Commons:Deletion requests/File:Luis Walter Alvarez 1961.jpg

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This deletion discussion is now closed. Please do not make any edits to this archive. You can read the deletion policy or ask a question at the Village pump. If the circumstances surrounding this file have changed in a notable manner, you may re-nominate this file or ask for it to be undeleted.

File:Luis Walter Alvarez 1961.jpg

[edit]

https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7665726 is clearly the original image, and was taken in California, not Sweden. The Nobel Prize Committee photographs are not necessarily by the Nobel Prize organization, which seems to be the fundamental mistake made here, by presuming that, since this was published alongside the Nobel Prize announcement, that it was taken in Sweden. We know the photographer per that link: It's Donald Cooksey, who is not Swedish. Clearly, given the National Archives has a less-cropped version of the photo which copyright is claimed on, this was not taken in Sweden, is not an "Official Nobel Prize photo" in any sense that would move the copyright to Sweden, and the argument based on it being a Swedish photo is not accurate. Now, it sucks to have to delete it, I fully agree, but, we do have a good photo of him, File:Luis Alvarez with a magnetic monopole detector.jpg, which I would argue is in some ways better.

It's possible that the University of California copyright claim is one that we at Wikipedia shouldn't accept per {{PD-Art}}. That's a fair arguement if we can show that Donald Cooksey was working for the federal government - He's Donald Cooksey, so this shouldn't be hard - or we could argue a PD-US-no-notice if it was published without a copyright claim. However, that's not at all what's being argued for the reason the photo is out of copyright, and we'd need to update the file pages to a valid copyright claim at a minimum.

So, to bulletpoint the problems:

  • The author is not the Nobel Foundation, it's Donald Cooksey
  • It was not taken in Sweden, it was taken in California, at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  • It was not taken in 1961; it was taken on January 2, 1962.
  • He got his Nobel Prize in 1968, so the dates don't even add up for this being anything to do with the Nobel Prize Foundation.
  • {{PD-Sweden-photo}} does not apply to photos taken in California by Americans. Forgive me if that comes off as really sarcastic, but the point is that, if it's kept due to other arguments than the ones currently made for it being out of copyright, we really need to fix the bullshit documentation. We can't keep using an obviously incorrect license for it.
  • For {{PD-US-no-notice}} to apply, we'd need evidence of it being published in the United States without a notice during the period where that caused it to lose copyright. A modern Dutch archive or a modern Swedish webpage won't do that.
  • For {{PD-USGov-DOE}} to apply, we'd need to get around the Federal Government asserting a copyright for the University of California. Now, bullshit arguments for copyright exist all over the place, and Cooksey was Associate director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, so there's probably good reason to think this is bullshit, especially as the phrasing might indicate that the University of California are claiming copyright for scanning it ("has asserted a continuing legal interest in the digital versions of the images included in the NARA accession"). But it's not completely clear whether that's the exact claim made.

Adam Cuerden (talk) 09:03, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

In File:Luis Walter Alvarez 1961.jpg, I have uploaded front and back of a photo published in U.S. by Keystone Press. There is no copyright notice, and hence {{PD-US-no-notice}} should apply. Materialscientist (talk) 10:05, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's fair. In that case, as long as we update everything, we're good, but we really do need to get all this right. Adam Cuerden (talk) 10:38, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've updated everything, and think we're good now. Adam Cuerden (talk) 07:43, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Kept: per Materialscientist. --The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 06:19, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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