File talk:Rainier Beach - Big Tree Club House circa 1905.jpg

Licensing

The following exchange is copied from Commons talk:Licensing:

I've been uploading images that are licensed cc-by-2.0 by the Seattle Municipal Archives. On most of what I've been interested in (e.g. Department of Engineering photos of streets and buildings, city-issued brochures), it is pretty clear that the Archives have a right to release it: these would have been work for hire, paid for by a department of the city government. I'm wondering about http://www.flickr.com/photos/seattlemunicipalarchives/3079673973/in/set-72157609278173818/, though, and hoping to hear others' opinion before I upload. They don't really indicate who took the picture, and Rainier Beach was not yet part of Seattle at the time this was taken, so it was clearly not done for the City. The picture was taken in 1905, but there is no indication that it was published before the magic date of 1923.

Now, if the picture was taken for the Rainier Beach gov't of the time, the City of Seattle would inherit the rights and could release them, but the Erlyn Jensen Rainier Beach Collection, to which this is credited, appears to be a privately donated archive. A lot of it is newspaper clippings and the like, so clearly not all of the materials were ones that were made by people who left Erlyn Jensen as their heir. Furthermore, I can't find any explicit indication online anywhere of what rights were granted when this collection was donated.

The Seattle Municipal Archives seem to be confident enough that they have the rights to this to release them under cc-by-2.0 (and, for what it's worth, they seem usually to slap an "all rights reserved" on things they post online for which they clearly can't grant rights: e.g. a post-1923 newspaper clipping, menu, etc.) Should I trust their confidence & upload the image to Commons, citing their cc-by-2.0 release, or should I err on the side of caution and not upload? - Jmabel ! talk 00:26, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

This is a really difficult one. In the past I often assumed that images are published close to the date they're taken, but in a case where an image is taken for a private archive, there's reason to doubt this. As soon as it's over 120 years old, in 2025, {{PD-US-unpublished}} will be sufficient. Meanwhile, you either need to obtain author information, or you need to determine whether any copyright in the materials was transferred to the Archives. I recommend contacting the Archives directly regarding the terms of the acquisition (hopefully, they won't ignore you), and/or contacting the keepers of the original collection to get more data about the image. Dcoetzee (talk) 02:26, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

If it is a print, that means it was published (unless they also own the negative). But their info page says their original is a print, and they don't have the negative. I would guess it is PD-US, which is why they probably felt safe to mark it cc-by (since they can't mark it PD). Carl Lindberg (talk) 03:10, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

End copied from Commons talk:Licensing