User talk:Marchjuly/Archives/2016/August

Peter Ewart files

Hi Marchjuly, The photo Peter Ewart Ed Pryor portrait.jpg that was deleted by Wikipedia editors is owned by Linda Ewart. She has published it on her own website for over 10 years. You may view it here http://peterewart.com/bio.php?ch=intro

The photo of the poster slated for deletion Peter Ewart CP poster Big Game.jpg is also on that website with permission from CP for use on informational publications such as her website and Wikipedia. See http://peterewart.com/ewart-corporate-artwork.php

Linda Ewart has asked me to update the information and images in this article.

Thank you for any guidance. I find the copyright/licensing information pages you directed me to very hard to decipher.

Jools — Preceding unsigned comment added by JoolsA (talk • contribs) 00:42, 08 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi JoolsA. Thank you for the message. English Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons are both operated by the WMF, but they have some different rules when it comes to image files. Commons only accepts files which can be verified to be unequivocally freely licensed or in the public domain; Wikipedia, on the other hand, does allow certain copyrighted content to be uploaded as non-free content. So, sometimes something uploaded to Wikipedia is OK to be moved to Commons and sometimes it is not.

Lots of images are posted online by people, but that does not necessarily mean the individual who posted the posted or the website where the photo can be seen holds the copyright over the image. Generally, the copyright of a photo taken belongs to the photographer who took the photo, not the subject of the photo. However, if the photo was taken professionally and the right were then transferred to or purchased by Peter Ewart, then I believe those rights would transfer to his estate upon his death. So, if Linda Ewart took the photo herself, she is the copyright holder. She then has the ability to decide whether she wants to freely license the photo and upload it to Wikipedia Commons. Since she's been using it on her website for a number of years, all she needs to do is follow the instructions at COM:OTRS#Licensing images: when do I contact OTRS? She has basically two options: (1) She can email a "Declaration of Consent" to Commons OTRS at permissions-commons@wikimedia.org which explicitly says that she is the copyright holder and agrees to freely license the photo; or (2) She can post a Creative Common license compatible with Commons on her website for the photo which says that she agrees to freely license it as explained here. Please note that "freely licensed" means that anyone can download and re-use the photo in anyway (including commercially) without needing the permission of copyright holder. If Ms. Ewart is not the person who took the photo and is not the copyright holder, then she will need to get whomever that person is to agree to freely license the photo. She can do this by following the instructions in COM:OTRS#If you are NOT the copyright holder. Since you apparently are neither the copyright holder nor the photographer, you also need to follow the instructions in "If you are NOT the copyright holder".

As for the "Big Game" poster, if you look at en:File:Peter Ewart CP poster Big Game.jpg, you see that another editor Asclepias has added licensing which says the image is in the public domain. This basically means the image is not considered to be under copyright protection and can be freely used by anyone as they like. Because of this I have asked Taivo, the administrator who deleted the Commons version, to check the to see if the English Wikipedia licensing is also acceptable for Commons. If it is, Taivo will likely restore the deleted Commons' file and add the appropriate licensing.

Finally one last thing about Wikipedia. You wrote Linda Ewart has asked me to update the information and images in this article in your above post. If that's the case, then you likely have what Wikipedia refers to as a conflict of interest when it comes to the Peter Ewart article, so I suggest you take a look at Wikipedia's plain and simply conflict of interest guide for reference. COI editing is not something expressly prohibited by Wikipedia, but it is something highly discouraged and the Wikipedia community has placed certain restrictions on the types of edits COI editors can make. Wikipedia articles are not owned by anyone in particular, including the subjects they are written about or anyone closely connected (such as in this case a family member) to the subject of an article. Ms. Ewart has complete editorial control over what goes on her own website, but she has no final say at all as to what goes into the Wikipedia article written about her father. What this means is that she (or you on her behalf) may proposes changes be made (such as replacing/adding an image) on the article's talk page, but a consensus of editors may decide that such changes should not be made. So, you both should keep this in mind when it comes to editing/revising the content of the Wikipedia article. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:46, 8 August 2016 (UTC)