, but it may do as well, because this image is probably not an ordinary scan but comparable to a photographic reproduction.
-- Asclepias (talk) 22:38, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
This looks perfect as it is. I've no problem with a chart as a work of art. I've made the changes. Thanks both for your help. Kognos (talk) 09:13, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Photographs by Jenny de Vasson

Question for our specialists of the U.S. law. The photographs in Category:Jenny de Vasson were scanned from a book published in 1982 in France. I asked the uploader if he could find more details and he has kindly replied. But some details of the situation may still be missing. Here are the facts, as far as we can tell. The photographs, several thousand of them, were taken by Jenny de Vasson, a rich woman who took photographs as a hobby and who died in 1920. The photographs remained unpublished until circa 1982. Leaving aside for the moment the possibility that such photographs may not have been copyrightable in France under French law, and assuming for the purposes of the discussion that they were copyrightable, then, under the version of the French copyright law then in force, the initial copyright (50 pma + extension), owned by the heirs or successors, would have expired in 1979. The 1982 book says that the photographs were "discovered" in April 1979 (oh, what a coincidence) in one of the houses previously owned by the family de Vasson and that they were shown in June 1979 to Jean-Marc Zaorski, a photographer and publisher. Zaorski and others wrote a book, published in 1982 in France by the publishing house Herscher. The book includes reproductions of 100 of the photographs. The copyright notice of the book reads "Copyright éditions Herscher 1982". Under the French copyright law, the first publication of a previously unpublished work, after the expiration of the initial copyright period, grants a copyright for 25 years after that publication to the person who owns the physical copy of the work and publishes it. That copyright would have expired in 2008. It would have existed on the URAA date, in 1996, if that makes a difference, but I'm not sure if it does. It is unclear who owned the photographic plates and the family albums at this point, in 1979-1982, and authorized the publication of the photographs. It may have been either the heirs of the de Vasson family, or the owners of the house, if the house had been sold to them with its contents, or Zaorski or someone else, if they bought the objects. The book suggests that the photographs were in the possession of Gilles Wolkowitsh, said to be a distant relative of the de Vasson family and possibly one of the present owners of the house and one of the writers of the book. Anyway, both the initial copyright (if it ever existed) and the subsequent copyright (if it ever existed) are now expired in France. The unknown is what is the copyright status of the photographs in the United States. The Hirtle chart seems rather confusing about material published outside the U.S. between 1978 and 1989. Did the publication with a copyright notice in 1982 in France preserve a U.S. copyright and to whose benefit (including if the publication was authorized by the owner of the 1982 French copyright who was not the same person as the owner of the pre-1980 French copyright who at this point presumably still owned the U.S. copyright on the unpublished photographs)? If there was or is a U.S. copyright, who owned or owns it and in what year did it or will it expire? 1991, 2048, another year? Thank you in advance for your lights. -- Asclepias (talk) 17:28, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Ooof. Hrm. I don't think the publication copyright enters into this, nor does the URAA. The original French copyright had expired (probably in 1971, since I think works had to be published to get the extensions) and I think that is all the URAA would be based on. For the U.S., copyright would have been preserved though because it was unpublished. If they were published with permission, and with copyright notice (even with an incorrect name), then the U.S. copyright was still valid, even if not enforceable by that publisher. For works created before 1978 but first published from 1978 through 2002, there is a special clause which makes the U.S. copyright last until 2048 (it's the later of 70pma, which had already passed, and that date.) If however the photographs were published without permission from the original author (or someone who owned the copyright by that point), then I think they were still technically unpublished from a U.S. perspective, and it would have expired in the U.S. in 2003.
Since the author's copyright had expired, I don't think anyone actually needed permission to publish them in France -- whoever had possession of the physical photos could do it. So that important question may be very thorny -- it's a question of who was the heir of the original author, i.e. the person that owned the copyright from the U.S. perspective. The U.S. would recognize any French rules regarding transfer/inheritance of the original copyright, but I don't think they would recognize the 25-year publication right at all. To me, the only way they are still under copyright is if the French publisher got a permission to publish from the legal heirs, which they didn't actually need to get. The notice is in the publisher's name, so they were using the publication right in France, but that doesn't give any hint as if they got permission for the (expired) original copyright which still existed in the U.S. It sounds like that's still a guess, but to me it seems unlikely that a publisher would have bothered. Carl Lindberg (talk) 01:02, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
@Asclepias: This one is a real doozy. First, it must be mentioned that the copyright term in effect for these photos in France at the time of their publication in 1982 was not 50 pma, but 50 years from the date of publication.[6] In 1997 France enacted a new copyright law (retroactively effective to July 1, 1995) which changed the term for posthumous works to 70 pma (and created the 25 year right for the first publisher as well). Up to 1997, these photographs were protected in France by the 50 year from publication term. After 1997 (due to the change in law), these photographs were in the public domain in France since they were published within pma + 70 (i.e. by 1990) and thus not eligible for the 25 year term.[7] Any of the photographs published after 1990, however, were entitled to 25 year copyright protection by the owner (within France). According to the Hirtle chart, any of the photographs published in the book would be protected in the U.S. until 1 January 2048 (See "Works Published Abroad After 1 January 1978"), assuming the publication was authorized by Jenny de Vasson's heirs, which isn't at all clear. However, any photos published after 2002 would be in the public domain (since the term would be pma + 70). So, in conclusion, the Jenny de Vasson photographs that are public domain are:
In the U.S.: those published after 2002
In France: those published before 1991
In other words, none are eligible to be hosted on Commons. The ones published in the book will be eligible on 1 January 2048. Any photos published after 2002 will be eligible 25 years after publication (2028 at the earliest). Kaldari (talk) 01:05, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
@Clindberg: I posted my reply simultaneously to yours. Can you look it over and see if it makes sense? Notably it's based on a different copyright term in France and the assumption that the book publication was authorized by the heirs (which may not be the case). If the book publication was not authorized by the heirs (as you propose), I agree the book photos would be public domain in the United States and thus OK to host. Kaldari (talk) 01:57, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
@Kaldari: I had forgotten about the older infinite unpublished copyright in France. However, per that law, the original copyright owner only had rights if they were first published in the 50pma period. After that, rights went to the physical owners / publishers like today. So it was sort of a 50-year publication right at that point, meaning they probably did not need to get permission from the original author's heirs, still. I'm less sure as to what that would mean for the URAA, but since there was a copyright notice, I think that's still irrelevant. It might however change the status in France, since I think the change to 70pma also said that any existing terms which had started running were still valid if longer than 70pma, so they may still be under French copyright until 2033. In general I think you're right -- your point may make getting permission from an heir more likely, and even if not (since it was not required), the U.S. might follow those older French copyright ownership rules anyways, which would make the 1982 photos protected in the U.S. until 2078. If the U.S. still considered them published without permission though, then they expired in 2003. Any ones not published until 2003 are of course PD in the U.S. now. But it's still a tough call even with all that info on the 1982 ones. Carl Lindberg (talk) 03:00, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
Thank you to both of you. If I understand you correctly, in 1982, the owners of the U.S. copyright were the persons who were the heirs under the French successoral law, irrespective of the fact that the French copyright may have been owned by a different person under the French copyright law. For the photos that were published in 1982 and uploaded to Commons by the uploader, he should try to find who the heirs were in 1982 and find if the publication was authorized by them, even if they were not the owners of the French copyright. If yes, those photos are under copyright in the U.S. until 2048. If not, they are in the public domain in the U.S. since 1991, because they are considered legally unpublished even if they were actually legally published by the person who owned the French copyright, and therefore the publication did not preserve the U.S. copyright.
With the 50 years after publication copyright, reminded by Kaldari, the situation of the French copyright seems more complex than I thought initially. The owner of the 1982 copyright was entitled to that copyright until 2032. The transitory provisions of the 1997 law, article 16, paragraph II, provided that the law did not have the effet to shorten the protections that had already begun. It would seem strange for the law to shorten the protection expected by the owner of the 1982 copyright, while at the same time the heirs obtain no benefit from the retroactive extended duration, because even that extented duration was expired by then. Since the 1997 law did not change anything for the heirs, who neither gained nor lost anything from it, there doesn't seem to be a reason why the law would have the effect of depriving the owner of the 1982 copyright from the remaining duration of it which was expected to last until 2032. Well, from the perspective of the copyright owner, not from the perspective of our preference for free works. (@ Carl Lindberg: I'm confused by your last comment. I missed a step in the reasoning. How might the "older French copyright ownership rules" change the conclusions about the U.S. copyright? Everything else being equal, how might those rules, by themselves, cause the photos to acquire the 95 years after publication U.S. copyright until 2078, if they would not otherwise acquire it?) -- Asclepias (talk) 13:45, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
Per Itar-Tass Russian News Agency v. Russian Kurier, Inc., the U.S. will follow foreign copyright ownership laws. I tend to suspect the current-day publication right is outside of those bounds -- the copyright expired, and the other is a similar but different right that can start at an arbitrary time owned by someone else. What happens if the URAA date is after one expires but the other begins? I'm not sure the URAA would respect that right being in force -- probably just the original copyright, since that *had* expired and that is the Berne Convention stuff that the URAA was more concerned with. The wording in the older law is a bit fuzzier though. I'm honestly not sure if the URAA would respect that older 50 year right once it was beyond the original author, or not. Granted, the U.S. had a similar law, though it didn't automatically give the rights to someone else. But it was published with a copyright notice -- so does the U.S. ignore that due to transferring to someone not the author, or do they respect it? I really don't know. If they do though, then the 95 year U.S. clock started in 1982. If not, then they are PD. If there was a legitimate heir among the publishers in 1982, I don't think there would be any question. I tend to agree about France itself though -- sure seems as though they would be under publication right there until 2033. Unless that older, non-author right is not considered part of the "droits d'auteur et des droits voisins" which terms were preserved. But you'd think it would be. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:13, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
Publication in 1982 in France created a new copyright, owned by the publisher, and lasting for 25 years. So copyright of these pictures expired in France on December 31st, 2007. The copyright expired 70 years after the author's death or 25 years after publication, which ever is longer. Copyright of the pictures published before the author's death (1920) expired in 1978 (50 years + war extension). Regards, Yann (talk) 11:35, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
Wasn't it a publisher right for 50 years by the law in 1982 ? Carl Lindberg (talk) 14:55, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Is this image "PD-US-no notice"?

I found a newspaper photo published in the US in 1976. [8] I am wondering if I can upload the image (more specifically, a higher quality version converted to greyscale [9]) Some points to keep in mind:

  • I checked for copyright notices in every page of the newspaper that the photo was published in as provided by Newspapers.com; there were no copyright notices
  • The photo illustrates the filming of a pilot episode of a television series. However, the photo may not be a publicity photo where we have to check the front and back side for copyright notices:
    • The photo was published in 1976, before the television series began airing in 1978.
    • The pilot episode was most likely never aired. According to [10], the boy pictured in the photo did not appear in the series. This newspaper clipping [11] states that if the pilot episode was successful, the series will air in 1977. The series aired in 1978, not 1977. Thus we can conclude that the pilot episode was unsuccessful and was not aired.
    • I could not find any other newspapers on Newspapers.com that has the same photo. Given that the photo was published in a Ligonier newspaper, the location where the pilot episode was filmed, the photo may very well be published only in that one newspaper.

FunnyMath (talk) 06:28, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Need to revisit COM:COSPLAY and possibly delete most of Category:Cosplay

@Yuraily Lic, Nightscream, Taivo, Jameslwoodward, Fitindia, and Elcobbola: We need to clarify COM:COSPLAY, because right now we have a direct conflict between the recent slew of nominations by User:Yuraily Lic, such as

and I have no doubt many others, and older decisions such as Commons:Deletion requests/Images of costumes tagged as copyvios by AnimeFan and the very explicit statement by Wikimedia Counsel Mike Godwin: "Suppose someone dresses up as, say, Spider-Man, and has a photo taken. The photo is neither a copyright violation nor a trademark violation."

We either explicitly say we no longer follow Mike Godwin's statement, and delete 99%+ of the thousands and thousands of files in Category:Cosplay, which are almost all cosplay of copyrighted characters, or we don't, but we can't go through these one deletion request at a time, we need to make a policy ruling. Pinging people who participated in these discussions. This is a big deal. --GRuban (talk) 12:56, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

 Comment @Brainulator9: Needless to say, masks (in other words, we can't see the faces of the people inside) are point. So, the deletion requests I've submitted are for the characters that we can't see the faces of the people inside. I think that the admins have also checked that. --Yuraily Lic (talk) 06:18, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 Comment @GRuban: Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Anime North 2018 This DR doesn't include costumes or cosplays. Those are statues and toys. Why did you list it here? --Yuraily Lic (talk) 17:58, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
Ack! Sorry, I think I got it confused with another cosplay deletion request you made. Striking. Would you like to list all the cosplay deletion requests you have made recently? It might be a relevant (and large) list. --GRuban (talk) 18:17, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
Thank you, GRuban. And, Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:First Order Stormtroopers, as far as I remember, this DR also included statues, action figures and film props that had nothing to do with costumes or cosplays. --Yuraily Lic (talk) 18:40, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
  •  Oppose mass deletion,  Support restoration of files that show people cosplaying, per Gone Postal, Nightscream and Evric. If we still follow Mike Godwin's policy statement I see no reason to delete them. Electron ツ ➧☎ 18:58, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 Comment About Mike Godwin's email,
In 2009, Mike Godwin advised via email about a discussion regarding photos of cosplayers.
However, in 2011, the Wikimedia Foundation legal team issued the statement regarding costumes, intended to supplant earlier advice given by Mike Godwin.
One of the admins, Sebari, says that "Mike Godwin's email is clearly marked as obsolete everywhere it's quoted" in Com:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Darth Vader (21 December 2019).
In short, it is pointless to bring up Mike Godwin's email (and the judgement based on his email) now.

--Yuraily Lic (talk) 02:00, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Graffiti and URAA

While we're at it, two other things which are in a grey area are COM:GRAFFITI and {{Not-PD-US-URAA}}. I often see cases at COM:DR and COM:UNDEL go either way, so we really need to agree on a consistent interpretation of policy.

Our graffiti guidance is currently wishy-washy, not saying whether it is OK or not. While that might be the most accurate answer as far as copyright law is concerned, we need a more explicit stance when it comes down to keeping or deleting images at Commons. We should update the guidance to say either: 1) pictures of graffiti are generally not permitted on Commons, unless they are freely licensed or fall within a suitable provision such as COM:FOP, COM:DM, or noncompliance with copyright formalities (US only); or 2) pictures of graffiti are generally permitted on Commons so long as they are reasonably believed to have been done illegally.

Likewise, for URAA-restored files uploaded prior to 1 March 2012, we need to say either: 1) they should be deleted if research shows that they are still copyrighted in the US; or 2) they should be kept, with the {{Not-PD-US-URAA}} tag to warn reusers. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:44, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

I feel those are good questions, though I think {{Not-PD-US-URAA}} was discussed at Commons:Village pump/Copyright/Archive/2020/01#URAA revisited in 2019 but ended up stalling out with no resolution. I'd also like to revise COM:PACKAGING and COM:CSM#Vehicles with respect to Ets-Hokin v. Sky Spirits, Inc. and Latimer v. Roaring Toyz. That said, those, too, feel like RFC things, though I could see the former being a bust. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 00:44, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
I support the need to clarify those, particularly the latter two. Ping User:Buidhe, I think we had some discussions on this not that long ago? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 00:49, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
With URAA it is very arbitrary, some admins will keep URAA affected files regardless of when they were uploaded. That is a very unsatisfactory situation and inconsistent with COM:LICENSING, which states: "If the end result of copyright evaluation is that there is significant doubt about the freedom of a file under US or local law, the file must be deleted in line with the precautionary principle." Wikimedia servers are located in the US, so if anything we should give more priority to following US law rather than the source country's laws, which we follow as a courtesy. Buidhe (talk) 01:02, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
My personal take is that there should not be grandfathering of URAA files based on upload date. Files which are PD in their source country but not the US should either be all OK, or all not OK. Indiscriminate speedy deletion of files believed to be URAA-restored should continue to be banned, but once ample research has been done, I think such files should be deletable. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:14, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

SVG for letter glyphs of font UnifrakturMaguntia

What do you think about the SVG files in Category:UnifrakturMaguntia? These are representations of glyphs in font UniFrakturMaguntia (UniFraktur website). In my opinion User:Cebus wasn’t right with the provided license and author claiming; I think the SVG creation did lead to a new copyright. With otfinfo I get this information: 

Family:              UnifrakturMaguntia
[…]
Designer:            j. 'mach' wust, Gerrit Ansmann, Georg Duffner, based on a font by Peter Wiegel, original typeface by Carl Albert Fahrenwaldt 1901
Designer URL:        http://unifraktur.sourceforge.net/maguntia.html
Copyright:           Copyright (c) 2010-2016 j. 'mach' wust, Gerrit Ansmann, Georg Duffner with Reserved Font Name UnifrakturMaguntia.
Copyright (c) 2009 Peter Wiegel.

