Commons:Village pump/Copyright/Archive/2023/01

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Documenting files below the threshold of originality

KABGBig985Logo.png is unlikely to be the uploader’s own work, and I have removed the corresponding source/author/date information from the information template and structured data. But I have nothing to replace it with, and the information template is displaying warnings about this information being missing. A deletion request established that it is below the threshold of originality, and the file is tagged as such ({{PD-textlogo}}), so what else do we need to do? Brianjd (talk) 10:00, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi Brianjd. Since the file is being used in an English Wikipedia article about radio station en:KABG, that might be a good place to start. The logo appears to be a former logo of the station, which means it was probably created by someone working for the station or its parent company around the time it was being used by the station. Try checking for old archived versions of the station's official website around the time the file was uploaded to see whether you can find it being used; if you can, then you can probably use that as the source of the file. Since the file was uploaded in July 2019, you can probably find it being used on the station's official website around that time by checking for archived versions using the en:Wayback Machine. -- Marchjuly (talk) 10:21, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
@Marchjuly All good advice for somebody who wants to take this up. I don’t really want to. I just wanted to point out that we need better general guidance for this kind of file.
I did add a Wayback Machine link as the source, per your suggestion. The information template is still complaining that it lacks an author. Brianjd (talk) 11:13, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
Except that you did sort of take it up when you started removing information from the file's description, and the warnings that appeared were a direct result of your edits. Even though the information was incorrect, you probably should figured out what to replace it with before removing it, or asked for assistance before doing so. -- Marchjuly (talk) 23:17, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
@Marchjuly Users shouldn’t remove incorrect information until they have correct information to replace it? What sort of a rule is that? Is that a general rule here, or just a quirk of the {{Information}} template?
This is the sort of comment that drives away new contributors, a point I have previously raised in different contexts. Instead, let’s improve the system. Figure out whether the information is actually required. If so, create some better warnings, with some links to useful advice. If not, don’t list it as ‘essential information’ (which I only found by typing Template:Information into the search bar and reading the equally useless documentation there). Brianjd (talk) 12:03, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
The Wikipedia article seems to be useless, by the way. Brianjd (talk) 11:14, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
The Wikipedia article included a link to the station's official website, which you were able to use to find an archived version that showed the logo actually being used by the station as the source for the file. Adding a company as the author is generally considered OK in a case like this since in many cases the logo was likely created as a en:work for hire type of arrangement, and the individual who actually created the logo probably will never be known. -- Marchjuly (talk) 23:17, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
@Marchjuly If we want to be technical, yes, the Wikipedia article did provide that link, but it is trivial to find that link via a web search.
As for your comments about the author, that needs to be documented somewhere that users can actually find it. Brianjd (talk) 11:56, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
I see that Yann has added the radio station itself as the author. I thought about doing this, but again, we seem to lack guidance here. Brianjd (talk) 11:48, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
If it has been determined to be below TOO by the US Copyright Office or some court, then I link to the decision in the "Permission" section. I usually don't document DR keeps anywhere on the file description (that should go on the talk page), but if people repeatedly tag such an image for deletion without checking, I might link to the DR in the "Permission" section for that particular image. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 16:17, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Seemingly conflicting licenses for icons used in Blender

I'm planning on uploading icons for buttons and other UI elements used in Blender, after slightly modifying them. Blender itself is licensed under the GNU General Public License 2.0 (shown here). However, when viewing the file containing all the icons, it has a watermark that states it's licensed under the CC BY-SA 4.0 (as seen here). In this case, do both the terms from the GPL 2.0 and the CC BY-SA 4.0? Which one should I tag my images as when uploading?

Money-lover-12345 (talk) 05:06, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Call for participation: TV Azteca logos

The community has gone back and forth on whether Category:TV Azteca logos are above or below COM:TOO. I'd like to invite everyone here to help set a precedent at this DR: Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:TV Azteca logos. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 08:38, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

As the public domain progresses in the United States to include nearly all of the silent film era, it's often the case that the best digital reproductions of these public-domain works exist in "restored" versions available commercially. In the US at least, copyright applies only to "original works of authorship" and the Supreme Court has explicitly rejected the "sweat of the brow" doctrine (see w:Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co.). Therefore it seems obvious to me that automated noise reduction, color correction, and similar alterations with the sole purpose of reversing the effects of age and wear, and restoring a visual or audiovisual work to its original condition, would not be eligible for copyright.

It's also the case that some things labelled as "restoration" would obviously be eligible for copyright. Silent film scores are re-recorded, or sometimes an entirely new soundtrack is added. Newly discovered footage is sometimes combined with the original film in an original manner to produce an entirely new product. And there are "grey areas" where it's not entirely sure whether a court would see a sufficient level of originality.

I propose that Commons or Meta should have specific guidance on what exactly is allowed on Wikimedia in this respect. We've already encountered this issue with Edison cylinder audio files from the UCSB archive - UCSB claims copyright on the "restored" MP3 files of the public domain phonographs in their collection. This is a thorny issue that's only going to become more and more prominent as years go by. It's possible that Wikimedia counsel may have to assist in this. Phillipedison1891 (talk) 17:27, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Can you prepare a draft of a such guidience? Ruslik (talk) 20:26, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
We would need to make sure to phrase it as "this is what Wikimedia/Commons will allow as a matter of policy" and not "this is what is and isn't eligible for copyright" since there is almost no case law on this issue - the Foundation would be relying on the DMCA safe harbor for legal protection. Perhaps something like this:
In some cases, a person who digitizes a particular audio/visual work may claim copyright in their "restored" version. United States copyright law protects "original works of authorship." Therefore, a file that contains additions or modifications to a public domain work with sufficient originality is not considered to be in the public domain and will be removed if not otherwise freely licensed. Such new content may include but is not limited to:
  • A new soundtrack or a re-recording of the original soundtrack
  • Colorization of black-and-white footage
  • Combining newly discovered footage with the original film in a creative manner
Alterations for the sole purpose of reversing the effects of age and restoring a work to its original condition will not automatically serve to render a work non-free and eligible for deletion per policy. Please note, however, that such materials may still be removed subsequent to a DMCA takedown request. Any final determination of what is and is not eligible for copyright protection will be made by a court, not by Wikimedia.
Phillipedison1891 (talk) 21:01, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Inconsistent Flickr copyrights

I was looking over an old discussion for File:Five Wounds National Portuguese Church.jpg. This was uploaded with a copyright notice in the image itself with a CC 2.0 license on Flickr. It is clear that the uploader on Flickr is the same as the person who took the shot. Would the CC 2.0 override the copyright claim or the copyright claim override the CC 2.0 notice? I don't know who would reuse an image with a blatant copyright notice anyways but if the CC 2.0 overrides, then I will just crop the copyright portion out as a new cropped image. Ricky81682 (talk) 22:19, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Nothing overrides nothing. The two mentions are correct and complementary. If a work is validly licensed CC BY 2.0, it is necessarily copyrighted. Section 4b of the CC BY 2.0 license states "You must keep intact all copyright notices". But the common practice on Commons allows removal of the watermark from the image itself, on the condition that it is transcribed faithfully on the description page. -- Asclepias (talk) 02:20, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
See Commons:Watermarks -- there can be some legal issues with removing the watermark. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:26, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
Isn't the "C" copyright notice difference from the CC 2.0 notice? I know the purpose of copyleft is to keep the copyright remaining and requires the CC notice in all derivative works or else the first person to create a derivative work could claim a copyright over it. Ricky81682 (talk) 03:09, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
No, the © symbol is just a declaration that the copyright exists (under U.S. law and the old Universal Copyright Convention). Same with "All rights reserved", which was the same thing under the old Buenos Aires Convention, so the two were often combined. Neither is necessary under the Berne Convention anymore but they can still help. The copyright has to exist in the first place in order to license it, so it makes perfect sense to have a copyright notice (which also identifies the copyright owner) along with a CC-BY (or other) license. In fact, part of CC-BY license is that the copyright notice is preserved (along with the note of the CC license). The full copyright still exists, it's just that everyone has a non-exclusive license to use it under liberal conditions. Carl Lindberg (talk) 05:41, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
@Ricky81682: They're indeed different things. One is a copyright notice, the other is the mention of the license. The licensed work is copyrighted anyway, copyright notice or not. The licensors may choose to write or not to write an explicit copyright notice. If they wrote one, then it must be preserved with the reuses of the work. It is not a matter of derivative works. -- Asclepias (talk) 13:20, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Is this public domain? Edinburgh infirmary

