User talk:Aafi

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ticket:2024092410003588

Dear Aafi, I'm writing to address a recent issue involving a photo that was mistakenly removed from Wikimedia Commons out of concern for its license: File:Virginio Simonelli shot by Marco Melfi.jpg. It is a photo of Italian singer-songwriter Virginio Simonelli shot by the Italian photographer Marco Melfi, and also uploaded on Wikimedia by Marco himself.

I've been updating Virginio's Wikipedia for many years, as a fan. One day, I complimented Marco Melfi on a photoshoot he did of Virginio and I mentioned that his Wikipedia page has a very old picture, the one that appears now on the page. Marco saw that very low quality photo, and disliked it so much that he offered to upload one of his photos as replacement. He considered it a homage, and he did so immediately. After that, I happily used his beautiful photo on Virginio's Wiki page. Despite Marco flagging the file as 'his own work', it still got tagged as missing permission by Gbawden, back on September 25th. I hadn't noticed that, but Marco immediately contacted me for help, because when user Gbawden did that, Marco received an automatic mail from Wikimedia that asked him to confirm his identity by sending a mail to the OTRS/VRT-volunteers. I told him he should send the email and then wait for your reply. Now on the file page I've seen that there is a warning, about the e-mail not having sufficient info to get the photo's license verified. I would like to know what was the problem in Marco's e-mail, so I can explain to him in Italian what he should write in a new one. Marco only speaks job-related intermediate English and does not understand the full Wikipedia system, and that is why I imagine he wrote an email not having enough info, so I'm trying to help him figure it out. It's a shame to lose such a beautiful photo. Thanks for the cooperation! Ravenlions (talk) 17:47, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Ravenlions, I'm currently not on the system so I won't be able to check the ticket. However I have a few observations:

1. We'd need a VRT permission release from the photographer, not from subject.
2. As copyright is usually held by the photographer. Here, Marco is the subject of the image. So very unlikely that he is the photographer himself/or owns the rights over copyright.
3. If the subject claims to be the copyrights owner (as it appears here), they'd need to support their claim with a declaration (or similar) or an agreement they might've had with the photographer on the transfer of the copyright.
4. Or a simple way would be, to engage the photographer in the email, and ask them to send the release.

If they help the VRT volunteers with this, the permissions would be approved. Let me know if there's something else I can help with. Kind regards, ─ Aafī on Mobile ^(talk) 18:24, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Wait, I think you misunderstood. Marco is the photographer. Not the subject of the photo. And Marco uploaded the photo and sent you guys the email. Ravenlions (talk) 19:21, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

@Ravenlions: I'm sorry. I was close to sleeping and took the message in another context. I just had a look at the ticket. In the previous responses it was asked that the permission needs to be explict: like mention of the license under which the they release the image. It was responded with "Buongiorno, Confermo che la foto in oggetto “Virginio Simonelli” è di mia proprietà e cedo gratuitamente i diritti per l’utilizzo." - which per Google Translate for me, is entirely make it PD, as I don't know this language, I can't comment if the element I'm looking at is missing/there and would leave it to other VRT agents, but it appears fine to me. Can you help interpret this statement, as in response to, "For images to be hosted on Wikimedia Commons, they require the copyright holder to provide a release under a specific free license (such as the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0), which allows anyone to use them for any purpose, including commercial usage and derivative works." If you can help here, I can drop a note in the ticket. _Regards, Aafi ^(talk) 06:05, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

No problem! And yes, I think I can help. Here's a breakdown of what Marco's Italian response means: "Good morning, I confirm that the photo in question “Virginio Simonelli” is my property and I freely grant the rights for its use." the 'freely' could also be translated as 'free of charge', so he wanted to say he is the copyright holder and is willing to allow others to use the photo as they wish without having to pay for a license. He did not mention the public domain, but I think it is understandable that he meant that. If you look at the file's page, indeed, the license that Marco first flagged when he uploaded the file was "Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication." Thanks for the help! Ravenlions (talk) 14:21, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Redundand heading replacement

Hi Aafi, after finally receiving my bot flag, i'm now able to replace the redundand headings as requested. I'm sorry about the delay, but in some hours the work should be done. FlaschBot2 (talk) 17:37, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you @Fl.schmitt. _Regards, Aafi ^(talk) 09:11, 11 October 2024 (UTC)