This Font Software is licensed under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1.
License Description: Copyright (c) 2010-2017 j. 'mach' wust, Gerrit Ansmann, Georg Duffner with Reserved Font Name UnifrakturMaguntia.
Copyright (c) 2009, Peter Wiegel.

This Font Software is licensed under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1.

(Left out some lines and didn’t insert the full license text.)
What about the date? The most recent version is 2017-03-19, but we could use {{Upload date}}. The potential fixes should be relatively easily done with VFC. — Speravir – 00:46, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

I feel slightly sad that noone answered. I just now did the changes, cf. e.g. Special:Diff/440156507. — Speravir – 23:02, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
This section was archived on a request by: --Speravir 23:02, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Category:Royal coats of arms of Norway (Sverre Morken)

Why are these files allowed on Commons? Category:Royal coats of arms of Norway (Sverre Morken) contains 11 copies of the Norwegian Coat of Arms where there is no context.
- Usage of the Norwegian Coat of Arms is restricted in Norway. Even the official authorities are not at liberty to use "riksvåpnet/riksvåbnet" as they please. Usage (how and when to use) is regulated by Res. om Noregs riksvåpen FOR-1937-03-19-3728.
- Usage of the official coat of arms is further regulated by Forskrift angående bruk av Rikets segl og Riksvåbenet. FOR-1927-05-20-3729. Usage is restricted to "3. Riksvåbenet må kun benyttes av Statens myndigheter i utøvelsen av deres offentlige virksomhet." (must only be used by Norwegian official authorities in their official capacity).
- Further it may be reproduced under certain conditions "4. Det er intet til hinder for at Rikssegl og Riksvåben gjengis i plastisk fremstilling eller f.eks. malet, tegnet, vevet eller brodert, når kun den gjenstand hvorpå seglet eller våbenet er gjengitt, ikke benyttes til skiltning, annonse eller reklame m.v., men kun til dekorasjon, belærelse eller lignende. Avbildingen må heller ikke anvendes på en sådan måte at den uriktig gir inntrykk av at den som benytter den, innehar noen offentlig stilling eller tjeneste." It is legal to use as a decoration, in teaching or likewise, but illegal to use for posters, signs, advertisements or in marketing, i. e. commercial usage is illegal. These files are not possible to publish with Commons:Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_3.0_Unported_License.
- Furthermore in some cases the illegal usage is punishable by law, see Lov om straff (straffeloven) § 165. Last time someone was fined for illegal usage was in the decision HR-2018-871-A of 9 May 2018. The fine was NOK 7200. The files I have looked are tagged with Template:PD-Coa-Norway which only states that some usage is punishable by law in Norway.
- The image is not possible to copyright for obvious reasons, the image belongs to someone and the owner have made a law restricting the usage.
- 11 of the files in the category (example File:Coat of arms of Norway.svg) is very clearly not a picture of "riksvåpnet/riksvåbnet" in a context where it in some cases would be allowed (for intance it is smaller part of the motif (not the main motif) or covered by freedom of panorama)).
- I think the files possibly would be allowed on English Wikipedia and other WPs offering a fair use license and it would be a pity to lose them in the rest of the WPs, but I do not understand why these files are allowed on Commons? Which rule is applied? Does anyone care to enlighten me?-- ツツ Dyveldi  ☯  12:16, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

In general, these are Commons:Non-copyright restrictions which only exist within Norway itself. Commons:Licensing is about commercial usage being restricted by the copyright itself. Similarly, many logos are trademarked, which laws still fully apply meaning you cannot use them under many circumstances -- but they are still "free" if the copyright, specifically, is licensed OK. We typically have the {{Insignia}} tag to note there are often local restrictions on the use of such images, which should of course be followed. Additionally, "commercial use" in a trademark/insignia/personality rights context typically refers to using a mark or insignia to imply sponsorship, whereas it has a completely different and unrelated meaning in a copyright context -- it's more about using someone's copyrightable expression to make money in some way. It's only a problem if the copyright explicitly is being used to control commercial use, not if there are other laws or rights which restrict uses in their own ways. A "free" copyright license is not a license to break other laws ;-) Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:39, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
Thanks Carl Lindberg. Does this mean all of these files should have {{Insignia}}? I also find the text on File:Coat of arms of Norway.svg: "This work has been released into the public domain by its author, Ssolbergj .." misleading since a WP-user clearly is not the author of this image and had nothing to do with its creation. He/she probably was not even born when the first version was made and the author of the present design was Sverre Morken who is very much alive. -- ツツ Dyveldi  ☯  19:01, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
Yep, they should probably all have the insignia tag. As for the copyright statement, actually that is fine. The basic blazon of the coat of arms is of course public, but each artist can have their own take on it, each of which can have an independent copyright -- see Commons:Coats of arms. The copyright is generally in the exact lines the artist chooses -- another artist can draw a lion, differently, and that would have its own copyright. That copyright must be licensed to be uploaded -- we can't just use any drawing of a coat of arms, only licensed ones (though some countries do apparently prevent copyright on such things). Also, sometimes the act of vectorization (choosing all the control points) can carry its own copyright, independent of what the rendered image actually looks like. Either or both may apply here, and that copyright must be licensed -- which is what Ssolbergj's statement does (even if not needed in Norway, it probably would be in other countries). The uploader was the author of that particular rendition, and presumably the vectorization, in other words. Copyrightable expression can have multiple forms -- another situation may be an engraving of a painting; the painting has its own copyright, but the act of engraving has its own creativity, with the result being a derivative work with its own additional expression -- so you'd need licenses from both authors in that situation (if both copyrights are still valid, at least). I am ignorant of what exactly Sverre Morken did -- if that is exactly his delineations, then perhaps just the vectorization is being licensed (and presumably the Morken drawing is not copyrightable due to policy or something). Carl Lindberg (talk) 23:17, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Question regarding certain Flickr pictures hosted here

(P199 advised me to ask here about this. This is an excerpt of my question in their talkpage.)

"Good evening again (from here in the PHL)! I have one daunting question. Certain Flickr-based files here are of inferior quality than their original counterparts, like:

I would want to d-'load their original, highest quality resolutions (with metadata), but their licenses on Flickr today have changed (to an unfree license that's non-compatible here). Can I still download their original resolution images and upload here or I might need to conduct a longer process (might be Commons:Flickr files/Appeal for license change)? Sadly, I don't have a Yahoo account."

I'm aware of what is said at Commons:Flickr files#Changing licenses. I already tagged those files with {{Flickr-change-of-license}}. I would also add File:Mandaluyong city.jpg, which I found the original as having metadata and yet its license has changed. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 04:47, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Check on Internet Archive. If they have an old version of the Flickr URL showing both the high-res version and the free license, then you can do it. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:03, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
@King of Hearts: unfortunately I cannot find such version/s of URL's. I entered the whole URL's of the three Flickr photos and found nothing. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 11:28, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

A photo I took myself is being flagged for copyright and I am getting dinged for it

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jonathan_Krane_CEO.png

This is a file I took myself. We have used it on the company website, not sure if that is why it is getting flagged. What can I do to prove I have the rights to this photo, and get the copyright flags removed from my profile?

Thank you,

Chrionexfleckeri1350 (talk) 13:15, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

@Chrionexfleckeri1350: Files that is also uploaded on a website are often violating the copyright so that is why we are careful about them on Commons. That means that if we find a file that is also used on a website it will most likely be deleted unless the uploader can prove to be the copyright holder. Usually whoever find the problematic file leaves a message on the uploaders talk page on what to do to fix the problem. You also have a message on your talk page but I will write a new message on your talk page to help you. --MGA73 (talk) 13:30, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
@MGA73: Thank you for your help! I got it now! Once I get the image clear with OTRS, will my flags get removed? Do I have to send to OTRS every time I upload? I don't want to have my ability to upload images get suspended.

Chrionexfleckeri1350 (talk) 14:06, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

@Chrionexfleckeri1350: OTRS is required whenever you upload: 1) a file which was made by someone else; 2) a file which has appeared elsewhere before, either online or in print, even if it is your own work; or 3) a file which looks very professional, like a studio portrait of someone. If none of these three apply, then OTRS is not required. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 14:36, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
@King of Hearts: This is an excellent tip! super helpful. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chrionexfleckeri1350 (talk • contribs) 17:31, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

How to flag 50+ files by a new uploader as copyright violations?

These uploads from the last week appear to me to be all violating copyright. How can I mark them as copyright violations without having to mark them one by one? Is there a procedure for this, or could perhaps an admin handle this case? Thanks, Eissink (talk) 00:15, 14 August 2020 (UTC).

I've deleted them. A report on COM:AN/U is probably the best approach. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:44, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Movie poster allegedly CC-BY-SA-4.0

Is File:John-was-trying-to-contact-aliens-poster.jpg really a Creative Commons file? Probably not, but I'm unfamiliar with Commons deletions and I wanted to double-check before I went ahead and tagged with something like {{Fair use}} or something similar. EggOfReason (talk) 18:13, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

You can tag it for deletion, with Copyvio or with subst:Npd. Not with Fair use. There is no assertion of fair use. The uploader says it is free licensed, without evidence. -- Asclepias (talk) 18:49, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
  • I have deleted this and another of the user's uploads as obvious copyright violations. The upload text indicated that they neither claimed to own the copyright nor claimed it was under a free license. It seems likely that they merely selected whatever let the software allow them to upload it. It's not uncommon that those familiar with IMDB confuse the fact that there are different rules in play here. One of the user's uploads was PD-text, possibly by accident, but I have added the correct copyright tag. GMGtalk 18:56, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

File:Map of Turkey, Persia, Mecran (Balochistan).jpg

Hello,

This file File:Map of Turkey, Persia, Mecran (Balochistan).jpg is from the Library of Congress published in the 1800's but it needs a "Digital ID". I can't figure out what is meant by that or how to get one. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you very much. Krok6kola (talk) 18:54, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Photographs by the UK company James Russell and Sons

There are at least 100 photographs on Commons attributed to "James Russell and Sons" or "J. Russell and Sons", which was a photography studio/company in London around 1900. What is the correct license for these files? I'm guessing most of them would be {{PD-UK-unknown}} + {{PD-US}} (since we don't know the actual photographer, only the company). Does that sound right? Kaldari (talk) 19:45, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

It sounds consistent with what is done in similar cases for other photo studios and organisations whose photographs remained unattributed. -- Asclepias (talk) 20:48, 15 August 2020 (UTC)
I take it if these were photos that were published over 95 years ago with no known author, {{PD-anon-expired}} would apply. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 02:50, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

8/20/20: I believe these pictures are government owned. Please see the subject, "contracted work", item #28, on the main page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lord Milner (talk • contribs) 09:14, 21 August 2020‎ (UTC) Update: Copyright ownership on vendor contracts for pictures are opposite between the US & UK. In the US, the paying agency retains copyright ownership; in the UK, these rights stay with the photographer. Link: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/ownership-of-copyright-works#:~:text=Where%20a%20person%20works%20under,contractual%20agreement%20to%20the%20contrary.&text=The%20period%20of%20copyright%20protection,is%20the%20employee(s).

Copyright status of images published in 1936 in the Netherlands

Hi, I am not familiar with copyright laws in the Netherlands, and I want to know if the images published here on 21 August 1936 from the yacht Chahsevar are free to use. Pahlevun (talk) 18:13, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

I think Commons:Copyright rules by territory/Netherlands may be your best bet. Note that as far as US law is concerned, it probably won't be free until 2032. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 19:40, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
Yes, I'd like to refer to the fourth bullit point: it looks like these pictures were used/published without any mentioning of the photographer, therefore they are PD after 70 years of the date of first publication. Ciell (talk) 08:06, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
@Ciell: , so they should be in public domain since 2006? Pahlevun (talk) 12:20, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
@Pahlevun: 2007 (always the year following the 70 year after death/first publication), but I would say yes. You could argue if the uploader did his/her best to find the original photographer: contacting the (previous) owners of the ship building company for instance. But assuming good faith, I would say these pictures are okay to stay. Ciell (talk) 18:52, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
Thank you. Pahlevun (talk) 18:54, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
@Ciell and Pahlevun: You still have to worry about the American copyright. Unless the photographs were published within 30 days of publication in the Netherlands, they will not be free until January 1, 2032. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 18:59, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
Published within 30 days of publication? I did not get it. Pahlevun (talk) 19:02, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
On what grounds would that be the case, BRAINULATOR9? Ciell (talk) 19:32, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
@Ciell and Pahlevun: The point of consideration is COM:URAA, mainly. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 20:08, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
I have not seen that rule being enforced for a long time. Is it somehow anywhere adopted in our Commons policies since 2013, as far as you know? Ciell (talk) 20:16, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
COM:L since time eternal has said that works must in the public domain in the US. As long as URAA is good law in the US, it's part of Commons policy that works must follow it.--Prosfilaes (talk) 05:51, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
@Brainulator9, Ciell, and Prosfilaes: I assume that Commons cannot host these pictures, but they can be uploaded on English Wikipedia with w:en:Template:PD-Netherlands license, am I right? I think that applies only to paragraphs taken (which are not attributed to anyone), but I am not sure about sketches on page 260 (Fig. 2, "DEKKENPLAN") and page 262 (Fig. 7, "MACHINEKAMERPLAN"), since it would be reasonable that the author was the designer of that yacht, Henri Willem De Voogt, who had his own personal design office at that time. He apparently died on 19-11-1963 and the sketches will be protected until 2034. Is my conclusion right? Pahlevun (talk) 16:29, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
"A mere allegation that the URAA applies to a file cannot be the sole reason for deletion." See the link for the procedure to follow if you would like to challenge a file being hosted on Commons. Ciell (talk) 16:51, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
Nope. But if we are sure that the work was still protected in the Netherlands in 1996, then it was restored, and it's more than an allegation, as basically stated by the very next sentence after your quote. As documented in Commons:Copyright rules by territory/Netherlands, the Netherlands retroactively restored their copyright to 70 years from publication in 1995, so in 1996 that was the term and it was still protected (even if it had expired in the Netherlands originally in 1987, it was restored in 1995 and expired again in 2007, and it was under protection on the URAA date.). One example of this is Anne Frank's diary, which is now public domain in the Netherlands, but its U.S. copyright is still valid (and it was accordingly deleted). It is highly frustrating given that the vast majority of such works won't be challenged by foreign copyright owners (Anne Frank's diary is a notable exception there), but it is the law. Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:12, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for your extensive explanation Carl. Ciell (talk) 17:23, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
Enforcement of the URAA is inconsistent, but it is still policy -- provided that we are quite certain that the works were in fact restored by the URAA. Sometimes we have imperfect knowledge of historical copyright laws in many countries which can affect things, but the Netherlands is well known. en-wiki uses U.S. law only, so the works would have had to become public domain in the Netherlands by 1996 in order to avoid being restored by the URAA, as the template there says. (If a work was "simultaneously published" in the U.S., meaning within 30 days per the Berne Convention, the U.S. was allowed to treat them as "United States works" instead of foreign works and could avoid restoring copyright per the URAA, but that is often hard to prove.). A work published anonymously in the Netherlands in 1936 became PD there in 2007, but its U.S. copyright was restored in 1996 and would not expire until 2032, as mentioned. If the author was named on the publication, or at any time before those 70 years were up, then yes the term becomes that author's lifetime plus 70 more years. If Mr. De Voogt himself did make those drawings (or take those photographs), then yes its Netherlands copyright would expire in 2034, while the U.S. copyright would still expire in 2032. However if it was an unnamed employee of his firm, then he is not the author, and the works would have the anonymous term. I'm not sure how likely either possibility is -- was he the only member of his company? Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:52, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
Author of none of the photographs nor the drawings are mentioned in the publication. A plausible perception could be that photos were taken by an unnamed photographer of Schip en Werf. To my knowledge (which comes from English language sources), 'Technisch Bureau voor Scheepsbouw H.W. de Voogt te Haarlem' was the named designer of the yacht, and it is unknown that the drawings were made by De Voogt himself or his possible employees (I'm not proficient in Dutch, but I could not find if Schip en Werf mentions this). It seems that the successor of the company is 'De Voogt Naval Architects B.V.', which joined w:en:Feadship in 1950. Pahlevun (talk) 18:18, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
Update: it seems that de Voogt company had some employees: "Although I did not work at De Voogt Naval Architects until 1958, I was very much aware of the family spirit among those who did. They were progressive visionaries too – the 54.30-metre motoryacht Chahsevar which they designed in 1936 for the Shah of Persia was the biggest pleasure boat built in the Netherlands for many generations". The one who drew those sketches may be someone other than de Voogt himself. Pahlevun (talk) 19:42, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
Then I'd say those are the anonymous term. Carl Lindberg (talk) 01:06, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Prince Charles baby photograph