Hi Folks!! Is this image [1] public domain. It states its "in copyright". The image is dated around 1920. The hospital expanded in 1920 when one unit to had to move, so its closer to 1920 than any other date. The author died in 1940. Scope creep (talk) 22:39, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

I would say that it can be uploaded. You should use the template {{PD-scan|PD-old-auto-expired|deathyear=1940}}. Lugamo94 (talk) 23:11, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi Lugamo94. That is great news, although I've since found out Joseph Lister, the article I working on, he never actually went there. He was in London at the time when it was built, which is unfortunate as its a great looking image. I will upload per your instructions and hopefully somebody else can make use of it. Scope creep (talk) 15:28, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

At Commons:Deletion requests/Files found with 24736216@N07 postcard, there's been a sub-discussion about whether File:Lisbon - Castelo do São Jorge & Largo Martim Moniz (1968).jpg falls under {{PD-Portugal-URAA}}. There seems to be a copyright notice at the back of the postcard, as seen here. If this copyright notice is valid, this would restore the copyright to 95 years. However, I think that the copyright notice is defective. This is because the 1909 copyright law (which detailed how copyright notices must be shown until 1978 - see :w:Copyright notice § Technical requirements) stated that "of section five of this Act, the notice may consist of the letter [c] inclosed within a circle, thus: ©". I'm quoting Section 18 of wikisource:Copyright Act of 1909.

If you look closely at the copyright symbol on the backside of the postcard at the ebay link, its not a "c" enclosed in a circle. It's two "c"s enclosed in two touching arcs - not a circle. Therefore, there is no copyright symbol, and the notice is defective.

I know this sounds a bit adventurous, so I'm asking whether this reasoning is right, and the copyright notice is indeed defective, and that this therefore falls under {{PD-Portugal-URAA}} --Matr1x-101Pinging me doesn't hurt! {user - talk? - useless contributions} 00:47, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

The Copyright Compendium I allowed some variations on the notice (Chapter 4). Not sure that is one... if it was just a partial circle around the C, it would be fine, but unsure about two of them. It is a weird case, and the Compendium says they will use a liberal standard on foreign publications. I'd probably say that would suffice as the symbol, but I'm not sure about its disassociated position in regard to the copyright owner. On the other hand, I would disagree with the assertion that the photo is PD in Portugal -- works were restored to 70pma, or 70 years from making available to the public for anonymous works, so it would seem to be under copyright there until 2039 (this is mentioned on the talk page of the template). The older laws were still in place in 1996, so it's true they can be used to avoid URAA restoration, but they can't avoid the EU restorations. The rule was a work protected in any EEA nation got restored -- so if the photo were protected in the UK (50 years) or Spain (80 I think) then they got restored in Portugal. Carl Lindberg (talk) 06:38, 3 January 2023 (UTC
If this file is PD per US standards, then this could be imported to ptwiki, where it's being used. I'm not sure about local policies in ptwiki, so take that statement with a grain of salt.
This file is probably not PD in Portugal, because it was almost certainly restored due to Spain (80 pma).
By the way, this isn't anonymous, as discussed in the original DR I linked. It's made by someone called "Fulano d'Eça", so undelete in 2089 on commons ({{PD-old-assumed}}) I guess. --Matr1x-101Pinging me doesn't hurt! {user - talk? - useless contributions} 15:33, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
It is probably not a copyright symbol. It was probably a sort of logo used at that time by the Centro de caridade. -- Asclepias (talk) 16:11, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, that is my feeling looking at it more. If it was used in the spot of a traditional copyright notice, I'd probably lean it would be valid, but it could well simply refer to "Centro de Caridade". Also, where is Fulano d'Eça mentioned? I see the photo is credited to "EÇA", but the all-caps treatment makes it seem that is an acronym referring to something else, but not sure what that something else is. If that does refer to an individual, then yes it's 70pma and we'd need to find their life dates to know when to undelete. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:22, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
I saw that name ("Fulano d'Eça") on the original DR, and just assumed it was the name. "EÇA" is probably a pseudonym, so as per {{PD-anon-70-EU}} it is Category:Undelete in 2039 (2039 because 1969 + 70 years) if the EU treats pseudonymous and anonymous works the same. I'm not sure about that because {{PD-anon-70-EU}} says nothing about pseudonymous works. --Matr1x-101Pinging me doesn't hurt! {user - talk? - useless contributions} 21:53, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
I agree with Carl Lindberg that the position is relevant. The rotated text in the middle (three lines, to the left of the hand-written "Mr.") appears to be an attempt at a copyright notice:

Centro de Caridade "Nossa Senhora do

Perpétuo Socorro" • PORTO

Proibida a reprodução

which is not the same orientation or immediately adjacent to the "CC" symbol we're talking about. This facebook album is identified as "CC - Centro de Caridade Nossa Sª Perpétuo Socorro - Porto by Fernanda Araújo - Postais Ilustrados - Editoras", which is instead consistent with a different meaning of the "CC" symbol. DMacks (talk) 22:37, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Old painting photograph, licensing question

Painting from circa 1620 (unknown painter) was photographed in 1973 (as a work for hire) for use in a publication by my (late) father. Painting is currently on public display in a church in Belgium but has been damaged and restored in the intervening period. I'd like to publish a scan of this photo on Commons. As newbie, your advice on this non-trivial situation will be much appreciated. BDeblier (talk) 19:29, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi, Yes, this should be OK with {{PD-Art|PD-old-100-expired}}. A faithful picture of an old painting doesn't create a new copyright. Yann (talk) 19:48, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
Thanks! BDeblier (talk) 20:03, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

A scanned photograph from 1936.

I found this photograph which was published in October 1936 on a newspaper called 'Zamana'.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/rashid_ashraf/16654788030

The uploader has marked it 'All rights reserved' on Flickr but I am not sure if that really applies. Can it be uploaded on Commons?

Ohsin (talk) 13:27, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Whether uploader marked it as copyrighted doesn't matter for its status. What matter for Commons is where it was published, whether it is out of copyright in country of origin and whether it was in public domain on URAA restoration date (1996 in most countries). Borysk5 (talk) 17:43, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
Sounds like a magazine published in India, so it would need to be PD by current Indian laws (which have mostly been non-retroactive) and U.S. laws, which generally means it needs to be more than 95 years old, or public domain in India as of 1996. A 1936 photo should do that, being that it was taken before 1941, the important date for URAA restoration of India's copyrights. See {{PD-India-photo-1958}} and {{PD-India-URAA}}. Carl Lindberg (talk) 18:35, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
If it was published in India, then it's fine. Per the Copyright Act of 1911, its copyright expired on 1986, which is before the URAA date. --Matr1x-101Pinging me doesn't hurt! {user - talk? - useless contributions} 00:18, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you all. I have uploaded the image.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Munshi_Premchand_with_wife_Shivrani_Devi.jpg
Ohsin (talk) 07:29, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
All Indian pictures from before 1942 are in the public domain in India, whether published or not. If they were published, they are also in the public domain in USA. If they were never published, only those from before 1903 are in the public domain in USA. So this one is OK. Yann (talk) 19:32, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for putting it in layman phrasing Yann. Ohsin (talk) 08:02, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Flickr trick

Hi, I noticed that a paid editor in English and Ukrainian Wikipedia is successfully adding images via Flickr but the strange moment is that linked Flickr accounts have only one photo which consequently was added to the article and the year user joined Flickr matches the year article was created. I wonder, how the trust works for such uploads.

