User talk:Mateusz Konieczny
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Fortepan[edit]
Dear Mateusz, you nominated a few Fortepan pictures for deletion, and I responded on the individual nomination pages because each cases are somewhat different. But I think you have a false impression about this private nonprofit archive which is quite rightly regarded as a national treasure in Hungary. The claim that they "routinely lie about licences" is certainly untrue but it is true that there are a few cases when their licence is not applicable on the Commons (eg. the photos from the newspaper Magyar Rendőr is probably one such case). Mistakes were certainly made in the past 12 years of its existence but generally they publish photographs donated by the photographers themselves or their heirs or in cooperation with large public archives (museums, the Public Archive of Budapest etc.) in a perfectly legal way and making them public domain after digitalization. It's a great resource, and launching a campaign to remove 160.000 photos from the Commons would be a big mistake because the large majority of them is surely not problematic at all. Zello (talk) 15:35, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Zello: Category:Images from Fortepan has clear "Do not blindly accept the boilerplate license on fortepan.hu. Fortepan can only issue a CC-BY-SA-3.0 license for images whose copyright it actually owns, but the rights to many images on fortepan.hu in reality belong to someone else. Unless the original copyright owner or their heirs have explicitly stated that they used to own the copyright and they have transferred the image rights to fortepan.hu, you should not assume that the blanket CC-BY-SA-3.0 license is valid. For really old imagery (PMA+70, basically more than 100 years old) you can use a PD-expired license. For background and details see this page. Summary: every image should be checked individually.".
- If that warning is wrong - then please discuss it with other contributors. If I misunderstood it - then deletion requests will be closed as keep (that is why I opened it just for few test cases, not for all Fortepan images where there is no evidence of verifying their claims)
- "you should prove individually that you have reasonable doubts" - in this case I believe that "No evidence that CC-BY-SA-3.0 by Fortepan is applicable" is sufficient Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 23:04, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
- "Do not blindly accept the boilerplate license on fortepan.hu" is quite different from "they lie routinely and always assume that the image should be deleted". It means that there are cases when the licence is not acceptable here eg. when the donor was unknown and named as "Fortepan" (instead of a named private donor); or when the photo comes from the digitalized archive of a newspaper (where the photographer probably retained their rights). But in the great majority of the cases the donors are named private persons, museums, companies etc. who owned the copyright and transferred it. You based all your deletion request on this claim that "they lie", and even proposed for deletion images which were published under clear and legal cooperation between Fortepan and institutions. Or a photograph when the copyright owner himself proudly announced his cooperation with Fortepan on his blog (while obviously the majority of donors do not do this). If these will be deleted, that means Fortepan will be banned from the Commons in its entirety. I think this can be one of the biggest loss of valuable images Commons suffered in recent years. Zello (talk) 06:36, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- "Do not blindly accept the boilerplate license on fortepan.hu" to me seems to mean "their licensing claims are often false and they are not trustworthy" - in other words, they lie routinely. If I am wrong then I expect that my deletion requests will be refused and it would mean that this warning should be clarified. To explain why I did this: I value Commons highly as it is fairly safe to use images found here. I would prefer to keep it this way, and as I understand Fortepan licensing claims are in many case simply false, so every single image should have confirmation/check - and "Fortepan claims that it is CC licensed" is NOT sufficient Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 09:01, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- I think this is truly a misunderstanding in the way as you formulated. I absolutely agree that Commons should be a fairly safe depository of PD images. Fortepan has the same goal, and they are basically compatible with each other. They are a respected instition, who were awarded the Pro Urbe medal by the Mayor of Budapest, and established partnerships with several important cultural institutions. Now they are official partners of the state-funded Robert Capa Centre of Hungarian Photography. The problem is not that they are "lying routinely", they don't do this. But sometimes they are saving and publishing "found" images where there is no information about the original photographer eg. during junk clearances or when they digitalized the archive of a newspaper which was closed down and its unclear who owns the copyright. In this way they were saving endangered images but the results are not acceptible here on Commons (yet - in the end they will PD probably a few decades later). But these problems regard only a small percent of a great archive, about 5-10 %, and you can safely assume them from the "Donor" label.Zello (talk) 10:16, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- "But sometimes they are saving and publishing "found" images where there is no information about the original photographer eg. during junk clearances or when they digitalized the archive of a newspaper which was closed down and its unclear who owns the copyright. (...) small percent of a great archive, about 5-10 %" - which license info they show in such cases? Is there a clear indication that