Does anyone see this photo from the Prince of Wales' official website, but no credited British photographer, perhaps this only photograph of baby Prince Charles of Edinburgh with his parents dated from 1949, which is now public domain in 2020. --122.2.109.196 08:21, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Hi, and welcome. The above post appears to be your first edit, perhaps you forgot to login. Logging in is required before uploading here, please do that. There are also many other reasons to create an account and log in. Also, if you already have an account what is your account name? Once you are logged in, you may follow COM:FS and upload the file yourself.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 13:48, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
A quick search online of Prince Charles' name and the photograph date reveals that it is sitting in the Getty Image catalogue with all rights reserved. You will need to present a justification for why the copyright has expired if you want to upload it to Commons.Getty From Hill To Shore (talk) 17:55, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
There is no copyright notice behind this photograph, unlike the US. --122.2.109.196 02:47, 15 August 2020 (UTC)
I am not sure what you mean by a "copyright notice" as many/most jusridictions don't need one; copyright is automatic on creation. To understand the copyright status of the image, you first have to establish which copyright jurisdiction applies. You made an initial guess at it being an unknown British photographer (with the implication being British copyright law) but Getty says the image was made by the international news organisation, AFP. Which country was the image first published in? That will probably set the applicable copyright law. If we assume it is UK law, copyright is author's life +70 years. The UK does allow a shorter term for anonymous works but that only applies if "the author is unknown and cannot be ascertained by reasonable enquiry." We know that the image is claimed by AFP and distributed by Getty, so a reasonable line of enquiry would be to ask AFP and Getty if they can identify the author. If they can identify the author, then the work is almost certainly still in copyright and can't be uploaded here unless they choose to release it under a suitable licence. If they can't identify the author and British law applies, then {{PD-UK-unknown}} will apply. From Hill To Shore (talk) 20:29, 15 August 2020 (UTC)
The question is who took the photograph. If it was a UK government photographer and it was released to the public, it would be Crown Copyright and OK. If on the other hand that was more of a photo-op where press agencies could take their own photos, it may not be OK. If a named photographer, it's still under UK copyright almost certainly. I guess if it's an un-named photographer, it should be PD-UK-unknown as of 2020. However in that latter case, the U.S. copyright may still be valid for 95 years from publication, in which case it would only be PD there in 2045. If published in the U.S. within 30 days, which is very possible but unproven, it would qualify as a U.S. work and avoid the URAA -- but otherwise it would be that 2045 date. If we can show the photo is Crown Copyright then it would be OK to upload as well. Any of these possibilities could explain its presence on Getty -- they credit it to AFP, a French press agency. The www.princeofwales.gov.uk website it is on says all photos are copyright the pressassociation.com (Copyright in all photographs on the site belongs to the Press Association unless otherwise stated), and not Crown Copyright. Copyright is never easy ;-) Carl Lindberg (talk) 03:50, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

/* Quartermaster */ Distinctive unit insignia

All I would like to do, if I may have some chance to do this is ... have added a Distinctive unit insignia not shown on the page, I myself was and still am proud to have worn and still can wear it proudly if I so choose. It is the... 3rd Sustainment Command Unit Crest with it's motto: (Sustaining the Line) and the one resource I can grab a photo of the crest is from: https://www.usamm.com/products/3rd-sustainment-command-unit-crest-sustaining-the-line I had not any idea it would be so hard of a thing to do or get to do or even have done for me. I am of course at your mercy for this addition of the DUI I once wore to be put into your category called: /* Quartermaster */ Distinctive unit insignia. Please allow this addition, won't you? — Preceding unsigned comment added by RADAREAGLE1 (talk • contribs) 03:10, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

  • @RADAREAGLE1: If you wish to have an image done with you wearing that insignia, then you are free to do so and to upload it here, provided the the photographer agrees to release the work under a free licence. If you do it yourself (with a timer perhaps) then you will be considered a photographer. There may exist laws that restrict you wearing some insignia, but these are not copyright restrictions, and you would need to look into them yourself. The question all comes down to copyright on this project, the crest is most likely {{PD-USGov-Army}}, and I have already explained the issues with a photo that you wanted to make. Of course, it is possible that I am completely misunderstanding you, and in that case please correct me. ℺ Gone Postal (〠 ✉ • ✍ ⏿) 03:50, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

File:Paint the Night (17953790144).jpg and de minimis

File:Paint the Night (17953790144).jpg shows a depiction of what appears to be the character Mack from the Cars franchise. (One of the image categories refers to that character.) The question I have is whether the character depiction (which may well be copyrighted) is actually de minimis, as indicated on the image's description page. --Gazebo (talk) 07:40, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

  • I have nominated it for deletion, I am very sure that this is way too far from De Minimis, the only thing that is visible in the photo is actually the truck. ℺ Gone Postal (〠 ✉ • ✍ ⏿) 11:30, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

copyright

Please check the copyright of these images

Thanks--Persia ☘ 19:00, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

@Persia: The actual copyright status of these images will probably vary widely based different parameters such as the country in which each image was originally published. Can you be more specific about which images you are interested in? – BMacZero (🗩) 20:12, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
@BMacZero: this picture--Persia ☘ 18:44, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
"No commercial uses without permission", Popperfoto Collection. Pahlevun (talk) 19:20, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
That is not the important line in this case. They are Getty images. Anyone who wants to use an image must pay a (large) fee. If they want a commercial use, then they must pay a supplement. -- Asclepias (talk) 22:17, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Philippine buildings before 1972

At Commons:Undeletion requests/Archive/2018-01#File:Philippines National Museum.jpg and File:Supreme Court of the Philippines.jpg, Clindberg secured the undeletion of two files with the argument that Philippine copyright law prior to 1972 was based on US copyright law, which at the time did not grant copyright to architectural works, and when the 1972 law came into place, it was not retroactive, so all buildings completed prior to 1972 in the Philippines may be freely photographed. This issue has come up again at Commons:Undeletion requests/Current requests#File:Life Theater Main Facade.jpg. Can we confirm that this interpretation is correct, and if so add it to COM:FOP Philippines? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 16:56, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

It's a reasonable guess, but it's just a guess. Technically the Philippines joined the Berne Convention in the 1950s, which should have mandated architectural work protection then. Before that they basically used U.S. copyright law which did not protect buildings. But I wasn't able to find any law which explicitly mentioned buildings, or define the contours of the protection, etc., until 1972. Buildings from before 1951 are almost certainly fine, and buildings completed before 1972 may well be. Photos of old buildings may not have been an issue anyone has considered (and if there have been no lawsuits about them, no reason to). Carl Lindberg (talk) 18:29, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
Found a source regarding the history of copyright law in the Philippines — http://ateneolawjournal.com/Media/uploads/8ce27a682240605170e80ddad6c57b9d.pdf (The Development of Philippine Copyright Law published by Ateneo Law Journal). Hope someone will interpret the contents on this source. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 10:59, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for that. It mentions the 1924 copyright law, which was based on U.S. law, then the August 1951 accession to the Berne Convention. The 1924 law required registration and deposit, plus renewals after thirty years. Those formalities are not supposed to be required after joining Berne, but they apparently did not adjust their law until the decree in 1972 -- so that mentions The Decree settled the no-formality issue by providing that copyright subsists from the moment of creation. Therefore it sounds like even the issue of copyright formalities was a gray area during that period. Technically the Berne Convention only requires protecting works from other countries to that standard, in order to get similar protection for Philippine works in other countries, and does not really mandate the law for a country's own works. It's possible they considered the text of Berne to be self-executing, but if the basic issue of formalities was unclear then I doubt we are going to get any answers on things like architecture unless there is a court case. Carl Lindberg (talk) 14:02, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
I have updated the section to the best of our knowledge. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:11, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

FSF-Vulgäre-Sprache-Symbol.svg

Would it be okay if i uploaded to commons with a {{PD-shape}}?--Trade (talk) 09:30, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

I am not so sure. Ruslik (talk) 20:29, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
Why not? Doesn't look any more detailed than the other content descriptor icons. --Trade (talk) 09:47, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
ToO in Germany is much lower than in USA. Ruslik (talk) 05:07, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
Not so much for logos -- Germany in the past did not like trademark and copyright to overlap, so their threshold for trademarkable items was much higher. That may be changing per at least one recent ruling though. This file is already on de-wiki so I guess they consider it OK there. But I think it's above the U.S. threshold, so I don't think it would be a good idea for en-wiki or Commons. Carl Lindberg (talk) 14:10, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

File:NE6_Dhoby_Ghaut_Art_in_Transit.jpg

Hello. It came to my attention that my photograph of this artwork (Interchange) (in the header) may violate copyright laws. So do I put this up for deletion? I may also request a look through for other related photographs, photographs of artworks in the Singapore MRT network:

Additionally there are other official map images violating copyright:

--ZKang123 (talk) 10:05, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Multiple copyright holders; one person grants CC license

Where is Commons existing documentation on accepting CC licenses from one author among many copyright holders of a work? I want precedent in Commons for managing the license of a work produced by a group where all participants are copyright holders equal to each other.

This source explains the situation.

My expectation is that when a work has a joint copyright, then any copyright holder alone can apply any sort of non-exclusive license to a work without permission from anyone else. The CC licenses are non-exclusive, and therefore, any single copyright holder of a group with a joint copyright can grant a Wikimedia compatible CC license to that work.

Where is the Commons guidance or precedents? Is there anyone here who will confirm or challenge this interpretation. Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:00, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry: I agree with your interpretation.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 16:51, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
Your conclusion may or may not be correct in some countries (I'll come back to it), but the path by which you arrived at the conclusion is, IMHO, debatable, on three points. Firstly, the notion of non-exclusive license, where non-exclusive refers to the side of the licensees, has no bearing on, and cannot be used to draw any conclusion about what happens on the side of the licensors. Secondly, the linked article does not say that one of the owners of a property can unilaterally, without the knowledge or against the will of all other owners, alienate the whole property (other than in the commercial context of a business usually dealing in such matters). It says that one copyright holder can alienate *his share* of the property. Thirdly, it depends on the laws of the different countries. For each country, the answer may be in the copyright law or in the general property law. For example the French copyright law provides that the joint work is the common property of the athors and that the co-authors must exercise their rights by common agreement. (There is an exception for when the part of one author in the work is separable from the rest. That author can then also exploit his own contribution separately, but without prejudice to the explotation of the common work.) Also, in this field, the laws generally provide default rules but leave freedom to contractual agreements. So, for professional or valuable works, the answer is probably found in the contracts between the owners. There have been past discussions of these matters. There are users who think that Commons should accept anything without question as soon as one owner gives an unspecified ok. That may be wishful thinking. I think it is a somewhat imprudent deviation from the precautionary principle. Commons should require at least a clear statement about the legal basis on which the person bases the assertion that they can offer the license, for example a statement that the person was designated to manage the rights in the name of all the owners, or that the power to act is derived directly from a specified section of the law, etc. You did not specify what type of situation you have in mind. That might colour the analysis. -- Asclepias (talk) 18:29, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
Baker Donelson suggests that CC licensing might not be OK. Their argument is: While a single copyright holder can unilaterally license the work, they are expected to share the profits with the other owners, and any free license would destroy the value of their copyright interest. Now, we probably don't want to carry this out to the extreme. For example, all assets acquired during marriage, including copyrights, are generally split equally in divorce, so the ex-couple are typically joint owners of any creative works produced by either of them. If the work is of high commercial value and/or the author is famous, then this might be a valid concern, but I wouldn't be so pendantic with the average Joe or Jane whose marital status we probably don't know anyways. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 20:14, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
@Bluerasberry, Jeff G., Asclepias, and King of Hearts: Apparently, some of the files from Category:Felicia Bond are actual illustrations from the If You Give... series, a series of children's books which has been commercially and proprietarily published since the late 1990s. They all are written by Laura Numeroff and illustrated by Bond. When I discovered this, this did raise several questions in my mind:
  • Bond drew the pictures, yes, but would they be thought of as part of the same work as the text Numeroff wrote or as a derivative work of Numeroff's text? Or did the drawings come first? This will have to be determined case-by-case, though I thankfully have a compilation book with some of Numeroff and Bond's anecdotes which might be helpful.
  • Has Numeroff had any say in this? Does she need to? What about the publisher? Do we care what they say?
  • Does Bond understand what she did? Of course, the books have not been entirely made free, and I can't use the work if I end up infringing another copyright, but I can still use those drawings in my own book if I wanted to, so long as follow the terms of the license. I can't check the OTRS ticket for myself, so I can't say what the situation was.
I honestly fear this might be a case of something like Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Videos by Bandai Namco where the copyright holder probably did not understand what they were getting into when the license was "granted", though I think the OTRS correspondence is more direct than the license Bandai Namco gave their YouTube videos. I'm probably just astonished that the author of these books I grew up with would do such a thing. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 20:47, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Commons:Joint authorship <---- Does any such page like this already exist? If not I then I am setting this up to collect documentation and precedent. I am not seeking to take a position, and only want documentation to be available somewhere. Anyone feel free to list any precedent. Please someone speak up if anything like this already exists. Thanks to everyone who has responded so far. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:40, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

{{PD-UK-unknown}} needs work

The {{PD-UK-unknown}} template is extremely confusing and leaves many questions unanswered (see Talk page). Could someone familiar with the intricacies of UK copyright law clean it up and make it more comprehensive? For example, what about anonymous literary and dramatic works? And why are engravings excluded? Thanks! Kaldari (talk) 21:14, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Are ferris wheels in the Philippines OK for Commons?

Good day. Are photos of ferris wheels in the Philippines OK for Commons? Do they fall on allowable levels of COM:TOO or are still copyrighted (no FOP)?

Examples:

Thanks. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 10:43, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

@JWilz12345: If there is no freedom of panorama then there is no standing permission to photograph architecture.
I am going to give the opinion that Ferris wheels are okay to photograph because they are machines in temporary structures and not architecture. Much in the same way that cities may install cranes, or buildings install scaffolding with elevators, or quarries may install mining equipment, these are temporary structures even if they remain in place for years. I think they fall under copyright restrictions of functional machines, which as utilitarian design are not copyrightable. I am just speculating and I was not able to find Commons guidance. The Commons:FOP policy talks about architecture and public art, but not other sorts of structures in public. I looked for a policy on photographing cars which I thought would be comparable, because both are utilitarian machines with some artistic design elements. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:33, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
@Bluerasberry: Perhaps you were looking for COM:UA?   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 16:48, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
Yes Jeff thank you. I think that applies to Ferris wheels. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:52, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
@Bluerasberry: You're welcome.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 23:03, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

(A slightly unrelated question) @Bluerasberry and Jeff G.: how about some other rides at en:Enchanted Kingdom? Like w:File:Space Shuttle coaster EK Coke Zero.jpg? I assume those are also utilitarian in their purpose, yet Space Shuttle seems to include a trademarked name, but should it pass COM:DM? JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 03:59, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

@JWilz12345: AIUI, the Space Shuttle was developed by US Government employees at NASA in the performance of their duties, thus it is {{PD-USGov-NASA}}. The Coca-Cola zero logo, on the other hand, is AIUI currently copyrighted by the Coca-Cola Company, and the cylindrical object it's painted on doesn't seem utilitarian.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 04:12, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: nevertheless, do those potentially copyrightable elements pass the de minimis? JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 04:23, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
The Coca Cola logo is free of copyright, see File:Coca-Cola logo.svg for details. SV1XV (talk) 04:44, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
@Sv1xv: Even in combination with "zero"?   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 05:16, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
Obviously, even so {{PD-text}} applies. It is still a {{Trademark}}, but this does not affect the issue discussed here. SV1XV (talk) 05:21, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
@Jeff G.: I assume it is also PD. Found a Commons pic - File:Coca-Cola Zero logo.svg (although it is marked ™ instead of ® as shown on the photo). It was even mentioned at Commons:Deletion requests/File:Aer Arann Islands logo.png, in which Jameslwoodward said that it has no copyright because it consists of typefaces and is of a U.S. company. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 05:24, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Using the aforementioned inputs, is w:File:Space Shuttle coaster EK Coke Zero.jpg (and possibly other photos similar to this visually) Ok for Commons? And if so, should it be tagged with 5 licensing tags? The copyright tag from the Flickr creator (fortunately it still remains on free license at Flickr), {{PD-USGov-NASA}} (for the roller coaster), {{PD-text}} and {{Trademark}} for the logo seen here, and {{De minimis}} for the inclusion of the rocket-like structure on the left (and maybe the cylindrical structure on which the logo is painted)? I feel having multiple licensing tags can cause potential problems and issues. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 06:49, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

@JWilz12345: Someone could post all these tags, but I think it is fine to only deconstruct these things when there is a problem or when we want to present a model case study. If someone asks and there is a problem, then we should address it, but real world public photos have lots of potentially copyrightable elements to tag.
In the near future (could be now, but surely within 10 years?) Wikimedia Commons will have image recognition software reviewing every part of every image to assist in individually tagging elements of images. The focus of human labor should be talking among ourselves for fun and to set guidelines for automation. Identifying and tagging company logos and spaceships should be easy for a computer to do in all Commons pictures, so I think it is fine for humans to skip that. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:42, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
@Bluerasberry: I hope I did the right thing with respect to the current and foreseeable conditions. Now at Commons as File:Space Shuttle coaster EK Coke Zero.jpg, I reduced it to three tags, since the logo is free from copyright anyway, as confirmed in an insight by Jameslwoodward at Commons:Deletion requests/File:Aer Arann Islands logo.png before. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 14:49, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Fresco form Casa del Bracciale in Pompeii

I would like to inquire if it is possible to use a certain picture (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fresco,_Casa_del_Bracciale_d%27oro.Pompeii.jpg) for an exhibition in a museum of Roman culture n Germany. Unfortunately, I don´t find any contact details of the author. What would be the appropriate way to get permission to use this picture?