Anntinomy (talk) 22:55, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

@Anntinomy: You can nominate these files for license laundering if there is some doubt that the license at Flickr is fake, i.e. not given by the copyright holder. Thanks, Yann (talk) 19:06, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
ok, thanks --Anntinomy (talk) 19:47, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Hello, I've noticed that these files (Demographic pyramids of Russia/Germany based off censuses) are very likely a copyright violation:

These have been uploaded by User:Razumov Oleg (who is currently inactive) in 2018 for the purpose of being used in the ongoing rewrite of the page on the casualties in the German-Soviet war on the Russian Wikipedia and can be traced to being derivatives of those used in the 2016 study "Demographic consequences of the Great Patriotic War" by A. G. Vishnevsky. I believe it's sufficiently likely that Razumov Oleg did not make the images himself other than adjusting the text surrounding the pyramids, which should fall under adaptation.

However, these files are published the CC0 public domain license, stated to be his "Own work". The study where the population pyramids originate is published under CC BY-SA 4.0, allowing adaption on the condition of attribution and being shared on the same license. I apologise if this is a question that could be easily answered, but what exactly does the policy say to do in this case? Should I just change the credit to A. G. Vishnevsky and the license to CC BY-SA 4.0, or was bringing up the copyright violations here the correct move? Randi Moth (talk) 23:22, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

@Randi Moth Normal practice on Commons seems to be to just change the file description accordingly, with no further discussion required. As I understand it, the uploader (and anyone else who has made such errors) has violated the copyright in the original works, possibly losing their rights under the original works’ licenses, but that doesn’t affect the rest of us. A free license should extend to other members of the public, regardless of how they came across the freely licensed work. Brianjd (talk) 05:13, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you. I've changed the author to the creator of the study in these files now and copyright to CC BY-SA 4.0. Was setting the "Author" field to only Vishnevsky correct since Razumov Oleg's edits are also credited in the file history, or was it necessary to add him in the "Author" field for the adaptation? Randi Moth (talk) 08:45, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
@Randi Moth In general, it is not OK to set the author field only to the original author. This does wrong to both authors, because it holds Vishnevsky responsible for a work that they did not create and fails to credit Razumov Oleg (the file description should contain the full attribution without reference to the file history). Also, CC licenses require you to indicate if the work was modified. This may not apply if the modifications are minor.
I don’t know whether such an indication would be necessary in this case or how it should be done (Commons does not seem to have a systematic way of indicating derivative works in general). Brianjd (talk) 09:21, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you very much for answering, and I apologise for getting it wrong initially. I don't think the modifications from Vishnevsky's graph are minor enough to not need credit, so I split the author section into "Original" and "Adaptation" similarly to how it would be with {{AutVec}}. Didn't find a more general template for this, unfortunately. Randi Moth (talk) 10:50, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
@Randi Moth This is probably as good as we can expect without proper templates for this.
Problems (for more experienced users to solve):
  • The text ‘Original’ and ‘Adaptation’ is not translated.
  • The reference to CC0 has been lost.
Brianjd (talk) 11:46, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Template:PD-US-record-expired for this year

Just to clarify, did sound recordings from 1923 specifically go into the PD this year, or does that happen next year? PseudoSkull (talk) 10:00, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

@Clindberg: PseudoSkull (talk) 23:48, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
The US term of protection ends on 1 January 2024 for sound recordings that were first fixed prior to February 15, 1972 and first published in 1923. See Classics Protection and Access Act at copyright.gov. —RP88 (talk) 00:23, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
Next year. 1923 recordings will be PD in 2024. This year is a pause, but then there will be some expiries every year for 23 years. Then another ten year pause (1946 recordings become PD in 2047, 1947 recordings in 2057). In general, you add the 100 years, then the following January 1 is when things become public domain. Carl Lindberg (talk) 00:35, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Commons:Deletion requests/File:Afrikan och Afrikanska x Ingel Fallstedt.jpg

Hi, This was added to Category:Undelete in 2023, but I don't understand the rationale: From volume I, "Abbe - Dahlander", published 1952, and therefore not PD until January 1, 2023. For example, File:Eldermonument Locke kyrgå x Olof Ahlberg.jpg is said to be Author = Olof Ahlberg (died in 1956) (the sculptor or the photographer?), but in neither case I see it in the public domain. Did I miss anything? Thanks, Yann (talk) 10:14, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Even worse, they are hit by the URAA date if I am counting correctly, and therefore will become PD on 1 January 2048. Ymblanter (talk) 18:59, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

PD-Art for File:Kapodistrias2.jpg?

File:Kapodistrias2.jpg is apparently a portrait of en:Ioannis Kapodistrias according to the entry for Kapodistras in en:Great Greek#Ten greatest Greeks. Since Kapodistras died in 1831, it would seem a {{PD-Art}} license (if painted while the subject was still living and painted by en:Dionysios Tsokos) would be better for Commons per COM:PD-ART than a {{PD-old-1923}} license. Since the file uploaded to Commons seems to meet COM:2D copying, the photo of the painting doesn't seem eligible for its own separate copyright protection. Are there any reasons why this can't be relicensed as "PD-Art". The current license is probably OK, but I wondering if "PD-Art" would be more accurate. For reference, I was able to find this on the en:National Historical Museum, Athens's official website and it seems to show the same painting (only a much less cleaner version). Perhaps that means the version hosted by Commons is a restored version? Something more attune to the Commons version can be found here and here, but neither use is attributed though the second website does list Wikipedia as a reference for the article. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:31, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

The museum has also item 5021. Their question mark suggests that the people at the museum hesitate to attribute it to Tsokos. But it could be after the Tsokos painting. File:Kapodistrias2.jpg is closer to it but not identical. One possible guess is that File:Kapodistrias2.jpg might be a copy inspired after item 5021, which itself might be a copy inspired after item 5511. The source and author mentioned on File:Kapodistrias2.jpg do not seem fully convincing. There is no link for the stated source and the uploader's logs and history of talk page (including the years before the cleanups) seem to indicate poor sourcing. The uploader stated the author as unknown. The mention of Tsokos was added later by another account, maybe not convincing either considering the copyvio tags and deletions. File:Ioannis Kapodistrias (1776-1831).jpg looks more like item 5021. It was initially uploaded to en.wikipedia (log) by another account.
The article of the website greeknewsagenda mentions that it took its images from Commons, including this image, as mentioned at the end of the article. The article of the website terrapapers is dated 2014, after the upload to Commons. Those websites do not seem to provide additional information about the image.
A PD-Art warning tag may be wrapped around the PD status tag(s) of a PD work when the faithful reproduction is from an external source and not explicitly free. The PD-Art series of tags are containers that add a warning to the PD status tag(s) of the original work in the parameter(s). If File:Kapodistrias2.jpg was really a reproduction of a work by Tsokos, a PD-Art tag could be wrapped around a PD-old-100-expired tag. Given the uncertainty about the author and source, I don't know if it can be tagged with anything.
-- Asclepias (talk) 02:07, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Asclepias for looking into to this and finding that additional information. I'm not sure, though, what you mean by Given the uncertainty about the author and source, I don't know if it can be tagged with anything. Does that mean the file's current licensing is questionable and the file should be further discussed at a DR? -- Marchjuly (talk) 09:25, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
Yes. -- Asclepias (talk) 13:00, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
I think it's a photo of that 5021 painting, and probably a cleaned up background. There is a TripAdvisor photo of a placard at the museum, which looks to be the same painting as this file, with a less cleaned-up background. I can't identify any real differences in the face or body. There are two vertical lines in the background just to the left of the head, one of which is in File:Kapodistrias2.jpg and one which is not, so it presumably got cleaned somehow. Different colors in the background; unsure if that was pure digitization or a different photo of the painting after being cleaned or something like that. Britannica.com has a black and white image credited to the museum (from an unknown 19th century artist) and dated 2009 before our upload; looks to be pretty similar (Google Lens finds it a match). The painting is apparently used on a Greek banknote. The exact image shows up here, though with a 2015 date, but it is credited directly to the museum (with a copyright claim). Unless we think there is a copyright on the background, I think PD-Art is fine -- sure seems like an 19th-century painting to me. Carl Lindberg (talk) 23:40, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Pictures of "Domaines nationaux" in France