copyright is unclear? (photo versions of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware ) Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 11:12, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- The found pictures were indicated with "Fortepan" as donor, these are not acceptible (except if they are simply old enough to be PD or PD-Hu-unkown - pre-1927/pre-1943). When the donor is "Magyar Rendőr" this shows the above mentioned newspaper where the copyright situation was unclear. (The reason of this is that the abandoned archive of the Hungarian Police magazine was saved by a famous photographer in 1993, and this photographer donated the negatives to the Museum of Photography and the digital copies to Fortepan. People argue that the photographer did not became the copyright owner by saving the images, and there can be some theoretical copyright owner who inherited the rights of the state funded police magazine and/or the individual photographers retained them after it was closed down - although no one has appeared with such claims. For me that's a fairly long shot but anyway...) I guess 1945 "Vörös Hadsereg" (Soviet Red Army) propaganda photographs are also not PD. Probably there are a few other cases which require caution, based on the given donor information, and many of them were hopefully never uploaded on the Commons. Named private donors (photographers or heirs), public institutions, big company archives (UVATERV, FŐFOTO, FŐMTERV etc.) are safe bets because these pictures were digitalized and donated in an orderly way, and constitute the large majority of the photographs. Another fairly typical problem that many times the photographers are named as donors instead of their heirs, the real donors (like the Tamás Konok picture you nominated), this comes from a deficiency in the structure of their old homepage which made no distinction between creators and donors. This was already - at least partially - corrected a few years ago but it should be corrected here on Commons manually one by one. Still no reason to delete the legal pictures, only an imperfection that can be eliminated easily as Wikipedia is always a work in progress. There are instances when the donors chose to remain anonymous using only a nickname (which is not a problem per se, I think) or when people donated pictures whose creator was unknown to them (i.e. not his/her father or mother but probably a photograph found among the family heirlooms). I would not delete these because I'm fairly sure that would be an overreaction but personally I would not upload them either. Zello (talk) 11:57, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- So, in short - with specific donor given it is possible to assume that license is not fraudalent? How "they digitalized the archive of a newspaper which was closed down and its unclear who owns the copyright" images are handled? Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 15:20, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- "People argue that the photographer did not became the copyright owner by saving the images, and there can be some theoretical copyright owner who inherited the rights of the state funded police magazine and/or the individual photographers retained them after it was closed down" - yes, copyright law is dumb as fuck in many cases. And you do not become copyright owner by obtaining or saving a physical copy. And in such case "Fortepan" has no legal rights whatsoever to license this files as CC. But as I understand then do it anyway, right? Instead of placing clear "copyright owner unknown, abandoware photo". Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 15:23, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- Yes, when a specific donor given it is absolutely reasonable to assume that license is valid, that's why I objected the nominations you proposed. As for the c. 3000 Magyar Rendőr images: they were uploaded to the Commons under CC licence which was theoretically wrong, I think, for the given reason. From their perspective, Fortepan did the right thing, they saved and published the images, and nobody objected this or ever will. The photographs were all deleted here in 2017 after a long debate which was probably a good decision but it is one of the main reasons why the instruction proposes caution with Fortepan images. But the lesson of this story is not that Fortepan is fraudulent or lying but that they are doing great work in a less strict environment and their aim is saving endangered photography and making it accessible. In most cases what they do is absolutely compatible with Commons, and in a few cases it was not. Zello (talk) 15:45, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- "From their perspective, Fortepan did the right thing, they saved and published the images" - for that parts I agree with them. But putting fraudulent CC license on images where they had no copyright to them was lying (or incompetence and confusion) Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 17:55, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- I think they simply accepted that the person who saved the archive had the right to make it PD, especially in the absence of any other claimant and given the fact that the magazine was also published by a public body (i.e. the Police) during socialism. Most probably the "copyright owner" is the Hungarian state in this case which has no intention to oppose the publication on Fortepan. (The unnamed photographers were employees, and making photos was their daily job. Hungarian laws state that in that case the copyright is owned by the employer.) The whole debate is quite theoretical, and I think Commons was the only place where it was deemed problematic.Zello (talk) 18:48, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- ""copyright owner" is the Hungarian state in this case which has no intention to oppose the publication on Fortepan" - this does not change that Fortepan has no copyright and is not allowed to release this works under CC (unless Hungarian state works are in PD like in USA), if they did so then they did it incorrectly and fraudulently. Making their other copyright claims more dubious. And they could simply release it as "licensing stuck, copyright makes no sense here, we are releasing it". Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 19:04, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- The images were deleted on Commons as per the above reasoning. It still quite wild to claim that "every other copyright claim is dubious" and "they lie routinely", and based on this to propose the mass deletion of everything (including tens of thousands of obviously legal images donated by photographers, heirs and public bodies). I'm quite sure that with the same scrutiny a huge amount of pictures from museums and libraries can be also deleted because many of them claim copyright ownership for images that they only collected and not created. In fact they are doing this more routinely and with much less explanation and public data than Fortepan.Zello (talk) 19:22, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Zello: "because many of them claim copyright ownership for images that they only collected and not created" - in many case we ignore this kind of fraud and proceed with Template:PD-old - if there are Fortepan images where it is clearly applying without real doubt it is an option. Though if you are aware of images under copyright, falsely claimed by museums and libraries as freely licensed - then please share this cases so I can nominate it for deletion Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 09:47, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
- The images were deleted on Commons as per the above reasoning. It still quite wild to claim that "every other copyright claim is dubious" and "they lie routinely", and based on this to propose the mass deletion of everything (including tens of thousands of obviously legal images donated by photographers, heirs and public bodies). I'm quite sure that with the same scrutiny a huge amount of pictures from museums and libraries can be also deleted because many of them claim copyright ownership for images that they only collected and not created. In fact they are doing this more routinely and with much less explanation and public data than Fortepan.Zello (talk) 19:22, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- ""copyright owner" is the Hungarian state in this case which has no intention to oppose the publication on Fortepan" - this does not change that Fortepan has no copyright and is not allowed to release this works under CC (unless Hungarian state works are in PD like in USA), if they did so then they did it incorrectly and fraudulently. Making their other copyright claims more dubious. And they could simply release it as "licensing stuck, copyright makes no sense here, we are releasing it". Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 19:04, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- I think they simply accepted that the person who saved the archive had the right to make it PD, especially in the absence of any other claimant and given the fact that the magazine was also published by a public body (i.e. the Police) during socialism. Most probably the "copyright owner" is the Hungarian state in this case which has no intention to oppose the publication on Fortepan. (The unnamed photographers were employees, and making photos was their daily job. Hungarian laws state that in that case the copyright is owned by the employer.) The whole debate is quite theoretical, and I think Commons was the only place where it was deemed problematic.Zello (talk) 18:48, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- "From their perspective, Fortepan did the right thing, they saved and published the images" - for that parts I agree with them. But putting fraudulent CC license on images where they had no copyright to them was lying (or incompetence and confusion) Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 17:55, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- Yes, when a specific donor given it is absolutely reasonable to assume that license is valid, that's why I objected the nominations you proposed. As for the c. 3000 Magyar Rendőr images: they were uploaded to the Commons under CC licence which was theoretically wrong, I think, for the given reason. From their perspective, Fortepan did the right thing, they saved and published the images, and nobody objected this or ever will. The photographs were all deleted here in 2017 after a long debate which was probably a good decision but it is one of the main reasons why the instruction proposes caution with Fortepan images. But the lesson of this story is not that Fortepan is fraudulent or lying but that they are doing great work in a less strict environment and their aim is saving endangered photography and making it accessible. In most cases what they do is absolutely compatible with Commons, and in a few cases it was not. Zello (talk) 15:45, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- The found pictures were indicated with "Fortepan" as donor, these are not acceptible (except if they are simply old enough to be PD or PD-Hu-unkown - pre-1927/pre-1943). When the donor is "Magyar Rendőr" this shows the above mentioned newspaper where the copyright situation was unclear. (The reason of this is that the abandoned archive of the Hungarian Police magazine was saved by a famous photographer in 1993, and this photographer donated the negatives to the Museum of Photography and the digital copies to Fortepan. People argue that the photographer did not became the copyright owner by saving the images, and there can be some theoretical copyright owner who inherited the rights of the state funded police magazine and/or the individual photographers retained them after it was closed down - although no one has appeared with such claims. For me that's a fairly long shot but anyway...) I guess 1945 "Vörös Hadsereg" (Soviet Red Army) propaganda photographs are also not PD. Probably