Commons:Deletion requests/File:Admiralty Arch (14726933558).jpg

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File:Admiralty Arch (14726933558).jpg

I suppose the top image could still be in copyright in the UK. It's credited to w:Aerofilms so e.g., if it was taken by w:Claude Grahame-White it would still be under copyright. It can also be found at [1], where it's for sale commercially, although I wouldn't necessarily expect this organisation to reveal if it was actually public domain. --ghouston (talk) 12:36, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

 Keep I think. There is no photographer listed -- that would typically be a different person than the pilot anyways. There is a bit of history on the company here; they note that pilots were hired as commissions came in. Claude Friese-Greene (died 1943) is pictured as a photographer there. On the other hand, it does say that Francis Lewis Wills (died 1980 and a co-founder) did develop the negatives -- so if he was the photographer as well, there could in theory still be a copyright for a long time. But given that there was no human credit on the published items by the looks of it, and the law required that the identity become public by 1992 or so (70 years after the 1922 publication), and it still seems to be unknown -- I think this qualifies for {{PD-UK-unknown}} (as currently listed). Doing research and identifying an author today would not matter; such identification needs to happen in the first 70 years after publication (or creation if never published). Carl Lindberg (talk) 18:34, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Interesting, I hadn't heard about this 70 year rule. Commons:Deletion requests/File:Fundament relict of Watkin's Tower - 1922.jpg is similar, and I'm sure there are a lot of other Aerofilms images that would be worth having. --ghouston (talk) 22:39, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Oh, it's the implication of the 70 years mentioned on Template:PD-UK-unknown. --ghouston (talk) 22:41, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Wouldn't that also require that somebody had tried to ascertain the author by "reasonable enquiry" within the first 70 years, and somehow made the result of the enquiry public? I suppose a reasonable enquiry in this case would be asking Aerofilms or their descendent rights-holders who the author is. --ghouston (talk) 22:44, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

I think the company would have had to made it public. I'm not sure there is any guidance on the term; generally anonymous authors must make themselves known, or have it come out -- I'm guessing the reasonable enquiry would be seeing if there was any information in the literature out there. This is largely theoretical; the photograph would have expired 50 years after creation (per the old UK rule) and the new 70 year term was imposed in 1996, per the EU directive -- but that had likely already passed so it probably was not restored at all. I think if the author's identity became known in the 70 years, the new 70pma term would apply. But learning the author's name now (if not from a public source) I don't think would make a difference. If an author can't be found via a reasonably diligent internet search now, it's likely the name was not known within 70 years, and I think it's OK to assume that term. (In fact, if the UK had properly implemented the EU directive, companies of works for hire needed to name the human authors on their initial publication to get the 70pma term; if not the7 get 70 years from publication regardless of later author disclosure -- but don't think the UK implemented that clause.) Carl Lindberg (talk) 23:08, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Also, the "unknown" part implies it may be possible to use this tag even without knowing the provenance, rather than most "anonymous" laws which requires knowledge that a work was published anonymously. If we know the initial publications were anonymous, I'm not sure what else there would be to enquire about, other than the author becoming generally known later on. Carl Lindberg (talk) 23:13, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

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Kept: no valid reason for deletion. --Jcb (talk) 19:29, 13 August 2016 (UTC)