Since 2017 are pictures of some places in France not commercially useable anymore without agreement (list at fr:Domaine_national#Liste_des_domaines_nationaux_au_titre_du_décret_n°_2017-720_du_2_mai_2017) So do images like File:Chambord - château, extérieur (03).jpg remain allowed on Commons? — François [Discussion] 17:10, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

@François Melchior: Bonjour, Oui. Vous faites vraisemblablement référence à l'article L621-42 du Code du patrimoine. Il s'agit d'une restriction non liée au droit d'auteur. Cette restriction peut affecter certains usages que des réutilisateurs voudraient faire des images en France. Mais elle ne peut affecter les usages faits ailleurs. -- Asclepias (talk) 18:11, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
D'accord merci pour la réponse! Du coup l'idéal serait peut-être d'ajouter un bandeau spécifique? Par contre il faudrait alors un bot pour l'ajouter aux images...? — François [Discussion] 22:50, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
Peut-être. Vous pourriez répéter votre suggestion en anglais pour voir s'il y a des opinions. -- Asclepias (talk) 23:00, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Appropriate upload of File:Naga Bhargavi.jpg?

Regarding File:Naga Bhargavi.jpg, the uploader has stated:

The image is shared to me personally by the person about whom the article is about. Santoshpratheek1 (talk) 17:09, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Is that satisfactory from a copyright perspective?
— Archer1234 (talk) 17:44, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Not only is this not satisfying proof, the photo was probably taken by someone else, not the person portrayed. Photographers hold copyrights. Borysk5 (talk) 21:19, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Currently on English Wikipedia as non-free image.

I wish to migrate this image to Commons. Can someone give a judgment as to whether this is copyright protected?

I think this may be ineligible for copyright by the rationale at {{PD-Shape}}, but I wanted to ask for opinions here. This university is in Spain and Commons:Copyright rules by territory/Spain applies. Alternatively, the school was established in 1574 and this logo is in a a style more common from hundreds of years ago, and {{PD-Old}} may apply. However I am unable to find any old versions of the logo, other than a version from perhaps 10 years ago. Bluerasberry (talk) 22:30, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

 Oppose This is definitely not a case of {{PD-Shape}} because the tassels, the hat and the golden ornaments at the rim of the shield are all creative enough to be copyrighted. So for further copyright considerations we would need to know when this particular version of the coat of arms was first published and who designed it. De728631 (talk) 22:43, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
If this logo were created from scratch, then it certainly would be above COM:TOO. However, it is possible that it is a trivial modification of a PD-old logo. So what you would need to do is find the most recent version of the logo whose copyright has expired, and we can then compare them. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:39, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Copyright for malleable works - Works by Félix González-Torres

Several images of works by Félix González-Torres are currently on English Wikipedia as fair use, non-free content. One was previously uploaded, I added the rest to show the different cited phases of his career and types of artistic output:

I wonder if any of these images can be migrated to Commons; there is currently at least one image of one of these works on Commons:

These works are claimed to be copyrighted by the artist's estate, via the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation. However, I'm bringing this query here as all of these works don't seem to satisfy the "fixed medium" requirement for a work to be eligible for copyright. I'm a die-hard Félix fan, but all of these works are legally visually malleable, per the extensive certificates the artist included with the works, meaning they are not eligible for copyright protections. Just gonna go down the list and explain each one.

  • 1: Work consists of two stacks of paper, each with a common phrase in plain text ("Somewhere better than this place" and "Nowhere better than this place"). The artist included an "ideal height" on the certificate but also included language allowing viewers to take papers from the work and allowing to be depleted as well as replenished, meaning it does not have a fixed state.
  • 2: Work is a simple string of lightbulbs. The certificate allows the owner to display the work in any shape or layout of their choosing, meaning it does not have a fixed state.
  • 3: Work was conceived prior to the artist's death but executed a decade after he died, consists of two marble pools sitting side by side, but they specifically are variable in their materials as he never specified what they should be made of (as described when unveiled in 2007 for the Venice Biennale). Official description of the work's medium at both the institution owning the work (Glenstone) and the artist's estate is "Medium varies with installation," meaning it doesn't have a fixed medium or state.
  • 4: Work consists of strings of beads hung in an entranceway. The certificate allows the owner to change the size to fit any entranceway of their choosing, meaning it does not have a fixed state.
  • 5: Work consists of two black-framed, battery operated clocks. The certificate specifically allows the owner to buy new replacement clocks, only stipulating the color of the frame and the fact that they must be identical to each other in size (no size specified), meaning they do not have a fixed state.
  • 6: Work consists of a pile of candy dumped in a corner. The certificate has an "ideal weight" but specifically allows viewers to take the candy, as well as allowing the owner to install the work in any layout of their choosing and allow it to deplete/replenish it on their own schedule, meaning it does not have a fixed state.

Additionally, the certificates for each of these works apart from #3 include information about how the materials for the original installation (the paper type/printing method, type/vendor of candy, type of lightbulb, type of bead, brand of clock), they also specifically include language allowing the owner to use a different brand/material variant if they need to meaning none of these works legally have a fixed medium, in the words of the artist.

Would love some insight as to whether these can be migrated or if higher quality versions can live on Commons. Asking before I do any moving, as I made the mistake earlier of migrating a different image by another artist before asking for advice. Thanks all! 19h00s (talk) 23:40, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Can you please have a look at this logo in terms of threshold of originality? Thanks, --217.239.0.124 14:55, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Threshold of Originality - art by Carmen Herrera

Looking for a second opinion on migrating these images of work by Carmen Herrera to Commons, both are currently on English Wikipedia as fair use, non-free images:

Would these be allowable under PD-Shape? They seem a bit too simplistic/geometric to pass the threshold of originality. Thanks for the advice! 19h00s (talk) 20:12, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Think this was answered for me via a deletion request discussion, but just to be clear - this does not seem to fall under PD-Shape because it was painted, giving it room for originality in its brushstrokes or color. 19h00s (talk) 22:30, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Is File:Original Doraemon manga Red-White variant.png above the threshold of originality?

"Japanese courts have decided that to be copyrightable, a text logo needs to have artistic appearance that is worth artistic appreciation." There is definitely a significant amount of artistry in this logo (the white circles on the ends of the letters and the bell on the "え", but the text is in a normal arrangement and is read as a sequence of letters, which is the reason why the Cup Noodle logo isn't copyrighted. Additionally, the logo for the 1973 anime series, which is identical to this logo (except for the eyeballs on the "ド) is uploaded as non-free on the English Wikipedia at w:File:Doraemon 1973 anime.png. Bsslover371 (talk) 03:14, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

FOP in Western Sahara

Concern: File:Tifariti 2005.jpg.

Is there a freedom of panorama exception for Western Sahara region? According to COM:Copyright rules by territory/Western Sahara, the Moroccan copyright law, at the very least, applies to works to the west of "berm" line. w:en:Tifariti lies to the east of it.

The vague {{FOP}} tag was added by Chubit in 2021, and this addition does not help at all, as it just places the photo at the category meant for tracking purposes only.

Also tagging photo uploader @AlbertoDV: . JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 06:22, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Irrespectively of the original question, I do not see anything copyrightable at the photo. Ymblanter (talk) 10:37, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
@Ymblanter: perhaps {{PD-structure}}? JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 11:12, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
I would just go with {{PD-self}} but indeed {{PD-structure}} could be added as well. Ymblanter (talk) 11:19, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
@Ymblanter: done adding PD-structure. I used {{Licensed-FOP}} to show the distinction between work license and the photo license. PD-self seems not applicable as it already duplicates the existing CC-0 photo license. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 12:01, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Images for Resolute desk page

Hi there. There are 3 images I would love to add to the Resolute desk page but I am unsure where copyright stands with each of them.