Best regards

J. Klein — Preceding unsigned comment was added by 109.118.161.145 (talk) 14:25, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Hi, and welcome. You may comply with the terms of either license at File:Fresco, Casa del Bracciale d'oro.Pompeii.jpg or post to User talk:Ismoon. You may not send email via Special:EmailUser/Ismoon because Ismoon did not enable it.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 14:46, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Hi Jeff,

Thanks a lot for the quick reply, I´ll try to contact Ismoon as suggested. Jörg — Preceding unsigned comment was added by 109.118.161.145 (talk) 14:51, 18 August 2020‎ (UTC)

You're welcome.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 16:45, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Error in copyright tag

I uploaded File:Admiralty Chart No 2454 Prawle Point to Hengistbury Head, Published 1967.jpg and there was a typo in the copyright tag {{PD-UKGov}}. I got a bot message notifying me of this. I have corrected the tag, but there us still a warning of deletion. Do I need to do anything more? Should I manually delete the nolicense template, or will this be reolved by adding the correct copyright tag? Kognos (talk) 20:21, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

If you fixed the problem, you can remove the problem tag. Yes, it must be removed manually. -- Asclepias (talk) 20:52, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
Fixed the tag link using {{Tl}}. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 01:06, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Uploading a professional headshot

Hello - I'd like to use someone's professional headshot on their wiki page - is this possible? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ometzger71 (talk • contribs) 14:49, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

@Ometzger71: Yes, but you would need to get the photographer of the headshot (not the subject) to email OTRS with permission to use it under a free license (not just limited permission for Commons/Wikipedia). See the instructions at COM:OTRS for the details of this. Vahurzpu (talk) 16:06, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

THANK YOU! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ometzger71 (talk • contribs) 19:45, 25 August 2020‎ (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by:   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 02:17, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

De minimis and non-photographic works

Currently, the COM:DM page is entirely about photography, where copyrighted objects often show up in the wild and are difficult to avoid. However, for non-photographic works such as infographics or videos, the copyrighted content is generally inserted intentionally by the creator, and our typical response is to say that this disqualifies the use from being considered DM. However, I recently came across File:Prism-slide-8.jpg, which makes a DM claim. (Let's set aside the question of whether any of the logos are actually copyrightable per COM:TOO, and assume for the sake of argument that they are.) In my opinion, this is clearly DM even though the logos are being used intentionally, and to censor the logos would be unnecessary and actually compromise the integrity of a notable source document. So the question is: in what circumstances can copyrighted works included intentionally as part of a larger non-photographic work can be considered DM? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:30, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

I see four possible schools of thought here, about using copyrighted logos in a presentation:

  1. The use is DM, period. DM can apply even when copyrighted works are intentionally included as part of a larger work. (Under what conditions?)
  2. The use is fair use when originally made by the NSA. However, from a Wikimedia perspective it is DM because the point of the image is to show the presentation and not the logos. (So where do we draw the line, if a Wikimedian-created presentation is not OK? When the incorporating work is notable?)
  3. The use is fair use, period, and should be allowed. COM:FU prohibits files which are intended to be used as fair use because Commons is a free media repository and does not constrain the possible use cases of its files, but if a file itself contains critical commentary of a copyrighted work and the portion used is very small, we still consider the overall file a free work. The usual DM restrictions on cropping apply.
  4. The use is fair use, period, and should not be allowed (if the logos exceed TOO).

King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:27, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

For the case of the example image given, I would argue it fails DM because their presence here is not incidental. They didn't just happen to be there. They are intentionally placed as decorative elements and do not constructively contribute to the image in any other way. Removing them would have no effect on the usefulness of the image, and their sizes being relatively small has no relevance to this particular usage. Touching on another point you make, while some of the text elements could certainly be considered below ToO (like Facebook, Hotmail, PalTalk, etc), that some of the highly stylized elements (like Gmail, Yahoo, Google, Skype) could be considered below ToO is absolutely bonkers to me. They aren't simple text, and obviously a high degree of stylistic effort went into them. Even considering the Best Western ruling, it's hard to grasp that they would not fail ToO, but I guess that's just me. It's a little appalling that our categories are absolutely packed with these things. — Huntster (t @ c) 19:17, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
Again, let's ignore TOO for the time being, because that's not the point of this discussion, because we're not just talking about one file but rather the general principle of things. Anyways, the point of our copyright restrictions is to protect ourselves and our reusers. My opinion is that such presentations should be allowed on Commons, because none of the copyright holders of the individual components is going to have a case against anyone who uses the whole slide. (In the case of COM:DM we already accept certain restrictions on creating derivative works, such as cropping, so they don't need to be completely freely modifiable.) -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:43, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
Certainly the ToO was secondary to the original point. You state "because none of the copyright holders of the individual components is going to have a case against anyone who uses the whole slide", but why? Because of fair use of the logos, or because of some belief of de minimis? It doesn't change the fact that the logos are intentionally ornamental here, which directly contravenes the idea of de minimis. Further, your statement reads like "because they won't, we should", which would fail our precautionary principle (in my reading at least. And yes, I strongly and fervently believe in the PCP). We cannot know that they won't, even if we suspect that's the case. That certainly doesn't mean that we should for the sake of doing so, much less that it's necessarily even legal to do so. — Huntster (t @ c) 13:08, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
COM:PCP means that we shouldn't speculate about whether the copyright holder is likely to sue. However, it is absolutely valid to speculate about whether they are likely to prevail in court, should they sue. And I don't see how they are likely to prevail in court at all. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 15:19, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
And I think that something which originated as fair use can in fact be considered DM for the purpose of Commons. In the Mueller report, the government used those copyrighted images to provide critical commentary on them. However, our purpose on Commons is different: it is to faithfully document a unique historical record, no different from accurately photographing a Paris skyline. Our goal is just to "capture reality as it is", and here it is the government that has provided the reality. I think part of the contention is what "unavoidable" means for the purpose of COM:DM #3 and 4. Physical objects that exist on Earth obviously qualify, but I think a notable work which uses but is not totally dependent on copyrighted works also counts, because there is an academic interest in preserving the integrity of the work. We shouldn't commit a very real violation of journalism ethics (i.e. doctoring a source document) for the sake of addressing a totally hypothetical copyright threat (no other organization has even so much suggested that the Mueller report might be anything other than PD). -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 15:40, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
It's apparent we have radically different views about what is legally acceptable and what isn't. I'm sorry, but I feel you are twisting into knots what is acceptable and what isn't for the sake of keeping things here. None of what you said changes the fact that the copyrighted elements are purely decorative, which should be a bright line in DM that must not be crossed. — Huntster (t @ c) 18:48, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
Well, the consensus at Commons:Deletion requests/File:Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election.pdf was to keep, so whose views are further from the Commons mainstream? Again, you have failed to demonstrate what risk there could be of copyright holders succeeding in court against reusers of an unredacted Mueller report. And I need to repeat myself: risk of successfully being sued != risk of being sued. We can consider the former (in fact, much of COM:DM, COM:TOO, COM:FOP, etc. guidance is based on case law, a fancy way of saying what we guess will happen if we get sued); it's the latter which is a violation of COM:PCP. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:43, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
Let's go back to the four freedoms. Other than a small restriction on a particular type of derivative work (not unusual; you can't crop an image relying on COM:DM or construct a building based on a photo relying on COM:FOP), which of the four freedoms is not met by the Mueller report? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:56, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
By the way, I don't think "purely decorative" is what you really meant. The properly owner of a PD building or work may place purely decorative copyrighted elements in front of it, making it impossible to photograph the PD thing without capturing the decorations as well, which is of course OK. Several examples on COM:DM are this, in fact. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 20:14, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
This issue also cropped up on Commons:Deletion requests/File:Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election.pdf (several not-so-free bits within a US government document which is free on the whole). I also thought about this with respect to File:Let's Move! London.webm (a US government video about the Olympics and the "Let's Move!" campaign where some bits focus on a SpongeBob SquarePants costume and a cover of "You Can Call Me Al" by Paul Simon, as well as File:A Tale of Two Kitties 190612 LTPC.webm, where the cartoon is in the public domain overall, but has still-copyrighted opening and closing tunes (I could be wrong about this, though). I think, in these cases, they should be put alongside de minimis, but not exactly the same: essentially, they are externally-created works where using the entire thing as-is is legal, but extracting the non-free elements and uploading them here are not OK. I'm pretty sure no one has gotten in trouble for transcribing Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. in full, even though the lyrics to two songs at the center of the lawsuit have both been attached to the opinion. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 01:06, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
Actually, for File:Let's Move! London.webm, I would argue that the music is OK even if shot by a Wikimedian, because it is incidental to Michelle Obama's speech. ("Copyrighted work X is identifiable, but is a small part of a larger work, so that the larger work cannot easily be shown without showing X. X is a part of the larger work, and its inclusion is unavoidable.") It seems like her speech was interlaced with the music, and we should not be required to cut out the musical portions if they are brief and not central to the purpose of the video. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:50, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
Another one that came up is Commons:Deletion requests/File:Catullus 9.webm. The video appears to have been shot in the Youtuber's home. The Youtuber had probably placed the copyrighted art intentionally in a part of their home at one point in time, but I don't think the art was intentionally included for the video and it has no relevance to the purpose of the video, so I consider it DM. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:57, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Copyright strike?

Image on commons donated by Fotocollectie Anefo (Netherlands Archives), date properly attributed (14 december 1961), and author properly attributed (Harry Pot). Same image on Alamy, with bogus authorship, bogus date of creation. How do we respond to these kind of things? Regards, Jeromi Mikhael (marhata) 12:39, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

We don't. See also 1, 2, 3. -- Asclepias (talk) 13:15, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
We may add a brief note about the situation on the file's talk page, in order to protect it from copyright extremists in case of a deletion request. SV1XV (talk) 13:46, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
We would have to do that for all files on Commons. I think we should not do something that sort of advertsises that site. Except in cases where it may be necessary. -- Asclepias (talk) 13:55, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

File:Bean StationTNSeal.jpg

I'm not sure it can automatically be assumed that this town seal is PD or otherwise not protected by copyright. Even though en:Bean Station, Tennessee seems to have been first settled in 1776, it appears to only have been incoporated in 1996 which means it's quite possible that the seal only goes back that far. The seal seems too complex to be PD per COM:TOO United States and Tenessee doesn't appear to be a state, like California and Florida, in which works created by state or local employees as part of their official duties are considered to be PD; so, the primary claim for being seal not being eligible for copyright protection seems to be that the author is unknown. Per COM:HIRTLE, works aren't automatically PD just because the author is unknown or because they are publically displayed, and it often depends on when the work was first published, etc. A picture or recreation of the seal might be something that the photographer or recreator can release under a free license, but the copyirght status of the original seal may still need to be taken into account per COM:DW. Since File:Bean StationTNSeal.png is based on the jpg file, it will also need to be sorted out; if the jpg can't be kept, then the png can't be kept as well. -- Marchjuly (talk) 03:23, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

@Marchjuly: Feel free to start a DR.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 03:52, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
Thank you Jeff G. I started a DR for this file. -- Marchjuly (talk) 06:42, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Copyright blocker project

I just commented on a DR there there a flag Australian Aboriginal Flag is mentioned as copyrighted. I wonder if we could effectively make a "copyright blocker project".

The flag in question is made by some simple elements and I assume its the combination that makes it copyrightable. So what if we made flags of every possible combination would that make all future flags ineligible for copyright?

The elements are

  1. The number of possible colors
  2. The top half
  3. The bottom half
  4. The circle

So if we make it simple and say that there are only 10 colors in the world then we can make 10 x 10 x 10 combinations. And if we divide the circle in 2 because some flags have that option then we should add an extra x 10.

Someone could of course make the circle a tiny bit bigger and say that it is so creative that they have the copyright for that. Then we could just say okay you have the copyright for that but we can still use our version in Wikipedia articles and no one can see the difference anyway.

We would get millions of flags so I'm not saying we should do it. I just wonder if you think it would be a possible way to block for copyright? And would we have to make a file showing it or would it be enough to have a list with a color code for the different elements? --MGA73 (talk) 16:22, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

This is not how copyright works. Copyright applies to original works of authorship, where original means "owing its origin to its author"; it is not the same as novel. Alternatively stated, copyright cares about "independent creation." As long has a hypothetical flag maker did not base their flag on our "blocker flag," they would not be precluded from their own copyright, ceteris paribus (i.e., assuming it was above TOO, etc.) Feist v Rural, for example, found "A work may satisfy the independent creation requirement even though it closely resembles other works so long as the similarity is fortuitous, not the result of copying." The US Copyright Office explicitly says: "if two authors created works that are similar or even identical, each work could be registered provided that the authors did not copy expression from each other." (underline added) Эlcobbola talk 16:34, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
You could theoretically generate all 2100 possible black-and-white images of size 10 x 10. It would consume about a billion yottabytes, but let's say it's doable. You won't have copyright to any of the generated files. If someone else chooses one of your files, that very act of identifying one as worthy of notice grants them copyright, because they are selecting one from a nonillion possible images, even though you generated the file first. It would be copyright infringement for you to make use of that particular file, if you base your decision to use it on theirs. (However, it is not copyright infringement for you to continue hosting that file as part of your overall database, per COM:DM.)
Numbers are generally uncopyrightable, but they can be copyrightable if large enough. After all, every digital file is a number. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:05, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
Thank you both. As for illegal numbers etc. I do not think that it is based on copyright. If I write "There is a bomb on the plane!" on a note and place it in an airport I doubt I will violate a copyright act.
I think it is actually interesting thought that if I make 10 or 100 files I have copyright to them but if I make an insane amount of files I will no longer have copyright to any of the files. Have there ever been a case where the court said you do not have copyright based on that?
As far as I know "registered" does not mean that you have the copyright and can do what ever you want. It just mean that your work have been added to the databases so everyone can see that you claimed ownership for something. Then it is up to both parts to find out if they want to take the matter to the court to have them decide who have the copyright. --MGA73 (talk) 18:36, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
Under US law, copyright protection is extended only to original works of human authorship. The creation of every possible variation of an image is unlikely to be copyrightable. As the US Copyright Office puts it, ...the Office will not register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author. (Compendium (Third) § 313.2)
Most of the "illegal numbers" are based on the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA, so they're technically made illegal by copyright law. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 22:47, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
But regardless, there are simply numbers which represent the bytes of a copyrighted file, and those are obviously illegal (though the Wikipedia article doesn't quite focus on them). -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:52, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
Yes I know that you can't register works produced 100 % by a machine. My question was if the work made my a machine could prevent a human from getting copyright later on. For example if a CCTV or a Google car or a satellite takes thousands or millions of photos and put them on the internet you could argue that there is nothing creative about that. So what if I pick one of them out does that mean I can have the copyright for that one photo I picked out? Anyway I think that if we were to make a project like the flag project there would be input from a human author and you could argue that my idea to do the project is creative :-) --MGA73 (talk) 05:48, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
if the work made my a machine could prevent a human from getting copyright later on. The answer is, as it so often is in law, that "it's complicated". However, it boils down to the same arguments that all originality disputes do: how much uncopyrightable stuff do you have to put together before you get copyrightable authorship? In this case, you would have two types of potentially copyrightable works: each individual image, and the collection of images. Each individual image would not be eligible for copyright because it was produced by a mechanical process, without copyrightable human authorship. Were the images derivative works of a copyrightable image, the resulting derivative would be protected because of the source image. In either case, no new copyrightable authorship is created. Similarly, the entire collection of images would not be protected by copyright, because the collection itself "lacks the modicum of creativity necessary to transform mere selection into copyrightable expression."(Feist v. Rural) Now, if you sat down and picked out several images, you could create a compilation with images that were "selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship."(17 U.S.C. 101) That compilation would be protected by copyright even if the individual images aren't.
As far as how that applies to pre-positioned cameras, that's yet to be completely figured out in the US. One could certainly argue that Google Street View photographs are not protected by copyright because there was no copyrightable human authorship. However, one could also argue that Google's decisions over what routes to take, the height of the camera, the time of day, etc. exceed the "modicum of creativity" required for US copyright protection. It hasn't been litigated yet, so it's really an open question. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 06:21, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

File:Askul logo.svg

If this logo was only the word "Askul", then I think it would clearly be {{PD-logo}} per both COM:TOO Japan and COM:TOO United States; however, the image of the man seems too complex for at least Japan which means I'm not sure this logo can be kept. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:42, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

You may be right but it is just my personal opinion. Ruslik (talk) 20:40, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
I'd have to guess the man would be above the U.S. level. No real idea about Japan. Carl Lindberg (talk) 23:18, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Sharing RAW files

