Commons:Deletion requests/Third-party photos hosted by the NWS uploaded by Michael Lee Weather
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Third-party photos hosted by the NWS uploaded by Michael Lee Weather
[edit]- File:La Plata 2002 tornado damage.png
- File:2002 La Plata Tornado Damage.png
- File:2002 La Plata tornado high-end F3 or F4 damage.jpg
These images were all sourced from webpages of the US National Weather Service but are the work of third-party photographers. However, we have no evidence that any of these images are in the public domain or available under a free license.
For many years, hosting such images on the Commons was done in good faith under the rationale that:
- public submissions to the NWS all entered the public domain and/or
- all files hosted on NWS websites were in the public domain unless they carried a formal copyright notice
An extensive review of this rationale in 2024 revealed that neither of these beliefs held up to scrutiny. These findings were confirmed in an RfC conducted from August to October 2024.
Per COM:ONUS it is the responsibility of the person uploading an image to the Commons or anyone arguing for its retention here to provide evidence of permission from the copyright holder. For anyone interested in seeking the permission of the creators to retain these files, I offer, as a head start, the following notes left over from when I investigated them:
- File:La Plata 2002 tornado damage.png
- Copyright holder emailed; seemed open to free licensing, but stopped responding October 5 after shown the release template. VRT ticket:2024100110011645
- File:2002 La Plata Tornado Damage.png and File:2002 La Plata tornado high-end F3 or F4 damage.jpg
- these damage photos were not taken by an NWS employee but by a SKYWARN volunteer
All these images were taken in the US after 1989, and therefore automatically protected by copyright at the instant of their creation unless ineligible for some reason. Unless anybody can provide any evidence of ineligibility for copyright, or permission from the respective copyright owners, we must delete all the files listed in this request per COM:PRP because as far as we can tell, they all are protected by copyright. --Rlandmann (talk) 11:52, 29 October 2024 (UTC)