Commons talk:WikiProject Postcards

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Copyright for post cards published in the countries of the EU before 1929

If I understand the legal situation right, the combination of the licence tags "PD-anon-70-EU" and "PD-US-expired" (PD-two|PD-anon-70-EU|PD-US-expired) could work for most post cards from the countries of the EU from before 1929.

Files on Commons have to be PD in the US and in the source country:

• PD in the US, because postcards are by definition published, so every postcard from before 1929 is PD in the US.
  
• PD in the source countries (EU countries) because for most postcards the name of the author (the photographer of the scene if speaking of photo postcards) is not known and was never known in the 70 years after first publication (at the longest 1999), as for most post card publishing houses there is no scientific literature or anybody that ever tried to identify the photographers. This would not apply to those postcards that give the name of the photographer on the back.
  

This would also consider the fact that we have de facto thousands of uploaded post cards just using "PD-old" that are from 1900s to 1910s. Carl Ha (talk) 19:40, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

I am not a lawyer, but it look logical correct. What is your interrest? Do you want relabel all this postcards with a new licence tag? Also many postcards had the attribut "Author unkown". But if you take a closer look at the image you found often something "Photograph: Max Miller" or a company name. --sk (talk) 06:35, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

My interest is to find a proper licence that keeps post cards on Commons safe from deletion, because most postcards on Commons have no proper licence and could be easily deleted if somebody nominates them for deletion. I will not take the task to relabel all the thousands of postcards on Commons, but rather want to find proper licences for my own uploads, as it is quite a lot of work to scan postcards. Therefore I want to be sure they will stay here as files. I wanted to share it because maybe then other users feel encouraged to upload their collection if there is a safe way to do it without copyright violation. I agree that some postcards have photographers names, but that is rather rare. If they only have the company name, that should count as "anonymous" as I understand. Carl Ha (talk) 17:11, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

The "proper" license really depends on where the postcard was first published and what the copyright laws of that country are. So there isn't really a general rule that applies to all postcards like you seem to want there to be. I'm sure I agree that "most postcards on Commons have no proper license" either. Certainly some licenses could be more specific, but that doesn't necessarily make how they are currently licensed incorrect either. But then it's not like we can or second guess licenses uploaders use in any particular instance since they would have access to information at the time that we don't in hind-sight. So I'd say, it's probably best to leave things as they are baring fixing clear errors, figure out what the best license for your uploads is, and leave it at that. If some postcards get deleted in the process then whatever. That's just the cost of doing business on here. Although it shouldn't happen if you use the proper license to begin with. Know one is out to delete images that are properly licensed. So just follow the guidelines and there shouldn't be an issue. --Adamant1 (talk) 08:29, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Unkown logo

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On this two postcards is a unkown logo on the left upper corner. A circle with 3 white areas. Looks like a flower. Did someone know the company of this logo? Is this maybe Haenlein Brothers? --sk (talk) 07:30, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

It is a printer mark. See also www.chicagopostcardmuseum.org. --sk (talk) 12:18, 8 May 2024 (UTC)