there are a few other cases which require caution, based on the given donor information, and many of them were hopefully never uploaded on the Commons. Named private donors (photographers or heirs), public institutions, big company archives (UVATERV, FŐFOTO, FŐMTERV etc.) are safe bets because these pictures were digitalized and donated in an orderly way, and constitute the large majority of the photographs. Another fairly typical problem that many times the photographers are named as donors instead of their heirs, the real donors (like the Tamás Konok picture you nominated), this comes from a deficiency in the structure of their old homepage which made no distinction between creators and donors. This was already - at least partially - corrected a few years ago but it should be corrected here on Commons manually one by one. Still no reason to delete the legal pictures, only an imperfection that can be eliminated easily as Wikipedia is always a work in progress. There are instances when the donors chose to remain anonymous using only a nickname (which is not a problem per se, I think) or when people donated pictures whose creator was unknown to them (i.e. not his/her father or mother but probably a photograph found among the family heirlooms). I would not delete these because I'm fairly sure that would be an overreaction but personally I would not upload them either. Zello (talk) 11:57, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- "But sometimes they are saving and publishing "found" images where there is no information about the original photographer eg. during junk clearances or when they digitalized the archive of a newspaper which was closed down and its unclear who owns the copyright. (...) small percent of a great archive, about 5-10 %" - which license info they show in such cases? Is there a clear indication that copyright is unclear? (photo versions of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware ) Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 11:12, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- I think this is truly a misunderstanding in the way as you formulated. I absolutely agree that Commons should be a fairly safe depository of PD images. Fortepan has the same goal, and they are basically compatible with each other. They are a respected instition, who were awarded the Pro Urbe medal by the Mayor of Budapest, and established partnerships with several important cultural institutions. Now they are official partners of the state-funded Robert Capa Centre of Hungarian Photography. The problem is not that they are "lying routinely", they don't do this. But sometimes they are saving and publishing "found" images where there is no information about the original photographer eg. during junk clearances or when they digitalized the archive of a newspaper which was closed down and its unclear who owns the copyright. In this way they were saving endangered images but the results are not acceptible here on Commons (yet - in the end they will PD probably a few decades later). But these problems regard only a small percent of a great archive, about 5-10 %, and you can safely assume them from the "Donor" label.Zello (talk) 10:16, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- "Do not blindly accept the boilerplate license on fortepan.hu" to me seems to mean "their licensing claims are often false and they are not trustworthy" - in other words, they lie routinely. If I am wrong then I expect that my deletion requests will be refused and it would mean that this warning should be clarified. To explain why I did this: I value Commons highly as it is fairly safe to use images found here. I would prefer to keep it this way, and as I understand Fortepan licensing claims are in many case simply false, so every single image should have confirmation/check - and "Fortepan claims that it is CC licensed" is NOT sufficient Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 09:01, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- "Do not blindly accept the boilerplate license on fortepan.hu" is quite different from "they lie routinely and always assume that the image should be deleted". It means that there are cases when the licence is not acceptable here eg. when the donor was unknown and named as "Fortepan" (instead of a named private donor); or when the photo comes from the digitalized archive of a newspaper (where the photographer probably retained their rights). But in the great majority of the cases the donors are named private persons, museums, companies etc. who owned the copyright and transferred it. You based all your deletion request on this claim that "they lie", and even proposed for deletion images which were published under clear and legal cooperation between Fortepan and institutions. Or a photograph when the copyright owner himself proudly announced his cooperation with Fortepan on his blog (while obviously the majority of donors do not do this). If these will be deleted, that means Fortepan will be banned from the Commons in its entirety. I think this can be one of the biggest loss of valuable images Commons suffered in recent years. Zello (talk) 06:36, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
Congratulations, dear license reviewer[edit]
Hi Mateusz Konieczny, thanks for your request for license reviewer status. The request has been closed as successful, and you've been added to the list of reviewers. You can now start reviewing files – please see Commons:License review and Commons:Flickr files if you haven't done so already. We also have a guide how to detect copyright violations. Potential backlogs include Flickr review and files from other sources. You can enable the LicenseReview gadget from Preferences.
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Please feel free to join us on IRC: #wikimedia-commons webchat on irc.libera.chat. You can also add {{User license reviewer}} to your user page if you wish. Thank you for your contributions on Commons! --─ The Aafī (talk) 14:16, 25 September 2022 (UTC)