File talk:Old Time Swimming Photograph.jpg
 | This file was nominated for deletion on 23 August 2012 but was kept. If you are thinking about re-nominating it for deletion, please read that discussion first. |
PD status
[edit]
The reason we must ask for sourcing is that the original publication details are necessary to prove it is in the public domain. If the photograph was taken in 1915, then the following is true:
- If it was published before 1964 without renewing its copyright, it is PD.
- If it was published before March 1989 without a copyright notice, it is PD.
- If it was published between March 1989 and 2002, it is non-free until at least 2047.
- If it was published after 2003 (i.e., on Wikipedia for the first time), then its status depends on who took the image or if it is anonymous.
Magog the Ogre (talk) (contribs) 04:24, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
- It is quite obvious that the image is a scanned copy of a personal or family snapshot. Yes, it is not outside of the realm of the possible (but incredibly unlikely) that someone took a published pictured and manipulated it in such a way as to make it appear to be that, but to go there is to enter the realm of conspiracy theorists, and we are allowed to use common sense in evaluating our images, and not simply tick off boxes in a predefined and limited list.
That the people in the image are wearing pre-1923 bathing suits is undeniable, that the layout and setup of the shot is inherently non-professional is apparent, that the state of the image indicates a great amount of wear and deterioration is obvious, that the scanning was done haphazardly without too much concern for the image to be straight can be seen by anyone. All of these factors, taken together, speak loudly for the image to be taken for what it appears to be: a family photograph that someone unearthed somewhere and scanned and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.
Let's not get too hung up on legal techicalities, or the minutia of policy at the expense of an image for which one can almost totally guarantee that there will be no legal exposure about -- no one is going to claim copyright, no one is going to find that it's been published before, no one's going to sue the WMF over this image. And that's because the odds are infinitesimally small that this isn't what it seems to be. Let's use our common sense and not edit like robots -- we are human, and can make human evaluations outside the box every once in a while. Beyond My Ken (talk) 06:10, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