Is there a way to upload RAW files here? My camera records in CR2 format, which I think is patented by Canon, and thus non-free. I can convert in DNG that is an open format, but still patented by Adobe with apparently restrictions on the license. -- Basile Morin (talk) 02:07, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

The DNG article says: "Use of the file format is royalty-free; Adobe has published a license allowing anyone to exploit DNG,[5] and has also stated that there are no known intellectual property encumbrances or license requirements for DNG", so I think DNG should be OK. Bubba73 (talk) 02:16, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for your help, Bubba73. Nevertheless, I can't find any DNG file on Commons, at least not in Category:Digital Negative. So waiting for confirmation before proceeding to my upload -- Basile Morin (talk) 02:46, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
You can use Commons Archive, which allows any file format. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:02, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
Thanks. I made an attempt but got this error message: "[e5c4f3538dd2fa5f7f96c614] Exception caught: No specifications provided to ArchivedFile constructor." (source of the file) -- Basile Morin (talk) 03:35, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

contracted work

A matter arose recently about the status of a copyright when a government contracted vendor is paid to photograph work. This occurred all the time, especially in the early 20th Century, when war committees and the like had their pictures taken. In a situation like this, a party who pays a contractor for the work also retains ownership of the copyright. Therefore, the photographer, or photographic studio, can be ignored for copyright purposes. All these pictures deserve an "OGL3" Wikimedia source code. Here is proof:

https://corporate.findlaw.com/intellectual-property/ownership-of-copyrights.html

Please refer to the paragraph, "The Work Made For Hire Rule". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lord Milner (talk • contribs) 09:11, 21 August 2020‎ (UTC)

@Lord Milner: As the introduction to that page says, Ownership rules discussed here apply only in the United States. Your mention of "OGL3", though, makes me suspect that you're talking about copyright law in the United Kingdom, which is quite different, and has changed with time. As far as I can tell from Laddie, Prescott & Vitoria, there has never been a general rule in the UK that commissioners were the first owners of copyright in works. There was such a rule under the 1956 Act (section 4(3), limited to photographs and some other works), but not under the 1911 or 1988 Acts. Under the 1911 and 1956 Acts, works made or first published under the direction or control of [Her] Majesty or any Government department were subject to Crown copyright. LP&V argue that this requires more control than merely commissioning the work, but you might be able to demonstrate first publication. --bjh21 (talk) 10:22, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
@Bjh21: The 1911 Copyright Act had substantially the same language (section 5(1)(a)). It was only the 1988 act which removed it -- so yes, I think that was a general rule until 30 years ago. (The Australian copyright law still has a lighter-weight version of it.) So for the UK, that was probably correct. And most especially if it was for the government, it would have qualified for Crown Copyright as you mention, which would make pre-1957 photos public domain that way -- simply making the initial publication of a work was enough to make it Crown Copyright unless there was a contract which specified otherwise. For anything which does not qualify for {{PD-UKGov}} though, I think we need to see the OGL license explicitly applied at the source. Carl Lindberg (talk) 23:33, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
@Clindberg: You're quite right: I should have read to the end of the chapter! For completeness, apparently section 1 of the Fine Arts Copyright Act 1862 contained a similar but slightly broader provision. --bjh21 (talk)

Response: You are right! What's good in the US is not good in the UK: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/ownership-of-copyright-works#:~:text=Where%20a%20person%20works%20under,contractual%20agreement%20to%20the%20contrary.&text=The%20period%20of%20copyright%20protection,is%20the%20employee(s).

Disa uniflora00

Any chance of someone closing Commons:Deletion requests/File:Disa uniflora00.jpg before it reaches its half-anniversary, this week? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:41, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

... which Commons:Deletion requests/File:500greatestalbumsofalltime.JPG reached today. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:50, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Apparently not :-( Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:53, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Big Sandy Power Plant 1963 photo

Hello. I am trying to see if this photo from the Smithsonian Institution can be uploaded onto Commons. It's a historical photo of the Big Sandy Power Plant in Lawrence County, Kentucky and the photo would be placed in Category:Big Sandy Power Plant. I know it's from Smithsonian Archives, but the photo is copyrighted by the Smithsonian Institution. Any assistance would be helpful. FunksBrother (talk) 20:34, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

When was the image published first? Ruslik (talk) 20:43, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
The Electricity & Modern Physics Collection from the National Museum of American History has the photo dated in 1963. I did a Google Image search and this was the only link to it. FunksBrother (talk) 22:02, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
Pinging @Ruslik as questioner.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 03:48, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
If it has been unpublished until recent times then it will be under copyright protection until 2083. Ruslik (talk) 12:35, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

File:Wind up gramophone.webm music copyright

Can anyone help me figure out the copyright status of the music in this file? Perhaps best to discuss on the talk page. -- Belteshassar (talk) 13:03, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Photograph of a medal from the Ottoman Empire

I have stumbled accross File:Order of the Medjidie.jpg which is claimed as PD due to it being published within the Ottoman Empire, see {{PD-Ottoman}}. The file doesn't give a date of creation/publication or author. As the Ottoman Empire ceased to exist in 1923 and colour photography film only started being produced in the 1930s, I believe the claim here is that the object (the medal) was created in the Ottoman Empire. The photograph is high resolution and appears to be of digital quality, suggesting that it was created in the last 20 years. Is there a case for arguing that the medal is a piece of art, so {{PD-Art}} would apply? If not, are there any other grounds for arguing that the copyright is not owned by the unknown photographer? I was going to nominate this for deletion but thought I would check here first. From Hill To Shore (talk) 20:17, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

As a 3D object, the unknown photographer has many creative decisions about lighting, angle, focus. It's irrelevant that the object itself has no copyright, such as would be the case if you were photographing a butterfly. --Fæ (talk) 20:52, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
Though a medal is a 3D object, it is usually photographed as a 2-D object, as only the obverse and reverse image is of interest, and getting a clear image to faithfully reproduce the original is usually the goal. The photo in question appears to satisfy these requirement, and doesn't involve artistic creativity (in contrast to technical skills, which is required). Had the photo been taken from an unusual angle other than to show the obverse/reverse (e.g. to show the engraving effect), or using specialized lighting to create some effect, than IMO it's copyrightable. --~~

Sculptures

File:David and Goliath by Yaacov Heller.jpg is a photograph of a sculpture that, according to en:Draft:Yaacov Heller, was created in Israel in 1974. Wondering if this needed a copyleft release from the sculptor as well as the photographer, I started looking in help pages and the like with relevant-sounding titles, but I quickly got lost. Where is this matter explained? -- Hoary (talk) 23:31, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

It depends on where it was photographed. If it was photographed in Israel, then we cannot accept it per {{FoP-Israel}} since the display was not permanent (it was clearly intended to be presented to the US). If it was publicly displayed in the US without a copyright notice prior to 1978, then we can accept it per {{PD-US no notice}} so long as the public was not prohibited from making reproductions of it. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:48, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
Is the Flickr user the photographer? Seems like that account just has a handful of photos related to the subject matter and nothing else. One of which is a movie poster. The uploaded photo appears to be the same one which is on the artist's website at https://yaacovheller.com/artwork/david-and-goliath/ (direct image [12]). The image URL suggested it was uploaded there in February 2020 which is before the Flickr upload. I guess the Flickr account is named for the director of that documentary though, so maybe that part is OK. However, it appears that was not the actual copy given to Ford -- it is a very similar statue, but several details (the sword and shield design at least) are different. The Flickr account has a photo of the one given to Ford. So, this would appear to be version in Israel. Carl Lindberg (talk) 03:43, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
Oh, if it's a copy in Israel, then it depends on whether it was publicly and permanently displayed. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:49, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

File:England Away Shirt 2010-2012 (crest).jpg

Not sure whether this is licensed correctly or can be kept. The licensing for the photo seems OK per the source given in the file's description, but the three-lions badge imagery itself is being treated as non-free content on English Wikipedia per en:File:England national football team crest.svg. This is clearly a photo intended to show the en:England national football team's badge, which means it's not really a case of COM:DM. It seems like that Commons would need both the photo and the badge imagery to be released under a free license to keep this file. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:28, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Copyright of 290 Foundation images

The 290 Foundation has a lot of images of models of Confederate warships that I'd like to upload, but I'm uncertain about their copyright status. This is the relevant text from their website, [13]: 

 Further: To encourage historical interest and further study, the 290 Foundation allows for the free distribution / reproduction of any material herein, complete or in part, original or sourced, by any means electronic or in printed form, to interested individuals, groups, associations, schools or like-minded organisations without restriction. The 290 Foundation requests only, a donation of £50 and a suitably worded acknowledgement to our site or source is given in all cases. The 290 Foundation cannot be held responsible for any material, altered or compiled separately from the original drafted text or document taken from these pages.

Thoughts?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:49, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the "free distribution / reproduction" sounds like a non-commercial clause to me, so the content would be ineligible for Commons. You may want to contact the organisation to see if they are willing to change their licensing policy to one that we can use. See Commons:Licensing. From Hill To Shore (talk) 22:30, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
It's a pity they did not go for a CC-BY-SA with attribution being a link to their landing page which requests donations.
I recommend you upload a sample to Commons and consider a discussion about how best to interpret this release. It reads as free use with attribution to me, so equivalent to CC-BY. The "without restriction" appears to allow commercial reuse and the request for a 'donation' reads as not a required payment or fee, just a suggestion. --Fæ (talk) 10:32, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
I've uploaded it at File:CSSWilmingtonModel.jpg using CC-By 4.0. Where's the best place for any discussion, the talk page or somewhere on the Village pump?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 15:27, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
@Sturmvogel 66 and Fæ: If they don't explicitly say "CC-BY", I wouldn't mark it as CC-BY, since CC-BY doesn't precisely match the legal terms. {{Copyrighted free use}} looks like a closer match to the actual terms of the release. Vahurzpu (talk) 00:40, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
{{Copyrighted free use}} won't work as they require "acknowledgement to our site or source... in all cases" {{Attribution}} would be a better fit, perhaps with {{Attribution|text=The 290 Foundation requests only, a donation of £50 and a suitably worded acknowledgement to their site or source is given in all cases.}} However, I am still a bit wary about the list of organisations and groups that they have given the right of free reuse to. Specifically, if they wanted it open to everyone, why did they post a list of groups? They name "like minded organisations," but what is their view on sharing with non-like minded organisations? From Hill To Shore (talk) 01:32, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
I have removed the CC-BY-4.0 licence, which we know is wrong, and replaced it with {{Attribution}}. That presents a slightly more accuratate representation of the position. I'd like to add a warning template to the file to note that the licence is disputed to prevent accidental reuse by third parties who stumble across it during this dicussion. However, I can't think of a valid one that isn't linked to a deletion process. From Hill To Shore (talk) 10:51, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
With respect to 'best place for discussion', I suggest this is it, unless someone is extra-concerned or flags them later. If this gets raised as an issue later on, then the best thing would probably be to have a deletion request discussion and in that DR point back to this thread too. Basically this is probably below the "significant doubt" level for precautionary principle, but where that level tends to vary based on confidence in this source and the literal ways to interpret rubric. --Fæ (talk) 08:16, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
First of all I think that the goal of this organisation is probably positive, and they did not try to create a wording with loopholes to catch accidental infringers, it is not Prenda Law. This reads like a free licence, with two caveats: 1) We do not know if "like-minded organisations" is intended as "those that also distribute their work in this manner", "those who are interested in this subject", "those that we explicitly allowed", etc, it is even possible to read it in a way that would require any reuser to distribute only to organisations that they themselves agree with; 2) "To encourage historical interest" is a very strange statement from the legal perspective, let's imagine that I take their work, and make it into the criticism of people who are interested in history, am I going against the licence or are they saying that any use will eventually lead to this interest. Is it possibe to politely ask them to make a clarification? The problem can be if they intend to distribute in the almost free fashion (let's say they intend it to be "unrestricted but only within educational institutions", we would not be able to use this, but many others will and this benefits the human community overall, if they then notice that people push the issue and start distributing in the way they didn't predict, the knee-jerk reaction maybe to replace it with "no distribution without permission" notice. ℺ Gone Postal (〠 ✉ • ✍ ⏿) 08:43, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
Sturmvogel 66: I'm slightly concerned about the lack of authorship, and more concerned that the URL links only to the image, and nowhere to the site itself. I've updated the test image with a link to the source URL, and a link to the Copyright page, and suggest that any additional uploads follow this example. Additionally, while 290 Foundation may make blanket statements about all images on their site being available like this, I'm seeing a whole lot of them that don't appear to be made *by* the Foundation and are likely simply taken from other sources. What measures will be taken to ensure copyright-washing doesn't occur? — Huntster (t @ c) 12:23, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Advice about OTRS request

Hi, I submitted the scan of the cover and title page of an old textbook. Subsequently a bot sent the notice of the OTRS requirement. OTRS for a Karsh photograph was a straightforward matter. This textbook was published by MIT The authors were faculty in Physics. Likely Physics would be happy to see the book receive some public attention. Unfortunately they might not have the authority to release it. Any suggestion about directing the request? Thanks! ... PeterEasthope (talk) 17:30, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

If you have the full book, could you check if a copyright notice appears on any page of it? A valid copyright notice must consist of 1) the word "copyright" or an abbreviation/symbol of it; 2) the name of the copyright holder; and 3) the year. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 20:10, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
Back of the title page. http://easthope.ca/French&HudsonCopyright.jpg The closest thing I've found to the Science Teaching Center is the Edgerton Center which is celebrating its 25th year. STC could have evolved into EC. Slightly odd that copyright wasn't retained by MIT itself. ?, ... PeterEasthope (talk) 23:09, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Is Template:PD-DCGov correct???

{{PD-DCGov}} claims that works of the Washington, D.C. City government are public domain as it is a sub-entity of the federal government. But the linked statutes on the template make no mention of such a thing and I can find no basis for that claim anywhere. {{DCGovWork}} is a similar template, and covers things specifically from the https://dc.gov website, where the city has voluntarily granted a cc-zero PD declaration for the material on their website. But I can't find anything validating that all DC-authored works on other websites are public domain. en:Government of the District of Columbia claims, "The District Government is within the Legislative branch of Federal government, which makes the government a Federal agency", but the citation given makes no such claim. Virtually all DC websites other than dc.gov itself have copyright statements on them. So I'd love to see some validation that that works of the DC city government are public domain ... I sure can't find it. --B (talk) 11:31, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

  • Hmm. This is an interesting question. I don't know the answer, but I'm keen to see what it is. I know Congress holds sway over DC policy. But I'm not sure how that would translate to say, an accountant for the city necessarily being a federal employee rather than an employee of a sub-national entity. But that's just my intuition. GMGtalk 12:11, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
  • The guidance in the Copyright Compendium on this matter has changed over time based on the version. The current third edition, section 313.6(C)(1), states that U.S. government works include works prepared by an officer or employee of the government of the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, or the organized territories under the jurisdiction of the federal government. The second edition of the compendium though, section 206.02(b), states: Works of the govern­ment of the District of Columbia, as now constituted, are not considered U.S. Govern­ment works. (Link to 1984 version, but same text was in 1998 version.) I really don't know what changed in the meantime. The first edition, supplement No. 9(V)(c), from 1973, states: Publications of the government of the District of Columbia will be treated as publications of the U.S. Government. I also have no idea what changed between the first and second editions (other than the 1976 Copyright Act, but I don't see any mention of the District of Columbia in the legislative notes). Carl Lindberg (talk) 01:18, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
    • @Clindberg: Interesting, thanks. I submitted a question to copyright.gov - I will post it here if I get an answer. --B (talk) 11:03, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
      • @B: I guess the Home Rule Act in 1973 might explain the difference between the first and second editions. The linked version was from 1973, but perhaps created before that Home Rule Act was passed. The second edition did not come out until 1984 (mostly to deal with all the changes in the 1976 Copyright Act). But I have no idea what changed for the third edition, since that Home Rule Act is still in effect. Carl Lindberg (talk) 13:31, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Also: is {{DCGovWork}} accurate? Per [14] (linked to in the template), "These terms and conditions apply only to data, as the term “data” is understood under the US Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 101 et seq., available from the District of Columbia (District) Data Catalog, and Track DC (the Sites). Data means non-copyrightable information such as facts, figures, map coordinates, etc., that have not been manipulated in some manner to be intellectual property subject to copyright law. It does not apply to any other web content or data that is publicly available, or that appears in any other location on the dc.gov website." The DC Government, however, has ("[e]xcept for third party content that is copyright protected or for content otherwise noted") released all "content on this site [https://dc.gov]" under the CC-BY-3.0 license, per [15]. —Mdaniels5757 (talk) 15:57, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
  • @Carl Lindberg and GreenMeansGo: I received a reply to my email to copyright.gov. You can view the reply at File:Copyright.gov reply to question about DC copyright status.png. The short version is that without any comment, he says that works of DC are copyrightable. I have replyed with the follow-up queuestion asking him to confirm that what is on page 30 of [16] is incorrect. I suspect, though, that he is right. There is no reason that works of the DC government would be public domain and it was probably simply an error in the publication. --B (talk) 18:57, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
@B: This is my intuition on the subject. DC is a sub-national non-state entity, of which there are a few varieties. That's not to say there might not be cases where certain individuals are bona fide federal employees, but I don't know that it's something we can presume as a matter of course. GMGtalk 19:25, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Unless there is an objection here, I intend to nominate this template for deletion ... I think that it's factually incorrect. --B (talk) 12:40, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Nominated at Commons:Deletion requests/Template:PD-DCGov. --B (talk) 11:45, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

asking someone to take a picture of you -- where is our default?