  1. Design proposal for a secretaire from the timbers of Resolute (1850) - this document was created in 1850 so should be out of copyright, but the page claims copyright, "© Crown copyright. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London". I am unfamiliar with British crown laws.
  2. President's desk - same issue as above
  3. Photograph of William Evenden - this image is talked about in a source, but I can only find a copy of it from his page on findagrave.com. Evenden died in 1896 so it should be out of copyright, but I want to check that uploading an image from findagrave.com is ok.

Found5dollar (talk) 19:14, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

@Found5dollar: For item 1, UK Crown Copyright normally expires after 50 years and the creation of the displayed document was in 1879. There is a residual issue that the UK uses the "sweat of the brow" doctrine in that the effort to digitise old records can restart the copyright clock (this argument of restarting copyright is not very well tested in the courts). However, I think the risk of that for UK Crown Copyright works is minimal, especially as almost all UK Crown Copyright works in the last 20 years have been released under a free licence (Open Government Licence). In this case I'd suggest using the licence {{PD-Scan|1=PD-UKGov}}.
Item 2 is not dated (the 1850 date relates to the creation of the ship from which the wood was taken). However, the indications are that it is from about the same time as the previous document, so 1879. The reasoning for item 1 can also apply here.
Item 3 appears to have been a photograph taken by John Hawke (Q65679743). He was born in 1831 but we don't have a death date for him. I'll see if I can find out more. The image will definitely be PD in the UK but I think it would only be PD in the US if he died before 1926 (due to Commons:URAA). If we can establish that Hawkes died before 1926, there should be no problem with uploading here. From Hill To Shore (talk) 19:44, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
Apart from the likely possibility that John Hawke died before 1926, one could also argue that as a formal studio portrait, the image will probably have been published in some form by 1927, which would mean that its US copyright expired regardless of URAA restoration. Felix QW (talk) 14:23, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
Sounds like Hawke was mostly active in the 1880s, so {{PD-old-assumed}} would also work (as it would for any of these, if they are named authors we can't find information about). Carl Lindberg (talk) 14:46, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Thank you all for this info! I will move forward with these licenses and these images.--Found5dollar (talk) 23:09, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

I have a book dust jacket from 1947 with the author's photo on an inside flap. The book has a copyright mark but the dust jacket does not. No book/jacket designer or photographer is credited inside the book or jacket. It was published in the U.S. so my understanding is that the U.S. Copyright Act of 1909 would apply (as it would for any hardcover book dust jacket published between then and 1977, after which the next copyright act takes place).

Another editor found guidance that book jackets need a separate copyright notice from the book itself but this document applies to the Copyright Act of 1976. Potentially relevant is this case that was also governed by the 1909 Act (art completed in 1974 and book published in 1975), which appears to say that the book cover art (or in my case, the photograph) entered the PD upon publication since it didn't have a copyright notice. Either way, looking for an outside opinion.

Was the book jacket ever copyrighted? And if not, would that mean its author photograph is PD as well? czar 02:17, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

The Jaws case you quoted seems definitive to me, as book cover art seems even less remote from the book than a dust jacket. So I think we should be fine for both the dust jacket image and the author photograph. Felix QW (talk) 14:18, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
The s:Compendium of US Copyright Office Practices (1973)/Chapter 4, which applied during the act of 1909, said basically the same thing about dust jackets. It seems as though they were treated as separate works. Forgetting a notice on a "relative few" copies would not lose copyright, but hard to imagine that a dust jacket would qualify. So if no notice, you should be OK. Anything published before 1964 had to be renewed as well, so are even more likely to be OK. Carl Lindberg (talk) 22:29, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Argentina's civil law system and FOP

This might be a continuation of Commons:Village pump/Copyright/Archive/2022/12#Argentine architecture now object of copyright.

According to w:en:Law of Argentina, the said country is part of the civil law system, and this is confirmed by this article by Harvard. This means the statement that Argentina sometimes follow customary law in terms of freedom of panorama as said at Commons talk:Freedom of panorama/Archive 5#Argentina may not be the real case here. However, it is still important to get the full context of the supposed "de facto FOP for architecture" as quoted in the Argentine lawyer's publication, especially if the lawyer was only referring to photography itself or he extended his statement to free uses without architects' permissions. Ping all of the people involved in the two prior discussions for this: @Asclepias, Manuelt15, Patricio.lorente, Eusebius, LPfi, Nard the Bard, Cambalachero, Alakasam, Alpertron, Elekhh, and Clindberg: . JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 05:34, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

User verification

If the uploader is indeed the person he claims to be, I assume that there are no copyright issues with this. However, there is no kind of user verification. I know the procedure on Wikipedia, but how is that done here? --87.150.8.133 08:54, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Brazil's TOO

I'm wondering is some others might take a look at COM:TOO Brazil. Does the statement "consequently the threshold of originality is considerably higher than the United States" contradict "the concept of creativity in Brazil is way more strict and exigent than in the United States" that immediately precedes it. Does the "concept of creativity" being more strict means that anything "PD-logo" in the US is almost certainly going to be the same in Brazil? -- Marchjuly (talk) 11:16, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't see a contradiction there - if the concept is "more strict", then more creativity is required, so the threshold is higher. Thus anything PD-logo in the US should be PD-logo in Brazil, but not vice versa. Felix QW (talk) 14:09, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi, I want to create a new copyright tag which will be used with files that are work of a government. Various types of governments, like national government, provincial government or local government, allow others to upload their contents under the conditions:- 1) proper attribution and 2) use in non objectionable and respectful manner. Copyright tags for the Governmental works of individual governments exists, like Template:GODL-India for Government of India, Template:PD-USGov for Government of United States. I think a general copyright tag should be created because:

  • Creating tag for every single government is impossible.
  • All users don't know how to make a new Copyright tag, so it would be very helpful for those users.

For these reasons I have made a copyright tag Template: Governmental work, in which I have added two parameters. One for the government name or attribution string specified by the government, while the another for the url of the copyright policy of the governmental website from where the file is taken. So, can I use it?? I would be grateful if you share your perspective. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ku423winz1 (talk • contribs) 15:59, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

@Ku423winz1: I'm not sure that template's going to be helpful since the copyright laws of various countries around the world aren't the same and in many cases government works aren't released into the public domain or released under licenses accepted by Commons. This is particularly the case for many governments below the sub-national level even if works created at the national level of the same country are treated as public domain. Moreover, in those cases where it might possibly be applicable, it's probably unnecessary (i.e. redundant). -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:12, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
A general tag probably is not good, because the very specific wording each use can be very important. So yes, we would likely need to make a specific tag for each government. GODL is a specific license, and actually should never be used unless the license is actually mentioned with a work (same as CC-BY) -- it's not an assumed license, and I don't think anyone (outside of data.gov.in website) actually uses it, so we have lots of works here which should not be. There are a handful of India government sites which do use the same wording (we have the {{Indian Army}} tag but it has obliterated the actual wording unfortunately), but again that only applies to works found on those specific websites. But the wording on each government website needs to be evaluated to see if it is a "free" license. It's not enough that works are available free of charge; they must also allow commercial use and derivative works. Can you show some examples of places you think this tag could be used? That tag makes it sound like you can use *any* governmental work that way, which is not the case, and should not imply it. Carl Lindberg (talk) 14:57, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
@Clindberg: I know the name of the tag is to be changed to something like free 'licensed governmental work' or FL-Gov or something else like that. And If the wording of the site does not match then it would not be used for that website, this is no different than the specific tags as they are also not used for the websites that do not free licence their works. If still it is a problem then there will be a notice that the tag can not be used if the works are not free licenced.
@Marchjuly: that's why I have given the 'url' parameter, as copyright policy of different governments are different so people can give the website which contains the copyright policy of that website as a proof. If the copyright policy is free licenced then it can be used. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ku423winz1 (talk • contribs) 06:56, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Category:Ayni Opera and Ballet Theatre, Dushanbe

