Commons:Deletion requests/Third-party photos hosted on weather.gov 2024-10-27

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  • Add {{delete|reason=Fill in reason for deletion here!|subpage=Third-party photos hosted on weather.gov 2024-10-27|year=2024|month=November|day=27}} to the description page of each file.
  • Notify the uploader(s) with {{subst:idw||Third-party photos hosted on weather.gov 2024-10-27|plural}} ~~~~
  • Add {{Commons:Deletion requests/Third-party photos hosted on weather.gov 2024-10-27}} at the end of today's log.

Third-party photos hosted on weather.gov 2024-10-28

[edit]

These images were all sourced from webpages of the US National Weather Service but are the work of third-party photographers.

For many years, hosting such images on the Commons was done under the rationale that:

  • a process used for a time by the NWS Sioux City regional office that placed photos taken by the public into the public domain as a term of submisison applied to all third party images across all of weather.gov
  • the wording of the general site disclaimer on weather.gov that says "The information on National Weather Service (NWS) Web pages are in the public domain, unless specifically noted otherwise" means "noted with a formal copyright notice" (and ignoring the wording later in the disclaimer that goes on to say "Third-party information and imagery are used under license by the individual third-party provider. [...] Please contact the third-party provider for information on your rights to further use these data/products.")

An extensive review of this rationale in 2024 revealed that:

  • the NWS has had multiple, conflicting processes for public image submissions over the decades, some running concurrently by different regional offices (examples). Some of these processes made release into the public domain a condition of submission, others did not, and some were ambiguous. In practice, we can almost never link a particular image to any particular submission process.
  • in every one of several dozen cases investigated, individual photographers and third-party organizations had not released their work into the public domain when they submitted it for the NWS to use, and still asserted their rights over their images.(examples) This indicates that either the site general disclaimer is not intended to be interpreted the way that uploaders to the Commons have interpreted it over the years, or that this interpretation is correct, but that NWS employees have applied notices to images so very inconsistently over the years as to render the disclaimer completely unreliable.

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 obtain permission of the copyright holder. Nevertheless, to expedite this process (and because throughout this review period, the people arguing most strenuously for retention have been remarkably reticent to actually ask photographers about the copyright status of their images), I have approached every one of the creators I have been able to identify.

Number File Basis of identification Contact VRT ticket Comments
1027-1 File:A tornado near Fort Stockton on June 2, 2023.jpg Confirmed: photographer confirms that the photo is theirs and that they retain the copyright. Stopped responding September 25 when I asked about their willingness to release under a free license ticket:2024102610000799
1027-2 File:June 2023 North Antelope Rochelle Mine tornado.png Confirmed: image is a still from a video posted on the creator's X stream the day after the event. FWIW, in the thread that follows, someone local to the area informs the creator that they were mistaken about their location when they shot the video. The videographer agrees, but the NWS clearly didn't catch this and still posted it as being shot at Antelope. The thread also contains multiple media outlets asking permission to use the footage, and the videographer confirming that they are the sole owner of it. Emailed September 12; no response ticket:2024102710001965
1027-3 File:EF4 Keota, Iowa tornado 2023 (1).jpg Confirmed: image is a still from a video posted on the creator's X stream the day after the event. Messaged via social media on September 12; no response ticket:2024102710002017
1027-4 File:An EF1 tornado over Baca County, Colorado on June 23, 2023.jpg Confirmed: image found on photographer's Facebook two days after the event. Messaged via social media on September 3; no response ticket:2024102710002222
1027-5 File:May 24 2011 El Reno–Piedmont tornado by Haverfield.jpg Confirmed: image found on photographer's X stream two days after the event. Messaged via social media on September 3; read; no response ticket:2024102710002286
1027-6 File:Benkelman NE tornado May 26, 2021.jpg Confirmed: photographer contacted by email, confirms owning the rights (and owns the media company that first published this) Stopped responding when asked about releasing under a free license ticket:2024091210003958
1027-7 File:2020aug-derecho-Cedar-Rapids-IA-tree-carnage.jpg tentative match with journalist with same uncommon name Messaged via social media on September 3; no response ticket:2024102710003196
1027-8 File:2020aug-derecho-damage-Cedar-Rapids-Iowa.jpg Broadcast meteorologist with uncommon name working in same city where this photo was taken Messaged via social media on August 31; no response ticket:2024102710003258
1027-9 File:2020aug-derecho-damage-Tama-County-Iowa.jpg Tentatively confirmed: professional photographer contacted via their website; "believes" this to be one of their images Stopped responding September 18 when asked about releasing under a free license ticket:2024102710003294
1027-10 File:Gabriel Garfield photograph of the 2013 Moore EF5 tornado.jpg Confirmed: photographer messaged via social media, confirms owning the rights Stopped responding September 18 when asked about releasing under a free license ticket:2024102710003276

We do not have any evidence that any of these images are available under a free license and we cannot host them here. --Rlandmann (talk) 12:58, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Can you go through these one at a time please? Thank you. ChessEric (talk) 20:36, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How would that help you? --Rlandmann (talk) 21:49, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It’s hard for me to vote for all of them at once. It’s more of a personal preference since it’s hard for me to understand large things as once. ChessEric (talk) 19:28, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I notice a lot of people stop responding when you ask about releasing the image under a free license. Could people think it's a scam of some kind? Are you mentioning creative commons? TornadoLGS (talk) 20:18, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Silence is difficult to interpret. However, we can get some idea of people's reactions from the folks who respond in the negative. You don't see those on these mass deletion requests, because as soon as I've been getting an explicitly negative response, I've been opening a specific DR for that specific image itself. So the spread of responses you're seeing (for example) above is skewed to "stopped responding". You can see a collection of explicitly negative responses here that might give some insight into your question.
The fact that we've been hosting their work without permission in the first place seems to upset some people. Others have expressed regret but rely on their photography as an income and don't want to give anything away.
I mention the Creative Commons in the second or third message, depending on how quickly we establish that I'm communicating with the right person. A couple of people have wanted more details about the license itself, which I provided.
I also speculate that the dense, legalese wording of our licensing template probably looks offputting and suspicious to some people. I mean, put yourself in their shoes: some random stranger emails you or messages you on Facebook asking about a photo you took years and years ago -- obviously, they've tracked you down somehow. Then they ask about copyright and licenses and about signing some mysterious, legal-looking document. At least one person I was emailing was unaware that they even owned a copyright on the photos they took.
I've never had anyone actually respond with an explicit accusation of a scam, but it's certainly possible and IMHO even likely that's what some people might be thinking.
Out of dozens and dozens of these inquiries I've sent out now over the last two months, only two people have been willing to release their work, and even then, in one case, VRT was not initially willing to accept their release and we had to jump through several more steps to get the license cleared. Most people aren't going to be willing to jump through all those hoops when there's literally no benefit to them whatsoever. --Rlandmann (talk) 21:20, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sometimes I wonder if our procedures for sending permission are too complicated. It seems even some Commons users couldn't be bothered to go through the process for files they do own the copyrights to. A lot of deletion discussions go like this:
  1. Someone uploads what they claim to be their own work to Commons.
  2. The file is nominated for deletion because it has been previously published.
  3. The uploader says they are the copyright holder.
  4. The uploader is instructed to go to Commons:Volunteer Response Team and follow the directions there.
  5. *crickets*
And then the file gets deleted even though it is plausible that the uploader is the copyright holder. Ixfd64 (talk) 00:44, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
 Delete All per above. Although treat this as a conditional delete. Conditional to whether or not any of them respond. Hurricane Clyde 🌀my talk page! 19:04, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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