Let's say you're at a restaurant. You ask someone to take a picture of you posing with your fancy sandwich. Who owns the copyright? Some people seem to argue that it's the person who pushes the button. But according to WMF legal, in "most situations where a friend or stranger is asked to take a picture of the subject without advance planning", "the person whose photograph is being taken had sole control over how the photo was taken -- they chose the place, pose, etc., and likely the angle and lighting as well." Of course, if the person pushing the button also made several decisions, it gets more complicated and in some cases the copyright might solely belong to the person pushing the button.

My question is where the default is when the only information we have is "I asked someone to take a picture of me". For the vast majority of cases, we can't know who made which decisions, and only have access to one party's side of the story. In seeing DRs over the years, it seems like there's some variability and a lot of reading into the images to make assumptions that don't always seem self-evident.

This new DR led me to wonder (courtesy pings to Ellin Beltz, Gone Postal, and the uploader, TwinofSedona). Is all that's necessary to assume it's ok to have the uploader say "I made the decisions" and then we close it and move on? What if the uploader isn't available to say that? — Rhododendrites talk |  16:54, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Excellent point. I can say with certainty that in all of my photos I made the decisions. --TwinofSedona (talk) 18:24, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
@Rhododendrites: I haven't seen that page before but I note some big health warnings in the text. First, the page is marked as a preliminary opinion from the WMF legal team and advises people not to rely on it. Second, the opinion refers to authorship under US law; it would be dangerous to assume that the same opinion applies to other jurisdiction. A third issue that you highlight above, is that the opinion doesn't cover situations where the photographer and the subject make joint decisions about the creation; for example, "I can't get you in the frame, please move a little to the right." We are taking the subject's word that they were the sole creative influence on the work. Personally, I would err on the side of caution and assume that the person who pushed the button was the author. From Hill To Shore (talk) 20:40, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
We also take the uploader's word that they were (say) the photographer of a previously unpublished landscape. Maybe it's really their spouse/sibling/friend who borrowed their camera and took the picture? But once we have full-res files with consistent EXIF, there is no more proof we can demand, so we have to COM:AGF and accept that they did in fact take the picture. I see no reason not to extend a similar level of trust to claims of creative influence. We've always been relatively lenient towards previously unpublished works. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:20, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
All of Wikilegal's posts are marked as not being legal advice. It's a standard template they put on all their posts. It's been there six years, listed among all their other posts, and they haven't updated it, so I don't see a reason to treat it any differently than any other Wikilegal posting. And while it is for U.S. law, I can't imagine it would be hugely different in other countries, unless there was something specific in other laws to guide us. And yes, that page does address joint decisions -- that would be the last paragraph in that section, where there is joint copyright ownership (which all laws allow for). In the U.S., any co-owner can make a non-exclusive license. But that paragraph does seem to suggest that someone not caring about their potential ownership may well mean they don't have it, since they say there would need to be intent to become a copyright owner. Otherwise, it sounds like their portion of the copyright would probably be abandoned. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:51, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
One thing I have said repeatedly is that while COM:PCP prevents us from speculating about the probability of getting sued, it does not prevent us from speculating about the conditional probability of the plaintiff succeeding should they decide to sue. That's why we follow case law (e.g. COM:TOO US), and assume that if someone files a claim against us, the courts will most likely follow established practice and rule according to how they have historically ruled, so we accept logos that are not more complex than those which have historically been ruled non-copyrightable. From a practical standpoint, if the subject of a photo hands the camera to a stranger and then receives it back, the stranger has no realistic way of proving that they took the photo. Such a photo is far less likely to cause problems than File:Macaca nigra self-portrait large.jpg, which we ended up keeping. From a theoretical standpoint, the stranger may even be said to have abandoned their copyright as they have retained no copies of the work nor have they left behind their contact details, leaving themselves no means to economically exploit the work. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:10, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
I hadn't seen that page either. I've long argued that the copyright in most bystander photos is at least co-owned by the person asking to get their picture taken, for the reasons laid out there. It frankly feels like an area where we should just assume good faith and allow them, to me. But that is not always the way DRs go. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:51, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
I'm of the same opinion as Carl Lindberg, and I think I have processed some DRs in the past accordingly. That is, if the person asking to get their picture taken apparently has previously made the most important decisions regarding image composition, and I assume that this is usually the case (they determine where they want to be photographed, in front of a specific background etc.), then the person pressing the shutter button is merely a kind of "technical assistant" and not the owner of the copyright. And I'm of this opinion from a Swiss/European point of view; I don't think that there are huge differences regarding this authorship question between the US and most other countries. Gestumblindi (talk) 09:48, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
I don't know where the default is; I would follow User:Clindberg's opinion for most cases and actually do accept "it was my camera and I asked them to take this" for pictures where that's reasonably likely. The situation which started this series of discussion is not as clear cut, however. It's a collection of images obviously not all own work dating back over the last 60 years. The set includes photos of the women as babies, children, and teenagers which are highly unlikely own work or requested bystander photos! In addition, the contributions include professional publicity photographs, USO photographs, COM:DW, some which could be saved by COM:OTRS and so on - not all "own camera" issues. Until the era of cellphones the number of people who carried their own camera was few and the ability of a random bystander to use a 35 millimeter unusual. Ellin Beltz (talk) 19:32, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
Bystander photos have happened for years. Autofocus cameras started in the late 1970s and even before then it was usually possible for someone to configure the camera, and just have a bystander press the button (been on both sides of that situation before, before digital photos became common even). Family photos are indeed a different situation, but usually the uploader likely inherited copyright, so that is often an assume good faith situation as well, to me. Derivative works, publicity shots... yeah those need clarification. Carl Lindberg (talk) 19:46, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
"Until the era of cellphones the number of people who carried their own camera was few" - not at all, see for example en:Instamatic (the inspiration for Instagram's original square image format, by the way). I owned an Instamatic as a boy in the 1980's and nothing was easier than taking a point-and-shoot photo with this camera. It was very popular. There were also many very simple 35 mm cameras. Gestumblindi (talk) 10:09, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
Addition, for what it's worth: Many of the simplest film cameras had a fixed focus, so neither a need nor the possibility to adjust focus; the only thing to observe was to keep a minimum distance, you couldn't take images of very close objects with these cameras. Also fixed shutter speed and only few basic settings for aperture. Gestumblindi (talk) 18:44, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
@Rhododendrites: The default is to sealion the uploader until they give up in disgust :P Kaldari (talk) 18:31, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

White House YouTube channel

Are the videos (and therefore stills and screenshots as well) from https://www.youtube.com/user/whitehouse in the public domain? (e.g. Template:PD-USGov-POTUS) Loksmythe (talk) 18:19, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Based on all the videos uploaded from the White House YouTube Channel to here Category:Videos of Donald Trump in 2020, it seems acceptable. This template seems to be most often used: Template:PD-USGov. Loksmythe (talk) 19:33, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
If an employee of the United States government, in their official capacity, is the author, then yes. Keep in mind that it's possible that a video uses "courtesy footage" or some such thing and that material might not be public domain. For example, suppose they had a video promoting the American manufacturing industry and used footage contributed by Ford showing a new plant they are opening. That footage would NOT be public domain. Or suppose that the President was standing next to a kid wearing a Transformers t-shirt. You can't crop out everything around the Transformers picture and proclaim that to be a public domain picture of the Transformers. --B (talk) 13:06, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Video footage with WH.GOV watermark

Is unedited footage of White House press conferences, events, remarkets, etc (as well as screenshots/stills etc) with the WH.gov watermark in the public domain (e.g. Template:PD-USGov-POTUS)? For example, a White House news conference on August 23, 2020 was streamed live on the official White House Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/1191441824276882/videos/718574865359809/. Thanks. Loksmythe (talk) 19:24, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

I think it is PD. Ruslik0 (talk) 10:28, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Zoom video meetings

I'm wondering, files of Zoom video meetings like this file. Each part taken by the depicted person. So each part have a different copyright holder.
a. Does the person that catch the whole frame have some copyright?
b. Reusers should give a credit to all of them?
c. This kind of photo can be considered as de minimis? -- Geagea (talk) 23:27, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

@Geagea: This has been coming up recently but I think nothing has been conclusively decided. See Commons:Village_pump/Copyright/Archive/2020/06#Who is the photographer in case of a screenshot of video conference?. – BMacZero (🗩) 19:23, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
I searched the Internet, asked on Reddit, and posted here a few months ago asking this question. It seemed like nobody anywhere was completely sure, but the default answers seemed to be that a Zoom screenshot is typically going to combine the copyrights of each individual webcam. I haven't seen the question of fixation come up, but it seems like a difficult way to argue. The way live broadcasters on television typically satisfy this is by recording the broadcast to tape as it's going out live. Especially with Zoom, one of its big features is its ease of recording. Any of the participants, and especially the host could be creating local and/or cloud recordings of the meeting, and many people record all of their meetings by default (I do). That said, when a broadcaster makes a copy, they already own all of the copyrights involved whereas most Zoom calls aren't going to involve that kind of work-for-hire contract. Since this keeps coming up without a clear answer, I've sent an email to Wikilegal to see if they'd weigh in. — Rhododendrites talk |  17:16, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
My first instinct was that each part have the copyright of the depicted person. Exept your post (recordings)I have seen different analysis: Copyright#Fixing, Jumbotron images (broadcast live) (commons), Pre-positioned recording devices. And now I'm not so sure. Anyway I think that if there are many small frames it might considerd as a de minimis. -- Geagea (talk) 20:21, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
I doubt the news media companies are very concerned with the copyright details, since certainly if there is a copyright owned by the person they are interviewing over Zoom, that person is certainly giving them an implied license to use their content by virtue of participating in the interview. copyright occurs when something is placed in a fixed medium, so if you are standing on the street corner making an extemporaneous speech, that is not copyrightable. If someone records a video of you making an extemporaneous speech, that video IS copyrighted. "Transmitting" counts as a "fixed medium" for purposes of copyright law, but I don't know that a private Zoom call itself counts as "transmitting". If that's the case that a private Zoom call itself doesn't count as "transmitting", then whoever first records it or transmits it to the public (in the case of a news media interview) would own the copyright. --B (talk) 13:16, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
I don't believe that transmitting counts as a fixed medium; see below. Merely making a copy of something or retransmitting it doesn't give you a copyright; it requires creative input by the copyright owner.--Prosfilaes (talk) 15:43, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Update: Wikimedia Legal wrote back to me to let me know they're adding this to their queue for research. — Rhododendrites talk |  19:23, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Rhododendrites, but I'm still wondering, can de minimis applay when the file contain let's say 20 parts or 40 parts? We don't need Wikimedia Legal for that. -- Geagea (talk) 00:02, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Each users stream is owned by the streaming user, so COM:OTRS permission is needed to include any screenshot of streams not yours. De minimis does not apply.--BevinKacon (talk) 15:07, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Actually, users don't have a copyright in their own streams because they have not recorded it in a fixed medium; however, in some jurisdictions they may be eligible for neighboring rights. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 15:16, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
So all live TV broadcasts are not copyrighted?--BevinKacon (talk) 15:20, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
Any that aren't being recorded by the creator. In practice none.--Prosfilaes (talk) 15:43, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

From House Report no. 94–1476:

Fixation in Tangible Form. As a basic condition of copyright protection, the bill perpetuates the existing requirement that a work be fixed in a “tangible medium of expression,” and adds that this medium may be one “now known or later developed,” and that the fixation is sufficient if the work “can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.” This broad language is intended to avoid the artificial and largely unjustifiable distinctions, derived from cases such as White-Smith Publishing Co. v. Apollo Co., 209 U.S. 1 (1908) [28 S.Ct. 319, 52 L.Ed. 655], under which statutory copyrightability in certain cases has been made to depend upon the form or medium in which the work is fixed. Under the bill it makes no difference what the form, manner, or medium of fixation may be—whether it is in words, numbers, notes, sounds, pictures, or any other graphic or symbolic indicia, whether embodied in a physical object in written, printed, photographic, sculptural, punched, magnetic, or any other stable form, and whether it is capable of perception directly or by means of any machine or device “now known or later developed.” Under the bill, the concept of fixation is important since it not only determines whether the provisions of the statute apply to a work, but it also represents the dividing line between common law and statutory protection. As will be noted in more detail in connection with section 301, an unfixed work of authorship, such as an improvisation or an unrecorded choreographic work, performance, or broadcast, would continue to be subject to protection under State common law or statute, but would not be eligible for Federal statutory protection under section 102. The bill seeks to resolve, through the definition of “fixation” in section 101, the status of live broadcasts—sports, news coverage, live performances of music, etc.—that are reaching the public in unfixed form but that are simultaneously being recorded. When a football game is being covered by four television cameras, with a director guiding the activities of the four cameramen and choosing which of their electronic images are sent out to the public and in what order, there is little doubt that what the cameramen and the director are doing constitutes “authorship.” The further question to be considered is whether there has been a fixation. If the images and sounds to be broadcast are first recorded (on a video tape, film, etc.) and then transmitted, the recorded work would be considered a “motion picture” subject to statutory protection against unauthorized reproduction or retransmission of the broadcast. If the program content is transmitted live to the public while being recorded at the same time, the case would be treated the same; the copyright owner would not be forced to rely on common law rather than statutory rights in proceeding against an infringing user of the live broadcast. Thus, assuming it is copyrightable—as a “motion picture” or “sound recording,” for example—the content of a live transmission should be regarded as fixed and should be accorded statutory protection if it is being recorded simultaneously with its transmission. On the other hand, the definition of “fixation” would exclude from the concept purely evanescent or transient reproductions such as those projected briefly on a screen, shown electronically on a television or other cathode ray tube, or captured momentarily in the “memory” of a computer.

So if it's not being recorded, there's no copyright.--Prosfilaes (talk) 15:43, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Just to see if I understand correctly.
  • bill = proposal for a law?
  • If someone speech in public, he does not own copyright for his own words?
  • regarding to musical etc. performance we have in Israel Performer's and Broadcasters' Rights Low -1984. Even though it's not a copyright law you can not record without their permission (performance).
-- Geagea (talk) 21:53, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

User:Vedib

Dear admins (or From Hill To Shore, for example), I am very rarely here, so I would ask you to check these uploads in terms of possible copyright issues. The user is a rookie; he started to contribute on BS Wiki eight days ago. I left him a message there, but, just in case, I am writing to your community here to keep an eye on him because I am not sure that he knows or understands what he is doing. – KWiki (talk) 13:37, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

I spotted this message earlier and flagged up several of their uploads as having unclear sourcing. I noticed that they have gone back in and edited the descriptions, but I haven't had time to review as yet. To clarify though, I am not an admin. (^_~) From Hill To Shore (talk) 19:40, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