When did the four architects as indicated at w:ru:Таджикский театр оперы и балета die? The four architects indicated are А. Юнгер , Д. Билибин, В. Голли, and М. Захаров. In accordance with COM:Tajikistan, they should have been dead for mkre than 50 years for the building to be acceptable here, since Tajikistan does not have commercial freedom of panorama. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 10:33, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Author died in 1952, works in PD in Netherlands since 2023, unknown publication status

Thousands of photos from a Dutch photographer that died in 1952 were released into the Public Domain on January 1st, 2023. When trying to upload one of those photos I have to select a licence. Some of his photos are from 1927 and older, making the licence clear (The copyright has definitely expired in the USA - First published before 1928 and author deceased more than 70 years ago). Some works are from 1928-1947 though, am I correct in assuming these photos cannot be uploaded to Commons? -- Spinal83 (talk) 13:34, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes, unfortunately. Unless they were published in the United States within 30 days of being published in the Netherlands (which would qualify them as a "United States work" and avoid the URAA restorations), or remained unpublished anywhere until 2003 (which would make the U.S. term 70pma as well), they would be under U.S. copyright for 95 years from publication. So pre-1928 works are fine, and a few more become fine each year going forward. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:01, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
I don't know if they were published or not :( Presumably most were, but probably not in the US within 30 days. That really is a shame, there are some photos that would be great to add to Commons. Thanks! -- Spinal83 (talk) 16:09, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
Yep. Do the photos come from the author, or were they generally published elsewhere? For many photos, I don't think we have much problem assuming they were published around the time they were taken, but if they came from the author's estate after they died, it can get a lot more problematic. Carl Lindberg (talk) 21:07, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
The photographer was working freelance for the local newspaper, but it will be hard to check which ones exactly. The rest come from his estate I think, donated to the local archives, and have now been released. -- Spinal83 (talk) 09:13, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Why are the files in Category:Works copyrighted in the U.S. not deleted?

Wondering why the images in the Category:Works copyrighted in the U.S. have not been deleted they should be deleted as copyrighted images are not allowed on commons Qwv (talk) 20:22, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

As explained in Category:Works copyrighted in the U.S. the category collects images that are in copyright in the US as a result of Commons:URAA. There is a split in the Commons community whether works affected by this one issue should be deleted or retained.
Hypothetical: you have two files with identical parameters and US copyright restored solely from application of URAA. You take the two files to separate deletion discussions and the arguments raised are identical on each page. An administrator on the first discussion closes as delete on the basis that US copyright is restored. A different administrator on the second discussion keeps the file citing guidance from WMF's legal team about not deleting files held on Commons prior to the advice being given solely for reasons of URAA.
The first administrator's interpretation is that the WMF guidance applies only to older images stored here - we won't go out of our way to delete the content here but that doesn't give us a right to upload new files that breach URAA. So the right call is to delete.
The second administrator extrapolates the principles set out in the WMF guidance and says that the files uploaded before the guidance are effectively identical to the files uploaded after. If we keep one file for URAA reasons then we should keep all files where the same reason applies.
There is no consensus on which interpretation is correct. I nominated a few of these cases for deletion but stopped after I came across the split interpretation issue. From Hill To Shore (talk) 20:51, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
This is something that has annoyed me to no end. Another issue is whether COM:GRAFFITI can be accepted in countries without FoP under the theory that the graffiti artist would not have standing to enforce their copyright; DR results seem to depend entirely on which admin is doing the closing. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:01, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

File:Shoot Six, 1969, Sam Gilliam, at NGA 2022.jpg

I was hoping to get some help identifying whether this work is truly in the public domain and free to upload to Commons. I've been unable to find a record of any original copyright notice for Sam Gilliam's painting Shoot Six (1965), owned by the National Gallery of Art - there's no record of registration with LOC or a notice displayed with publication. Does that mean it should be OK to upload? Or am I looking at this from the wrong perspective, and is there a bigger onus to comb through exhibition archives to determine if it did originally have a copyright notice? Figured I'd ask before I rely on this method to determine PD status for more historical works like this. Thanks! 19h00s (talk) 17:15, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

According to the guidance at Commons:Public_art_and_copyrights_in_the_US#Before_1978, placing it in a gallery that does not allow taking copies would not constitute publication, and therefore no notice would have been required. I am not sure what the implications of this are for public museums, and what their policies on taking copies would have been in the 1960s and the 1970s. Felix QW (talk) 18:31, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
That painting was definitely shown in multiple public museums/galleries shortly after its completion, including at Gilliam's first museum show at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. While obviously people couldn't exactly take cell phone pictures back then, the Phillips has never had a rule against photography. 19h00s (talk) 21:39, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
Seems like you have done your research. Then I think you can be confident with the no-notice tag. For actual, handcrafted visual art, with nuanced texture on canvas etc. I would be hesitant to conclude that the threshold of originality has not been reached. Felix QW (talk) 21:22, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
Alternately, does this painting seem like it passes the threshold of originality for copyrighted art? It's technically just several colored triangles placed on a canvas, which would seem to fall under the copyright office's "simple geometric designs" rules. --19h00s (talk) 22:51, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Florida Memory

Florida Memory is part of the State Library and Archives of Florida. It offers its images under the PDM (Florida Memory offers all images under the terms of the Creative Commons Public Domain Mark 1.0 (PDM 1.0). This indicates that the images are free from all known copyright restrictions.), but it's hard to determine the actual license status of the images. I am trying to untangle the license status of the images in en:WPST-TV, some of which come from there. Even though they have PDM, it's hard to discern who took the photos and thus if they are PD-FLGov. How should I proceed?

The photos in immediate question are File:George T Baker 1940.jpg, File:WPST-TV Miami "Good Morning" show interview of Julius La Rosa.jpg, File:Richard Mack.jpg (which is extra likely for PD-FLGov since he worked for the state government when this was taken), and File:Molly Turner, WPST-TV hostess.jpg. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 20:05, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Oof. That is not a great tag for them to be using, but if we think they are the copyright owner of material transferred to them, then we do have {{PDMark-owner}}. For things that are old photographic prints, maybe we can assume {{PD-US-no notice}}. Works by Florida government departments could be {{PD-FLGov}}. Maybe the more general {{PD-US}} if we are less sure. Looks like CC0 was used on those photos, which is incorrect. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:14, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
@Clindberg They are photos from 1940 and the late 1950s, so the time period certainly fits. The dot pattern in the Mack one suggests an extract from some sort of publication. Would {{PD-US-no notice}} be a suitable tag for all four of them? Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 17:43, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
This is similar to the case of PD-BNF. I stand by what I said in that discussion. Essentially, if we determine through independent research that a file is clearly not PD, then of course it must be deleted. If such cases are rare for Florida Memory, then we can consider Florida Memory a reliable authority capable of satisfying COM:EVID. That is, normally if a file merely looks like it might be a government work or has no visible notice on the portion visible, we still require additional research to prove that it is actually a government work or that it has no copyright notice on the back, other pages, etc., without which we would delete per COM:PCP. However, for me a PDM declaration by a reliable authority reduces our own burden of evidence to "here's the most plausible way it could be PD, let's assume that the authority has done the research to confirm the necessary findings of fact". -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:27, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
That's reassuring to hear, @King of Hearts. So how should these images be tagged? Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 20:06, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, I don't see any reason to disallow uploads from there, unless there are other circumstances (derivative work, or a foreign work still copyrighted in country of origin). I would not use PD-US-no_notice unless we are fairly sure we are looking at the entire work -- something scanned from a publication no, unless we know the publication and can see that there was no notice. However, we do have the catch-all {{PD-US}} tag when we are sure enough that it is PD, but aren't sure about it is due to lack of notice or renewal, or some other reason. I might buy {{PD-FLGov}} for the Mack one. Carl Lindberg (talk) 01:22, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
@Clindberg The data does say that most are photo prints or from photo negatives. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 01:40, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
With regard to the Florida Memory Project, the template {{Attribution-FLGov-PhotoColl}} may be relevant. The information in that template implies that Florida Memory Project works can be freely reused though giving attribution is required. If the information in the template is not accurate, perhaps the template could be edited. --Gazebo (talk) 05:11, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Stamps of Bhutan

