User talk:Bgreenelewis

Welcome to Wikimedia Commons, Bgreenelewis!

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-- Wikimedia Commons Welcome (talk) 00:42, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Copyright status of the photo of Herbert L. Lewis

Hello Bgreenelewis, and welcome to Wikimedia Commons!

I see that you uploaded two versions of a photo of Herbert L. Lewis, and you tagged them as your own work. That seems a little unlikely, given that you would have to be well over 100 to have taken the photo back then. Wikimedia Commons tries very hard to determine the actual copyright status of photographs, and so I was wondering if you know anything about the source and photographer of the photo.

There are a few possible situations I can see:

• If you did take the photo yourself, then what's there now is fine; you can release it.
• If you know that the photo was published somewhere shortly after it was taken, any time before 1926, then it's public domain for the reason in {{PD-US-expired}}
• If the photo wasn't published anywhere before 2003 but the photographer died before 1951, it's public domain for the reason in {{PD-US-unpublished}}
• If neither of the above two apply, but you are the heir of the photographer, you can license it under {{Cc-by-sa-4.0-heirs}} (or something else in Category:License tags for transferred copyright if you want)

Even if none of the above four apply, and there's no other reason to believe that the photograph is in the public domain or freely licensed, it's okay to use a low-resolution copy on English Wikipedia as fair-use, as long as the draft you're working on is accepted as a full article.

TL; DR: What do you know about who took the photo and where, if anywhere, it was published? That might affect whether Wikimedia Commons is legally able to keep it.

Thanks, Vahurzpu (talk) 04:22, 18 January 2021 (UTC)