1909 image from Atelier D'Ora-Benda

Is this appropriate for Commons? I Dora Kallmus died in 1963, and Arthur Benda in 1969, but the National Library of Austria only credits it to Atelier D'Ora-Benda, so... there's a little ambiguity there. File in question is at en:File:Alma Mahler in 1909.jpg. Adam Cuerden (talk) 01:43, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Please see Commons:Copyright rules by territory/Australia. Unless you can find evidence of the image being released under a suitable free licence, we will have to wait for the file to come into the public domain for upload to Commons. Australian copyright law is generally life +70 years (though if copyright had already expired before 2005, when a life +50 rule was in force, the copyright would still be expired now). In this case a death date of 1963 would give a copyright expiry of 1 January 2034 and a death date of 1969 would give a copyright expiry of 1 January 2040. While I am not familiar with any exemptions under Australian law, I expect that we can't upload here for another 13 years at the earliest; I'd suggest raising the question again then as to which of the two dates should be considered (the National Library of Australia may have updated its record by then). From Hill To Shore (talk) 02:11, 26 August 2020 (UTC) Ignore me, I read Australian instead of Austrian. It is 3am here so I'm obviously too tired to give advice. From Hill To Shore (talk) 02:21, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
Time to try again. The first step is to determine which legal regime applies to the photograph. The Atelier d'Ora studio was in Vienna and operated from 1907; it is safe to assume that Austrian law applies to the image. See Commons:Copyright rules by territory/Austria. As this is a studio photograph, the copyright rule is author's life +70 years; if the copyright is held jointly by two or more authors, the copyright expires 70 years after the death of the last author. Benda is the credited author and the one who died later, so whether it was his sole work or a joint work, the copyright expires 70 years after his death. That means the Austrian copyright will remain until 31 December 2039. For the US copyright, you are relying on the photograph being published prior to 1925; do you have evidence to support that? If it was a private photograph, it may not have been published until it was obtained by the National Library. The file can't be transferred to Commons until 1 January 2040 and you will also need to demonstrate how the US copyright has expired. From Hill To Shore (talk) 12:59, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
So, I am right in thinking that it wouldn't come under some published-under-a-collective clause that would make it count as anonymous? Thought so, but wasn't sure. Adam Cuerden (talk) 13:44, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
As you have a source naming one of the studio employees as the author, it will be difficult to justify a claim of anonymity. You would have to bring in a more reliable source that can explain why the author can't be determined. From Hill To Shore (talk) 13:50, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
I... do? I think I missed something. I don't see anything naming Benda as the author (As opposed to Atelier D'Ora-Benda, his studio with Dora Kallmer), but I have missed things before. Adam Cuerden (talk) 14:43, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
I may be misinterpreting it but I believe the studio is named "Atelier d'Ora" so "Atelier D'Ora-Benda" would mean Benda at the Atelier d'Ora studio. I'm not an expert on the studio as I only heard of it today, so if "Atelier D'Ora-Benda" is just an alternative name for the studio then that introduces a level of confusion. From Hill To Shore (talk) 15:16, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
Ah, no, D'Ora-Benda was the name of their collaborative studio. But it's also called Atelier d'Ora, so... Let's call it no commons until 2040. Adam Cuerden (talk) 16:31, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
I honestly have had similar problems trying to clean out Category:PD Austria 1932 (which contains files using {{PD-Austria-1932}}); many of the files have incomplete information over when or whether they were published, so I can't tell when they will safe to keep under U.S. law (until 2073), or even what may fall under the EU's publication right. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 15:23, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
If a work qualified for {{PD-Austria-1932}}, then it qualifies for {{PD-1996}}. The PD-Austria-1932 tag I think accurately represented the situation in Austria on January 1, 1996. However just a few months later, Austria implemented the EU directive, which retroactively restored everything, meaning that was no longer valid in Austria itself. However the URAA date had already passed by that point, so stuff restored in Austria a few months later was not restored in the U.S. They only had to be published before March 1, 1989 (without a copyright notice) to still be PD in the U.S. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:52, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
I did find this description of the companies:
The founder of the Atelier d'Ora in 1907 was Austrian-Jewish fashion and portrait photographer Dora [=d'Ora] Kallmus (1881–1963), her assistant being the German photographer Arthur Benda (1885–1969). In 1921, Benda became a partner in the studio, which operated a branch also in Karlsbad during the season. In 1927, Kallmus made the Atelier d'Ora over to Benda, who carried it on with his wife Hanny Mittler under the name "Atelier d'Ora-Benda." Kallmus moved to Paris, where from 1925 on she ran her own photographic studio and built up her reputation as a society and art photographer.
And also this take on it:
She soon set her sights beyond Austria, spending her summers in Berlin and Karlsbad seeking out new patrons, before achieving her lifelong dream of opening a Paris studio in 1925 [...]. But her assistant Benda had abandoned her, returning to Vienna to take over her studio and changing its name to Atelier d’Ora-Benda-Wein. Following this betrayal, the two never spoke again.
The latter source says this about the working relationship:
Women were not allowed to complete the most complex technical training so d’Ora employed Benda to focus on the mechanics, while she set the lighting, fixed the poses, obtained the clients and worked on PR.
If the photo was from 1909, it was from well before the second company name existed. It seems doubtful it's a sole credit to Benda... more likely, the Austrian archive used the name of the company as of when the photos in question were donated. Presumably some earlier Kallmus photos like this were still in their possession. Per Austrian law, it would have originally expired long ago (probably 1930), but then possibly revived in 1996, depending on the anonymous question, and their status today would be the same as then. Their article 60 says Where the author of a work has not been designated in a manner that creates a presumption of authorship under Article 12 the work would be 70 years from publication, which would have meant it remained PD in 1996, and today. Article 12 says Failing proof to the contrary, the person designated in the usual manner as the author on the copies of a work which has been published or on the original of a work of art shall be presumed to be the author provided the designation gives his true name or a pseudonym known to be used by him or--in the case of works of art--the artist's known mark. So I guess the question is if whether the company name is enough to qualify as an artist's mark, since it's not really a true name or a pseudonym. By the strict letter of the law, probably not. Though I guess it's possible that versions distributed in 1909 did have an artist's mark -- though that would almost certainly have been for Kallmus, not Benda. I do see the mark "d'Ora" on some of her photos. Not sure knowledge of the working relationship would be enough to give Benda a joint copyright -- sure seems like it would be solely Kallmus or anonymous. I guess I'm not really sure either -- seems likely a version was published at the time with more of an author's mark. Carl Lindberg (talk) 04:51, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

File:Sir David Edward.jpg

I'm not sure about the licensing of this file. The photo is probably "own work", but the painting itself might not be. The portrait is of en:David Edward, who was born in 1934 and is still living; so, I don't think it's old enough to be PD just based upon it's age. Another problem might also be that the photo (even if the portrait is PD) is not really a case of COM:2D copying per COM:FRAME since it also shows the frame and some other elements. That can probably be cleaned up by cropping everything else out and the license of the cropped version changed to {{PD-Art}}, but that only makes sense to do if the portrait itself isn't protected by copyright. Any ideas on whether the portrait is protected by copyright? -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:26, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

COM:FRAME is not relevant because the photo is pretty obviously own work; it only comes into play when we want to assert that photographs taken by other people do not have sufficient creativity to generate copyright. The only issue is the status of the painting, and I agree that it is probably not PD. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:42, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for clarifying FRAME King of Hearts. I'm assuming that the unclear copyright status about this then makes the photo a possible COM:DW. Would this be something better to discuss at DR or is simply adding {{Dw no source since}}. File was uploaded in January 2019 and it was one of only two edits made by the uploader. Uploader has also been inactive on English Wikipedia since June 2019. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:33, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
As an observation, he is depicted in the robes of the European Court of Justice. If it is an official portrait it may have been released under a free licence. However, I have no evidence to support that. From Hill To Shore (talk) 02:02, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
I'd do a DR to give people maximal opportunity to find information on the copyright status of the underlying work. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 02:33, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
Thank you King of Hearts and From Hill To Shore. I've started a DR about this file as suggested above. -- Marchjuly (talk) 13:42, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Canadian photograph from 1946

Hello -- I've been trying to decide whether a particular image could be uploaded to the Commons, but I'm a little dazed by the various copyright rules and would like some advice. After some research, I've confirmed that this photo of Dr. Frances McGill [17] was originally published in the RCMP Quarterly (a Canadian magazine) in July 1946. As far as I'm aware, the image was never published outside of Canada. From what I understand, a Canadian photo created before 1949 meets Canadian public domain criteria -- but would this photo also meet U.S. public domain criteria? Should I upload it? Alanna the Brave (talk) 22:32, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

If it is Crown Copyright (was the magazine a government publication at the time?), then it would be OK. Otherwise, no -- the cutoff was photos created before 1946, since 1946 photos were still under copyright in Canada on January 1, 1996 (they did not expire until 1997) as such got restored in the U.S. The en-wiki en:Template:PD-Canada template documents the U.S. interaction better than the one here. I guess if it was created before 1946 but only published later, it would also be OK. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:04, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
Hmm -- the crown copyright angle might be a possibility. Prior to 1999, the RCMP Quarterly was published by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (the national police force). Do you think that counts as a crown/government entity? Alanna the Brave (talk) 20:12, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
This article seems to credit it to the National Film Board. Which makes sense. It was the mission of the "still photography division" of the NFB to create photographs like this. It may have been first published by the NFB itself or by the RCMP magazine. -- Asclepias (talk) 23:11, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
@Asclepias: I've tried to trace the photo long distance via Library and Archives Canada (which now holds NFB photo archives), but I've had limited success -- COVID-19 is making it really difficult for archivists to access their full holdings and respond to queries. The 1946 RCMP Quarterly magazine is the earliest publication of the photo that I've been able to locate so far, and it doesn't credit an author/copyright holder (alas!). Alanna the Brave (talk) 01:56, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
The 1921 Canadian copyright law stated (much like the UK at the time): Without prejudice to any rights or privileges of the Crown, where any work has, whether before or after the commencement of this Act, been prepared or published by or under the direction or control of His Majesty or any government department, the copyright in the work shall, subject to any agreement with the author, belong to His Majesty, and in such case shall continue for a period of fifty years from the date of the first publication of the work. So being first published in a government publication would seem to make it Crown Copyright. Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:04, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
  • I have suggested that we lobby all the big Canadian archive sites, and request they waive the US intellectual property rights they retain for all images that are in the public domain in Canada.
In theory, they could try to tap another revenue stream by seeking income from individuals who require permission to use these images in the USA. In practice I suspect this would be a huge headache for them, and they would be better off earning the limited bit of goodwill by waiving those rights. Geo Swan (talk) 02:43, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Does cropping create a new copyright?

I happened across a photo I uploaded "in the wild" (off-wiki), and was surprised to see it credited to me and someone else. Looking at the file page, I see it is a cropped version of a photo I uploaded, and the person who did the cropping changed the "author" field from "Rhododendrites" to "Rhododendrites. Cropped by UserX [timestamp]". Since that field is what we assume media users go by for attribution, I was surprised to see anyone change it. For something like a photo restoration or major edit I sort of get it, but does a crop really create a new copyright? Doing a quick search it looks like the same person has hundreds of these credits. (obviously UserX is not the username -- omitting the person's name for now, since I'm unclear on the rules for this). — Rhododendrites talk |  18:46, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

I found a couple of such edited photos: File:Coney Island Boardwalk 1 crop.jpg and File:Cornell Tech buildings (41991) crop.jpg, maybe there are more. SV1XV (talk) 19:26, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
Almost never, I would say. Extracting material can generate new copyright, as I argued at Commons:Village pump/Copyright/Archive/2020/08#Copyright blocker project, but cropping is just too trivial IMO. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:28, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
You can communicate with the user and check what his intention was. Maybe he did not mean to claim authorship. Maybe he just wanted to add the mention and did not know how. Maybe it was added there by some tool he used. The mention that the image was cropped is useful but it should not go in the author field. It can go almost anywhere else. It can be added with the Retouched picture template. Or it can be mentioned in the description. -- Asclepias (talk) 20:01, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
Sometimes yes and sometime no. Consider the following pair of photos:
  • uncropped
    uncropped
  • cropped
    cropped
The uncropped and cropped pictures illustrates different things but the cropped picture is clearly a derivative work of the uncropped picture so the person who did the cropping is justified in naming themselves as a co-editor of cropped picture. There is of course a legal problem about the cropped picture, does the copyright expire 70 years after both of us die or 70- years after I die?
(For the record, the uncropped was actually cropped before I posted it. The chapel is on a river bank and when I was processing the picture, I noticed that I had also photographed a couple kissing and cuddling on the river bank. I cropped them out of the picture in order to preserve their privacy! Had somebody else cropped them out, I do not believe that would have justified a new copyright.) Martinvl (talk) 21:55, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
I don't think that generates new copyright, because it merely represents the fairly obvious idea of zooming in on a central window. There are far more ways of designing a stylized apple than of cropping a shot. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:26, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
(after edit conflict) Is it a simple cropping in the case of Kings College Chapel? It may be an optical illusion (my eyesight isn't the best) but to me the colour balance has been altered on the cropped image. That section of the original file had a yellowish tint whereas the crop version appears to be paler. If they have adjusted the file beyond cropping, that adds a layer of creativity (though perhaps too minor for the threshold of originality).
Derivative works under UK law are treated as joint creations; copyright will expire 70 years after the last author dies. However, the issue could be complicated further a subsequent author created the derivative work in a different country, which would add another layer of copyright rules. From Hill To Shore (talk) 00:00, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
Where does it say that for UK law? They define joint works where the contributions of each author are indistinguishable. It seems, like the U.S., that the derivative work (or adaptation) would simply be its own work, with the copyrightable additions being owned by the second author. To use the derivative work, you might need a license from both authors though. The underlying work will expire on its original schedule, at which point only the new content would have a copyright (if it still does). The derivative author does not get any ownership of the expression of the original though, unlike a joint work. I'm not sure the crop (and possible changing of tones) would count under UK law though -- their "adaptation" definitions are a bit stricter than the U.S. Carl Lindberg (talk) 01:41, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
Your wording probably explains it more clearly but that was my meaning. In a derived work if the second author dies first, the copyright of the underlying work will remain in place for a longer period. You have to determine the copyright status of the original before you can say the derived work is free of copyright (so original author +70 years). If the author of the original work dies first, the copyright of the derivative elements will last longer (so second author +70 years). The original author doesn't gain a right to the derivative elements but neither do they lose their rights to the original elements included within the derivative work. The more levels of derivation and the more countries are involved, the more complex the situation becomes. From Hill To Shore (talk) 02:07, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
Putting aside, for simplicity, the minor color differences between these examples, I wouldn't see a new copyright there, either. It's about added creative work. There's no creativity in displaying just a piece of a work. There are [tenuous] arguments to be had about, say, appropriation/conceptual art or other forms which repurpose an image with little alteration, but they at least have artistic narratives to go along with them and thus an argument for original authorship. Here it's just "I only wanted to show part of it". Seems like how excerpting is different from abridgment, which requires the author to contribute "a sufficient amount of creative authorship in the form of edits, revisions, or other modifications to the preexisting work" rather than just copy/pasting a chapter on its own. Or the difference between remixing and just playing a segment of a song. — Rhododendrites talk |  00:08, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

I believe that the information page on {{Information}} is enlighting: "This field should not be used to specify the name of the person who is the scanner, finder, or uploader of the image – these things do not make that person the author." It does not refer explicitly to "cropper" but I believe it is somehow covered by "scanner" as you may scan part of an image. However the uploading forms are not so clear about these issues, althought they have been improved in recent years. SV1XV (talk) 23:51, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

It is an interesting guideline but as with all guidelines there will be valid exceptions. It is possible to manipulate images with the scanner hardware or software, so there could be an element of creativity involved, though that would be an exception rather than the rule. Most users would choose the default settings for the type of image they are scanning and even some of the options that could be selected may not be sufficient for Commons:TOO. From Hill To Shore (talk) 00:07, 29 August 2020 (UTC)


It's probably possible -- framing a photograph is one of the copyrightable aspects. However, the crop itself would have to exhibit enough creativity to support a copyright on its own, which would likely be rare. There was one (district level) case which suggested they could. However, simple crops like the one on the stained glass window example above, almost certainly not -- that is a fairly obvious framing if you wanted to focus on the window. And it's still just depicting the building as the original photo does, not really transforming it in any way. I don't think stuff like that would amount to a copyright, or even close really. I just ran across one recent Copyright Office ruling, when Chick-Fil-A wanted to register a special crop of their logo as a derivative work -- they were turned down. CFA argued that simply cropping a preexisting image amounts to sufficient creative authorship. The Board finds that to be contrary to the principles enunciated in established precedent and Office policy. [...] It is conceivable that a photograph could be cropped in such a way as to “recast, adapt, or transform” it, resulting in a protectable derivative work. In this case, however, the cropping results in only minor, de minimis changes to the original designs, and does not transform the source works in any meaningful way, and therefore does not contain authorship that is separately protectable from those underlying works. Carl Lindberg (talk) 01:18, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

  • If any of these examples concern my actions, I had no intent to claim a new copyright, simply to provide information as to who altered the image. You'll note that none of the images I've cropped appear in my personal collection Category:Images by Beyond My Ken. If there's a better field to add the "cropped by" info to, please let me know on my talk page. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:48, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
    I think any discussion about it should be public. I'd tend to put my name as cropper in that spot as well; it makes it clear that this is a modified version of the original uploader's vision, and if anyone has complaints about it, it's possible I'm at fault instead of them.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:36, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
    Thinking about it again, I think it does make sense to include the cropper's name in the author field, even if the cropper is not entitled to any new copyright. After all, at COM:CONSENT we tell our licensors: "I am aware that the copyright holder always retains ownership of the copyright as well as the right to be attributed in accordance with the license chosen. Modifications others make to the work will not be claimed to have been made by the copyright holder." If information about the crop is omitted, then it may falsely imply that the original author is responsible for or endorses the crop of their work. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:11, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
    The wording of the attribution (or lack thereof) is the copyright owner's call to make, not the cropper. So maybe there are cases where the author hates someone's crop and wants to change that field, but it's their call, not the cropper's. If there's a worry that some copyright holders won't notice a crop that they may find objectionable, that sounds like a good use of a different field. According to the "author" field of the template documentation, it's for the "original author of the file". — Rhododendrites talk |  04:46, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
    File:HSH 1882 Hyatt at Parowan Gap.jpg is one of my photos under the CC-BY-SA. I don't see anywhere on the page that says that the author field has anything to do with the attribution. If it is only for the original author of the file, then it's not appropriate for attribution; by default, all copyrightable changes have a right to be attributed. We're unfortunately not explicit on how the CC-BY licenses should be attributed.--Prosfilaes (talk) 05:13, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