Hello. Does anyone know what the copyright status for stamps of Bhutan is? Unfortunately they aren't mentioned on Commons:Copyright rules by territory/Bhutan. I guess they could potentially be public domain since works by employees of the government are, but from what I've seen such laws don't usually apply to stamps. The other options are either "create + 25 years" for applied art or "create/publish + 50 years" for collective works (whatever that means). It's questionable if stamps are applied art though. So I'm interested in what other people think. Adamant1 (talk) 04:43, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

I was recently reading w:en:Dawlat al-Islam Qamat and I noticed that there was a full-length version of the unofficial national anthem of ISIS hosted on Commons as File:Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant anthem.ogg. The copyright notice is {{PD-because}} with the English-language reason of Common property. The file comes from a country that is not recognized, so official documents from that country can not be copyrighted.

This sort of claim seems to be pretty absolute; all original works of ISIS would be rendered into the public domain under this logic. I'm wondering if there's a consensus as it pertains to whether original creative works of ISIS (and, by extension the Ajnad Media Foundation) are in the public domain owing to the the coupling of the lack of U.S. recognition of ISIS with lack of copyright "law" passed by ISIS, or if these works should be treated as if they were created by an ordinary corporate author in Iraq or Syria. Is there any consensus as to how to treat works of ISIS from a copyright perspective? — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 07:46, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

I tried once and the consensus is that because armed groups cannot hold copyrights, the copyrights belong to individual person who originally created it. Which considering the fact that tracking them and contacting is near impossible means they're out of reach for us. Borysk5 (talk) 09:36, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
We discussed that back when the first ISIS flags appeared. As far as I remember, consensus was that copyright still applies. See also the somewhat related Commons cares about copyright even when a copyright owner does not. El Grafo (talk) 11:31, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

A whole bunch of copyvios

Hi, I need some help: What do I do with a whole bunch of images that need to be nominated as presumable copyvios? Do I really have to tag every single one or is there some shortcut?

It's the uploads by this user. The majority of them appear to be images from an advertising agency. The photographer would have the Urheberrecht, and the advertising agency they work for would sell usage rights to the Stadtwerke Pforzheim which has made them available on their website for use as press photos. I don't see any indication of a Creative Commons license anywhere along the way, which would be unusual for press photos anyway.

I just tagged one of the images and then discovered that there is this whole bunch of them. Can someone help please? Thanks, --87.150.9.111 21:34, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

I tagged most of them. They will be deleted after a week or so, unless the uploader provides some evidence for a free license. Yann (talk) 22:03, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you! The uploader seems to have been active on the German WP these days, so they may notice and react. --87.150.9.111 23:25, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

FOP Taiwan

COM:FOP Taiwan.

At first, it is not OK for 2D or 3D artistic works to be uploaded to Commons. After talks in 2018, 3D artistic works are allowed. And after talks in 2020, 2D artistic works are allowed.

However, the sale of reproductions (photos, etc) of outdoor artistic works is not allowed according to Article 58 of Copyright Law of Republic of China (Taiwan) literally. In fact, the FOP provision in Taiwan is the same as COM:FOP Japan. (English version of Copyright Law of Japan here, see Art.46 (iv))

After consulting TIPO, the copyright authority of Taiwan, it is not OK to photograph an outdoor artistic work and sell the copies of it if the artistic work is the theme or the main part of the photo. This applies to both 2D and 3D artistic works. And the article by TIPO (Commons:Copyright_rules_by_territory/Taiwan#cite_note-7), the reference of allowing 2D artistic works, was deleted and clarified then.

So FOP Taiwan can be summarized here,

  • OK for architectural works.
  •  Not OK for 2D or 3D artistic works. You cannot sell the photos of them so these photos are not free enough.

The replies of TIPO are translated below.

(二) 至於如拍攝戶外彩繪牆塗鴉（美術著作）並將其製成明信片販售，是否構成本法第58條第4款「專門以販賣美術著作重製物為目的所為之重製」之情形，原則上如係以特定美術著作作為「攝影主題」或「拍攝重點」，並將該照片印製於明信片上，再加以販售，應屬第58條第4款之情形，利用人不得依本款主張合理使用；惟如係將該等美術著作作為人物照或其他風景照之襯托背景，而該美術著作係屬「附隨存在」於照片內(而非攝影重點)，則有依本法第58條第4款主張合理使用之空間。至於本局智慧財產權月刊192期(第77頁)所述得依本法第58條主張合理使用之情形僅限於上述「附隨利用」他人戶外美術著作之情形，惟為避免造成誤解，本局將撤除本頁相關內容，併予說明。
(2) As to whether the photographing of outdoor graffiti (artistic works) and print it in postcards for sale constitute the situation of "reproduction of artistic works for the purpose of selling reproductions" in paragraph 4 of Article 58 of the Law, in principle, if a specific artistic work is taken as the "theme" or the "focus", and the photos are printed in postcards for sale, it should be the situation of paragraph 4 of Article 58, one shall not claim fair use* in accordance with this article; However, if such artistic works are used as the background for portrait photos or other landscape photos, and such art works are "attached" to the photos (not the focus of photo)*, there is a space for fair use in accordance with Paragraph 4 of Article 58 of the Law. As for the situation of fair use in accordance with Article 58 of the Law mentioned in the Vol.192 (p.77) of TIPO's monthly magazine, it is only limited to the above-mentioned "incidental use" of outdoor artistic works. However, to avoid misunderstanding, we will remove the relevant content on this page and give an explanation.

Summary: The par.4 of Art.58 do not apply to the situation that the artistic work is the main part of the photo.

Notes: The limitations of copyright (scope of copyright) is generally called "fair use" in Taiwan. If the artistic work is not the main part of the photo, COM:DM may apply then.

一、所詢問題一：著作權法(下稱本法)第58條第4款「專門以販賣美術著作重製物為目的而重製」，該條款所稱之「美術著作」，並不限於平面之美術著作，立體美術著作(如雕塑)亦屬之，請參考本法第5條第1項各款著作內容例示第2點(四)；意即若係拍攝以該戶外雕塑作為「攝影重點」之照片，並將照片製成明信片販售，同樣構成本法第58條第4款「專門以販賣美術著作重製物為目的所為之重製」之情形，利用人不得依本款主張合理使用。
Article 58, paragraph 4 of the Copyright Law "reproduction of artistic works for the purpose of selling reproductions". The term "artistic works" mentioned in this article is not limited to 2D works, but also 3D works (such as sculpture). Please refer to 2(4) of the illustration of Article 5, Paragraph 1 of the Law; It means that if the outdoor sculpture is taken as the "focus of photo" and the photos are printed in postcards for sale, it also constitutes the situation of "reproduction of artistic works for the purpose of selling reproductions" in Article 58, Paragraph 4 of the Act, and one shall not claim fair use in accordance with this paragraph.

Summary: The par.4 of Art.58 do not apply to the situation that the 3D artistic work is the main part of the photo.

