Commons:Deletion requests/File:Official New York City Subway Map vc.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:Official New York City Subway Map vc.jpg

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This file was initially tagged by Dream out loud as Copyvio (copyvio) and the most recent rationale was: Official New York City Subway map, copyrighted by the MTA Yann (talk) 17:39, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. It is copyrighted by the MTA and also published by the MTA under a free license. See the Source link on the page of the file. Vcohen (talk) 17:52, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. There are some rights reserved. The license is a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. It says: "You are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format; for any purpose, even commercially" under the one condition that it is properly attributed, which it is. This photo was released by the MTA after they put the copyright on all other NYC Subway maps. For this reason, the image can be kept. Epicgenius (talk) 14:03, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Kept: Flickr account is MTA, with free license. Yann (talk) 11:22, 13 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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:Official New York City Subway Map vc.jpg

[edit]

While its true that the original version of this file was uploaded to Flickr by the MTA under an acceptable license, it has since been overwritten by a variety of clearly copyrighted images, and a quick Google search shows that the MTA considers their map copyrighted. Personally, I'm not a lawyer and know little about NY State laws, however its clear the current license is inaccurate for this version of the file. EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!) 19:39, 18 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That means that I was right when I was trying to revert the file to its original version (there are two such attempts in the file history). There must be a way to avoid changes in licensed maps. Vcohen (talk) 19:49, 18 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep: Well then let me inform you that copyright law covers changes like these minor adjustments. This has been discussed before. Why do you even care about this? If MTA had a problem with it they'd reach out. It really is not a significant enough derivative to be in copyright. ɱ (talk) 19:54, 18 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Why do you even care about this? If MTA had a problem with it they'd reach out." You well know that has never been how Commons works, we don't wait for the copyright holder to come complain. And if you could point me to where copyright law lets you take a completely different image from someone because they released a similar one without copyright that would be great. EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!) 20:02, 18 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
"Completely different image"??? It's exactly the same graphic, released under CC BY, just with minor service changes, meaning really only a few small lines have been changed. This isn't a different enough image, a substantially different work, to warrant a new license. ɱ (talk) 22:01, 18 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The burden of proof lies on you, in stating your claim of copyright violation, to back up your claims. Show me the legal code that describes the level of alterations necessary to issue a completely different copyright statement. Because as far as I've found, if the original is so similar to the reproduction that it can easily be thought of as the same image, you cannot issue a new or different license for it. ɱ (talk) 22:06, 18 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
"The burden of proof lies on you, in stating your claim of copyright violation, to back up your claims." The new image very clearly says "© 2019 MTA", there's my claim of copyright violation. EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!) 22:30, 18 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Also because the original image was CC by 2.0, not CC by SA, meaning any adaptation to the original work could be licensed or copyrighted differently. CC by SA 2.0 would allow what you are referring to. EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!) 22:35, 18 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Great, you proved the MTA is inconsistent with their licensing but you'll find that lots of places. All of the flickr photos are CC BY, yet all their images posted on the website or Instagram have no such license statement, sometimes even a blanket All Rights Reserved. This is not the evidence you need, which I was referring to - that this is enough of a change to warrant a new license. ɱ (talk) 23:00, 18 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@EoRdE6: By the way, that is a misunderstanding of SA - the copyright holder (MTA) can always do whatever they want. What SA means is that other people can only release derivatives under the same license, absent special permission from the copyright holder. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:13, 23 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Interesting argument. That this seems to have escalated quickly suggests there may be some backstory to the nomination, but I'm interested in the argument itself. My default would be "new publication of different creative work = new evidence required". But if we reduce the keep argument here, what if the MTA released the same image in a different resolution? Or just increased the size of the font? Or fixed a misspelling? Seems like that would be unlikely to raise red flags (maybe I'm mistaken). Not going to weigh in with a !vote at this time, but I've mentioned it at VPC here: Commons:Village_pump/Copyright#New_license_needed_for_updated_version_of_the_same_map? — Rhododendrites talk |  22:29, 18 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Here's some evidence that there needs to be a significant difference between the files in order to license it separately. en:Rogers v. Koons, a US copyright case, set a precedent that the works need to be different enough so that the average person would recognize the copying (basically verbatim from the article). The images in question are vastly different, and yet they were deemed similar enough to still be in the original copyright. Yes this is not an exact parallel, but that's incredibly unlikely to find. It shows, however, that small changes like some expected reroutes are definitely minor enough to retain the original copyright statement. ɱ (talk) 23:05, 18 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • The argument to keep is certainly a novel argument, but I think it is misguided. The "substantial similarity" test is used to determine if one work is a derivative of another work. Applying the "substantial similarity" test to the images shows us that yes, the new map is a derivative work of the old map. All that says is that the new map contains copyrightable authorship from the old map and does not tell us anything about the overall copyright status of the new map. Because a derivative work contains the original authorship and the new authorship, the copyright status of both the original work and the changes determine the copyright status of the overall work. The original work was released under the CC-BY-2.0 license and is freely license. There is no evidence that the changes were released under such a license.
    Without evidence of a free license, we must consider if the changes are trivial (de minimis) or below the threshold of originality. The Compendium of US Copyright Office Practices § 919 provides some guidance here. Overlaying the two maps shows the extension of the 7 to 34 St Hudson Yds, transit connections incl. at 207 St, the Second Avenue Subway project, small changes to labels, changes to the basemap including the removal of streets in Brooklyn and the Bronx, changes to bus services near LaGuardia, and a revision to the legend. The basemap road deletions are inconsequential, and can probably be ignored. The changes to label positioning, like the hypothetical changes Rhododendrites mentions, are certainly below the threshold of originality, so they get ignored too. The changes to the transit information, including the legend, can't be ignored as de minimis, as they're the central focus of the map. That leaves originality. I would say that the changes to the legend are likely to be above the threshold on their own. As for the actual map changes, the Copyright Office says A derivative map may be eligible for registration if the author added a sufficient amount of new authorship to the preexisting material, such as creative depictions of new roads, historical landmarks, or zoning boundaries. The new map contains more than a few additions, and I believe that they are original and substantial enough to be copyrightable. Because the new map is not completely covered by free licenses, it is non-free and unsuitable for Commons. Unless evidence is provided that the MTA has released the new map under a free license, the file should be reverted and the intervening revisions deleted. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 01:30, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Keep and revert: While there may be an interesting and complicated question of copyright law here, there is a very simple question of Commons policy. Commons:Overwriting files says that if someone thinks that an update isn't a minor update, they can revert it and the reversion should be honoured. Here, Vcohen has (repeatedly) reverted to the original version. If Ɱ and others wish to upload the new version, they should do so under a different filename. Once the file has been reverted, it can obviously be kept. --bjh21 (talk) 10:23, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Keep and downsample to the same size as the original because the latest version is higher resolution than the original. While the Creative Commons people believe that their license applies to the "work" and cannot be restricted based on resolution, we as a community have largely decided to ignore that advice per COM:PRP. In terms of the differences in substance, I think the changes to the map itself are below COM:TOO. The changes in the lines, I feel, are merely mechanical changes that can be inferred from the creative choices taken from the rest of the map. The legend is a bigger change, but it appears to be a mere restatement of facts without much creativity in either the wording or the layout. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:10, 23 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Kept: The 2013 version is unquestionably available under the CC license. More recent versions are not; even if the changes from the 2013 version are minor, the MTA claims copyright on them. The safest course of action, and the one that seems to best fit consensus here, is to revert the file to the 2013 version. --Pi.1415926535 (talk) 20:55, 27 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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