This seems to be more of a question about the definition of the "author" field. Agree with Carl, any straight edge crop alone is purely a mechanical endeavour per Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corporation. The croppers name does not belong in the authors field but can instead be added in the source or description. I would fully support Rhododendrites' right to move the croppers name from the authors field to the description \ source field of their own works which are CC licensed.--BevinKacon (talk) 12:30, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Because authors have the right to be attributed in the way they desire per the CC license, I think this is the way it should be done: Editors may append their name to the author field of a derivative version. In fact, this should probably be the default action unless the original author is known to prefer otherwise. (I, for one, do not want poorly modified versions of my works attributed solely to me.) However, if the original author removes the editor's name, and the edit was below TOO, then the editor's name should not be reinserted. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 14:03, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
This only makes sense to me if objectionable crops were more common than acceptable crops, which doesn't seem likely. It seems more sensible to say that in those less common scenarios when the creator doesn't like the crop for whatever reason, they can change the author field to include the name of the cropper as they see fit.
Regardless, media reusers do use that author field for attribution purposes, whether that's its intention or not, and the potential damage of unintentionally adding a new copyright holder/author/person who receives attribution by default seems to outweigh the bad feelings (does this fall under moral rights?) someone has when someone credits them for a bad crop.
The more this goes on, the more I'm thinking I may whip up some custom templates... — Rhododendrites talk |  14:45, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
@Rhododendrites: That appears to go against the terms of the Creative Commons licence (though the wording varies between licence versions). According to the Creative Commons FAQs, anyone who alters a licensed file has to make clear that the file has been altered (though there is no requirement to give their name). They must also avoid wording that implies the licensor endorses the modified work. The licensor may choose to waive their right to attribution on the modified work, or they may ask for their name to be removed entirely.[18] It does not give the licensor the right to change how the licensee describes the work on a broader basis.
As an example, if I wrote a book and included a cropped version of an image you made, you can ask for the attribution to be removed. However, if my text talks about the image and says that it is a crop I made from a larger image (without claiming ownership of the original) you have no right to edit the text of my book as I have not breached the licence conditions.
If a user has included descriptive text here to say they have cropped an image from the original, they are meeting the conditions of the licence by saying that the work has been modified. The trouble comes where users try to place their name as a second author, which can cause confusion about ownership of the copyright. I believe we can set guidelines to help users to present the information in as clear a way as possible, but an author doesn't appear to have the "right" to do as you suggest under the licence terms. From Hill To Shore (talk) 16:27, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
I'm not saying the author has the right to change license compliant attribution in a work that uses an image (whether or not it's cropped). I'm really only concerned with how we frame this on our file pages and the implications that has for how people connections between our various fields and what people use when deciding how to attribute. Saying that an image has been cropped on the file page is different from adding a new name to the author field, and the different approaches have different implications for how it will be attributed down the line. — Rhododendrites talk |  16:57, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
  • King of Hearts, when we release one of our images so it can be re-used for any purpose, haven't we agreed that a re-user could add devil horns to our selfies? Haven't we agreed that lame and incompetent re-users are free to put lame and incompetent derived images up for others to see? Geo Swan (talk) 03:37, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
  • I've brought this issue up multiple times, over the years. I used to perform a google image search, every six months or so, to see how often images I took were being used by third parties. Occasionally was the answer.
But the disturbing thing I found was that good faith third parties were also routinely re-using images I hadn't created, images I had only uploaded, and mistakenly crediting those image to me.
It is a human factors issue. Our default information pages are poorly designed, so those good faith third parties routinely mistake who is the author of images' intellectual property rights. When I have raised this in the past quite a few people have said something like. "So, people are stupid. Those third parties are stupid. We can't do anything about stupid."
No, even smart people make mistakes when using interfaces are poorly designed, and our information pages are demonstrably poorly designed, since this mistake is common. Yes, we can do something to help prevent our good faith re-users making this mistake:
  1. Render the IP rights owner in a larger font.
  2. Change where we render the IP rights owner. Movie makers know that pride of place, in the order of a movie's stars is the first credit. We put the description first. The second best place to credit an actor is last place. When a movie has a cameo of a big star, they are typically listed last. We put the uploader last.
  3. We could put the commons uploader's name in a smaller font; we could put it in a different place; we could require the re-user to click on a button to see the commons uploader, and give an explicit instruction they are not the rights owner who deserves credit.
Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 03:29, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
The {{Credit line}} template in conjunction with the other fields parameter of {{Information}} seems to work well for this. As far as I can tell, if that template is present, the Media Viewer extension uses that information instead of the author field when generating an attribution statement for reusers. clpo13(talk) 21:03, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

another copyright claim on PD images...

I spent some time improving our coverage of guy who took a lot of excellent photos of Canada's north, Emrys Jones. He took these photos in 1928. Later he became a highly respected Professor. He donated his photos to his University when he was in his sixties.

January 1, 1949, is the date when images start to be protected by copyright, in Canada. So, I think these images, taken in 1928, should be unambiguously in the public domain.

However, this page, from his University, says:

Copyright / Use Restrictions:
Access to these photographic images and the technical capacity to download them does not imply permission for re-use.
The images available here are for scholarly and personal research purposes only.
Permission to reproduce i.e. publish or publicly display any image from this collection must be requested in writing. Such requests must be sent, faxed or e-mailed to...

I downloaded some of these images, and it looks like other contributors downloaded some dozens of his images.

Okay, should we ignore this claim as too questionable? Geo Swan (talk) 02:35, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Their copyright status in the United States depends on when they were first "published", under the U.S. definition. -- Asclepias (talk) 11:55, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
Geo Swan, I agree that per {{PD-Canada}} and Commons:Copyright_rules_by_territory/Canada photographs taken in 1928 are PD in Canada. However in the US they are most-likely still copyrighted. I do see a lot of files with PD statement only from the source country, like files in Category:Works_copyrighted_in_the_U.S. or using {{Not-PD-US-URAA}}, so I am not sure if we are still following PD in source country and in the US policy. However if we still do such files might be challenged and deleted. --Jarekt (talk) 14:23, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
COM:L is still official policy and still says that "Wikimedia Commons only accepts media that are explicitly freely licensed, or that are in the public domain in at least the United States and in the source country of the work." (Emphasis in the original.)--Prosfilaes (talk) 14:32, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

File:SarahKnauss1979.jpg

En:wp:File:SarahKnauss1979.jpg What can we say about the copyright of this file? In general what we can do if we don't know whether it was published or not, and wheter with a notice or not. Thanks--Pierpao.lo (listening) 21:07, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Pinging @NowIsntItTime as uploader of en:File:SarahKnauss1979.jpg.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 00:30, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Help with copyright status of Special:Contributions/Alhadramy_Alkendy's uploads

Hi folks, I was alerted to the questionable copyright status of many of the images uploaded by Special:Contributions/Alhadramy_Alkendy, but I'm not sure what the best way forward is so I'm asking here for help. I see two main problems: first, they've tagged everything as "own work" and "CC-BY-SA 4.0." Okay, that's a common enough mistake. The bigger problem is that I'm not sure what the actual copyright status of these flags is, nor whether they're copyright violations. I'm sure that many of the designs are old enough to be out of copyright, but I don't know how to approach the more recent flags, especially things like File:Emblem_of_the_Holy_Capital_(Makkah_City).png (which looks to my untrained eye like a fairly modern design). Would appreciate suggestions on how to proceed. GeneralNotability (talk) 21:08, 31 August 2020 (UTC) (please ping in replies, I'm not watching this noticeboard)

COM:DW#Maps used to argue that most maps are public domain

The summary in the guideline appears misleading. It is currently being used at Commons:Deletion requests/File:Haplogroups europe.png to argue that all maps must be public domain if the elements within in consist of boundaries and relief details. The map in question has no source, unknown author, unknown date, unknown country of publication and unknown copyright status.

More views would be welcome on this reading of COM:DW, as I feel the guideline itself is the problem as it is misleading and hard to interpret compared to the reality that modern maps are copyrighted and for Wikimedia Commons cannot be released as public domain. For example in COM:DW#Maps it says that copyright ineligible are maps that use standard cartographic conventions, like a survey map, which is bonkers advice, as literally all Ordnance Survey maps would be public domain using this guidance.

Thanks Fæ (talk) 08:30, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

@Fæ: That verbiage was added in this edit 00:53, 16 May 2010 (UTC) by Afil in reference to US law, and later extended to the rest of the world. I understand UK TOO is lower than US TOO, so the extension makes no sense.   — Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me 11:54, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
As this is actively misleading, I have gone ahead and boldly removed the section and created a guideline discussion about it at Commons_talk:Derivative_works#Maps_section. Hopefully nobody will just re-add it without investing time in writing it from scratch; it's not a question of simple amendments to update it. --Fæ (talk) 12:10, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
PD-map is fine, but your statement is a misquote, it actually states "because it consists entirely of information that is common property and contains no original authorship." It should not be used to justify the uploading of copyrighted maps, regardless of them looking 'simple'. The case for justifying that copyright claims are ignored for maps which include complex boundaries or complex relief detail, has not been made, and even under US law, I doubt that kite will fly without multiple difficult to understand exceptions. --Fæ (talk) 14:33, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
Fæ, I agree that if you create your map starting with copyrighted input data then the output will be derivative work and the {{PD-map}} will not apply. However it is very easy to pick public domain data as your starting point, since we have plenty of it. My quote was not from {{PD-map}} but from the text you wrote in your opening message. I should have made it more clear. --Jarekt (talk) 17:23, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Coordinates are OK regardless of whether they come from a PD or copyrighted source; they are simply facts and no creativity is involved in assigning them. Tracing streets on a grid from Google Maps is also OK, since a straight line is nothing more than an instruction to connect two coordinates; tracing curved roads may or may not be OK. However, more complicated things like coastlines are drawn subjectively and may generate copyright. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 14:23, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
This is false and misleading. If we allow any image of coordinates, then you can claim that an image of 1,000,000 coordinates joined by simple coloured polygons cannot have copyright. In this way any map, or indeed any frame from a film, would be public domain.
There are limits, and blindly quoting the Feist case, does not actually address the international interpretations of copyright that we have to encompass. --Fæ (talk) 14:29, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
Yes, joining them together creates copyright when there are enough coordinates. However, a mere mapping of 1,000,000 coordinates to the locations they are meant to represent is not copyrightable. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 15:18, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
Therefore there is no such thing as database rights. --Fæ (talk) 15:32, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
It depends on the country. Database rights do not exist in the US. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 15:33, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
So, in contradiction, you are allowing Ordnance Survey to copyright their data, which is literally just sets of coordinates? Hence, say, 1000 coordinate data points from the OS API which might define the polygon for a postcode area, is copyrighted, and is 1000x smaller than your initial response.
Starting to feel the DW guideline was misleading yet? --Fæ (talk) 15:36, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
No, I am not saying that "sweat of the brow" data is definitely copyrightable outside the US. I am saying that "sweat of the brow" data is definitely not copyrightable in the US, and the situation in other countries can vary. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 15:49, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
Nobody said anything about "sweat of the brow". Please stick to relevant and actually published copyright law. The OS publishes in the UK and correctly copyrights its maps and digital maps. At no point does the OS rely on extra-legal claims about "sweat of the brow" and neither should we.
For any later reader not getting the example, UK postcode maps may be relatively simple polygons, but are copyrighted in UK law with the OS being the official provider of postcode maps and data. Consequently you cannot see a free postcode map on Google maps, even though if you put in an address, it will tell you the postcode. --Fæ (talk) 15:58, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
Why do you keep on going back to the UK, when I am qualifying my statements by saying I am only speaking for the US? I am not making any claims about the copyrightability of maps in the UK. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 16:29, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
The first thing to realise in this discussion is that facts are not copyrightable. 1 coordinate is not copyrightable, 100 coordinates is not copyrightable, 1 googolplex coordinates are not copyrightable. There are database rights, but just like trademarks, pattents, and other restrictions, it is important to differentiate them from copyright. Adding a line between two adjacent coordinates is definitely not copyrightable, but if somebody can show that they were selecting which coordinates to link with a line, that is where copyright gets created. Now, since UK has been mentioned, this gets much more complicated, because sweat of the brow copyright is not anything "extra-legal" there, but it is the law. There is another more difficult question, for which I do not know the answer: Let's say I were to create something that has copyright protection in the UK, but is not protectable in the US; after that another person in the States would take my work and modify it. Would the courts in the US say that this is a derivative work, even though this is something that is not copyrightable in that country to start with? And I do not know the answer to that. ℺ Gone Postal (〠 ✉ • ✍ ⏿) 16:29, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
"Sweat of the brow" is UK copyright law? Link please, preferably to that part of the revised copyright act so we can all quote it exactly. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 18:44, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
Choice of jurisdiction is a thorny issue whenever multiple authors are involved (especially when the original author isn't aware of / doesn't consent to the derivative work). COM:FOP generally considers only the country where the object is located or the country where the photograph is taken (sometimes they are different!), rather than the nationality of the photographer, nationality of the architect, location where the sculpture was made, etc. But it is not an absolute rule, or you'd end up with silliness like Commons:Deletion requests/File:Aboriginal Flag 01.jpg. What jurisdiction do we use for maps? The country/countries featured in the map? The country of the creator? This is a moral issue rather than a legal one, since legally Commons is only required to ensure that files are free in the US. The whole "source country" bit used to have a legal meaning in US copyright law (see COM:HIRTLE), but nowadays copyright exists independent of country and so the question we need to answer first is: why do we require works to be free in the source country? Is it out of obligation to the author? Our treatment of FoP seems to contradict that interpretation. Is it to protect the most likely reusers of the work? That would explain both our normal FoP procedures, and why we don't allow FoP-Israel for the Australian aboriginal flag: because people were primarily using it as a loophole to illustrate Wikipedia articles on the flag rather than as an illustration of the zoo exhibit. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:18, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
For what it's worth, Ets-Hokin v. Skyy Spirits, Inc., 225 F.3d 1068 (9th Cir. 2000) held that in order to count as a derivative work under U.S. law, the underlying work must be eligible for copyright. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 20:03, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

US Bureau of Mines, 1938

Would a map of coal fields published in 1938 by the United States Bureau of Mines be public domain? - TimDWilliamson speak

  • Some US Federal agencies publish material, like research papers, that they paid for, but where the authors were academics, paid by a research grant, or contracted out to a think tank. It is my understanding that it doesn't matter if they sponsored the research on which the paper, or map, summarizes. Professors paid for by a research grant aren't "employees". So I think their work is not public domain. Geo Swan (talk) 23:27, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
If it was released as such, there's no copyright notice on it, so it went into the public domain immediately. There's really no chance that it wasn't PD-USGov as well.--Prosfilaes (talk) 09:23, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Letter from the White House

My family was provided with a letter from the White House (President Reagan) honoring the 100th anniversary of a family member's birth. I would like to link this to my family members' Wiki page and my question is: What is the appropriate copyright (if any) citation that I should use.

Use {{PD-USGov-POTUS}}. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:02, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Don't trust White House publicists as to what rights you have to repubish the letter. One of the most famous photos of 2011 showed President Obama, and senior members of his cabinet, sitting in the situation room, with their aides in the background, listening to the SEAL team raid Osama bin Laden's hideout. It was taken by an official photographer, so it was public domain.
  • A small newspaper, whose readership were all members of an offshoot of Judiasm which prohibited pictures of women, retouched the image, airbrushing out Hilary Clinton, and the one female aide in the background. The retouched image stirred some controversy. White House publicists weighed in, and issued what looked like legal threats to that small Jewish newspaper, claiming they had violated some kind of agreement.
  • The threats from the White House publicists struck me as ugly bullying. I thought that since it was a public domain image the White House couldn't complain if someone drew mustaches on everyone's faces, or devil horns. Geo Swan (talk) 18:58, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
  • That's not how it works; PD means nobody claims copyright, not that reuse is a free-for-all. Under US law (which is what we're talking about here) publicity rights restricting commercial reuse and modification of an image of recognizable people don't stop just because the image is in the public domain. Commons and the rest of the WMF ecosystem aren't affected because we're non-commerical and (theoretically) using every image for a genuine educational purpose, but the moment it appears in something commercial like a newspaper, the subjects of that photo can complain about what you do with it, even if there's no copyright on the photo. There's a fairly good briefing note on the intersection of PD and personality rights in US law here. — iridescent 07:22, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
Within this correct issue of personality rights, one should judge whether the derived works cause harm or damage the reputation of the person.
For extremely well known public figures, it's invariably fine to create parody, but not attacks on the person like fake porn images, even for someone like Trump.
Lastly this is Commons, user created fluff, like Trump with a badly drawn on moustache, are likely to be deleted per COM:HOST. --Fæ (talk) 08:58, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
Iridescent thanks for the link to http://www.publicdomainsherpa.com/rights-of-publicity-and-privacy.html . I don't think it is relevant to my specific White House exxample, because it says:
While copyright is a federally protected right under title 17 of the United States Code, neither privacy nor publicity rights are the subject of federal law. Publicity and privacy rights are the subject of state laws, and the laws vary from state to state.
Washington DC, where the White House is located, is Federal territory, so no state laws, thus no personality rights.
So, I still think the 2011 White House publicists were wrong to bully the Jewish newspaper for its airbrushing. Geo Swan (talk) 14:28, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
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