針對來信所詢「某乙販售某甲所拍攝之『含有戶外美術著作之照片』行為，得否屬合理使用」，承上(一)所述，就某甲以「非販售目的」所為之重製戶外美術著作之行為，可依本法第58條主張合理使用，惟就第三人某乙販售(散布)上開照片重製物之行為，如可認係為專門販售美術著作重製物所為之散布，恐不得依本法第63條第3項規定進行散布，故某乙除須取得該等攝影著作之著作財產權人(某甲)之同意或授權外，亦須取得該等戶外美術著作之著作財產權人同意或授權，始得為之，否則即有可能構成著作權之侵害。
The reproduction of outdoor artistic works by A for "non-commercial purposes" may be used reasonably in accordance with Article 58 of the Law. However, if the said reproduction is sold by B (another person) solely for the purpose of selling reproductions, the selling may be not OK in accordance with Par.3 of Art.63 of the Law. Therefore, B must get the authorization from both A and the copyright owner of the original artistic work lest it would be considered as infringement of copyright.

Summary: Though Article 58 only prohibits the reproduction without permission, the sale of the reproduction is also not OK.

Therefore, COM:FOP Taiwan, {{FoP-Taiwan}}, maps and tables in COM:FOP should be revised and artistic work photos in Category:FoP-Taiwan should be deleted.

Ping @Wcam, Jameslwoodward, Jeff G., Leoboudv, Prosfilaes, Kai3952, Alexis Jazz, Ww2censor, and Reke in previous talks. Teetrition (talk) 10:36, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

PS. The replies of TIPO are under {{GWOIA}}, attribution to TIPO(經濟部智慧財產局). Teetrition (talk) 12:34, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
Looks reasonable. It probably makes sense to add a note about COM:DM as well; it seems to be OK to intentionally include a copyrighted artwork as the backdrop of a portrait, which is far more permissive than the DM of most other countries. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:46, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
@King of Hearts: I do not think it is more permissive than other countries' DM. The response not only mentions "focus" but also "theme": if a specific artistic work is taken as the "theme" or the "focus", and the photos are printed in postcards for sale, it should be the situation of paragraph 4 of Article 58, one shall not claim fair use* in accordance with this article; (fair use here refers to freedom of panorama). Theme in my opinion is synonymous to intended subject. I can see a DM similar to France's but not Estonia's or Cambodia's. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 15:58, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
My suggestion is to ask WMTW members @Supaplex, Ffaarr, Imacat, GDHFang, Alexsh, Koala0090, JM99, MonicaMu, Natsu621, and Isocyclo: @林非帶你飛: to check whether those limits you mentioned are NCRs or not. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 14:29, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
@Liuxinyu970226: The provision that the sale of copies of outdoor artistic works without permission is not allowed is one paragraph of COPYRIGHT Law of ROC, in FOP provision (Art.58) in Section Limitations of Copyright. You can take the photo of an outdoor artistic works JUST because FOP provision allows you to do so as long as you do not sell it otherwise it constitutes the situation that Item.4 of Art.58 describes. Item 1 to 4 of Art.58 are exclusions of FOP provision. Please read Art.58 of Copyright Law of ROC again. I know what is NCR and have never talked about non-copyright restrictions. Teetrition (talk) 15:08, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
@Liuxinyu970226: it is unfortunate but, with these most recent official correspondences from TIPO, Taiwan's going to be like USA, Russia, and Japan. The 2018 opinions became invalid. Stefan2's analysis here makes sense after all. After all, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea have similar FOP provisions and the "four conditions" (but SoKor is more restricted as it does not limit non-commercial use to artistic works only). I have corrected the entries for Taiwan on English Wikipedia and on Tagalog Wikipedia. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 15:39, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
Considering @Kai3952 emailed me and said that members in WMTW and counsellors of the said organization held different views on it, and Liuxinyu970226 has already pinged them, I will wait for reasonable dissidences before the talk being archived. Teetrition (talk) 05:17, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

No new comments so far and today the discussion will be automatically archived by bot. Thanks to @JWilz12345 for updating COM:FOP Taiwan and {{FoP-Taiwan}}. I will translate {{FoP-Taiwan}} into Chinese (both Simp. and Trad.) and Japanese. Teetrition (talk) 10:32, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Checkmark This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Teetrition (talk) 10:32, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Files by daves_archive1 (Flickr)

I was really shocked when I found this user in a bad authors list yesterday night. This flickr account has many valued retro images of Europe (1960s-90s) with a high resolution and quality. I don't understand why the author's actions have been regarded as flickrwashing. Typically bad flickr authors upload low-res bad quality images which readily can be found in Internet via Tineye (prior to upload date). And they don't upload so many images. I have checked many images without any results in Internet. This user may be 70-80 years old so uploading number of old photos may be reasonable. I request to remove this user from blacklist. Thanks Юрий Д.К. (talk) 20:39, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

We seem to have Category:Files from foundin a attic Flickr stream, which contain files from this Flickr user's linked accounts. I am not sure why they are on a bad author list but looking through their files on Flickr, they have uploaded some photographs of works copyrighted by other authors. At the very least, an automatic import from Flickr could cause us to record incorrect author information. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable in this area could chip in. From Hill To Shore (talk) 21:44, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
I am not sure what you mean by your edited comment, "And they don't upload so many images." The Flickr account says it currently has 164,721 images uploaded. Can you please explain your meaning there? From Hill To Shore (talk) 21:52, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for response. And they don't upload so many images - I mean that bad flickr authors typically do not upload tens of thousands of images. Many good flickr user can randomly upload unfree content (covers, DWs, FOP violations) but is not a reason to ban entire user' photoset (if number of violations very low). If admins de-listed this user I will check uploads, put categories and avoid automatic import (as I always do). Юрий Д.К. (talk) 22:02, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
I just picked out a single one at random, File:College Road, Harrow.jpg, and it turns out to be a commercial 1937 postcard. Since there is zero information on the Flickr pages, we have no idea whether the postcard credits the photographer on the reverse, and therefore whether it is still copyrighted in the UK, while it will definitely be copyrighted in the US due to the URAA restorations.
Given that I would definitely object to taking images from this account if there is no description whatsoever regarding the real provenance of the pictures. Felix QW (talk) 14:10, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Choice of source country

Recently I've come across several situations that have made me think about how we determine source country. Unfortunately, doing so is not always straightforward, and there is almost no official documentation of our current practices. Here is what I understand to be the de facto common practice on Commons in various situations, as well as some that I'm not sure on:

One question to consider: Why do we require works to be free in their source country? We are only legally obligated to ensure that they are free in the US. (Of course, in certain situations there can be US legal implications of determining the source country, e.g. for URAA, but that is not the majority of cases. And once URAA gets involved, by definition the source country is more permissive than the US on that work, so the point is moot.) The way we choose to answer this question will likely impact how we choose to determine source country. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 09:41, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

@King of Hearts: in terms of FOP, the source country needs to be taken into account. Perhaps by following U.S. law, we can finally host Louvre Pyramid, Grande Arche, or Millau Viaduct here, but we may instead receive complaints from French artists and anti-Wikimedia politicians. Remember that in the FOP discourse in the EU Parliament in summer 2015, France was a vocal opponent of commercial freedom of panorama that Wikimedia tried to apply in the whole of EU. That opposition implies the power of artists' societies in France to strike Wikimedia Commons with their own version of take-down notices. We may get relief from DMCA notices, but new notices from anti-Wikimedia peoples in France, Greece (who also launched opposition in 2015), and other states may come soon. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 13:26, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
Not if the architect of the Louvre Pyramid, Grande Arche, or Millau Viaduct allowed for a replica to be installed in the US (and if the US replica is not inhabitable, then it wouldn't be considered a building and so wouldn't be allowed anyways). I don't think anyone has the right to complain if they knowingly authorized a copy to be placed in a country with FoP. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:15, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
I think Wikimedia is just making up these rules. Borysk5 (talk) 17:29, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
@Borysk5: blame the relatively obsolete FOP rules of several copyright laws. Yemen, Nepal, and a couple of others do not even have FOP clauses, though copyright laws usually work in "what is not written is forbidden" rule. U.S. FOP has no mention of sculptural works in Title 17, and this resulted to successful litigations like Gaylord v. United States, where U.S. courts did not adhere to "what is not written is allowed" general rule in laws. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 17:34, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

In my response, in terms of freedom of panorama, I prefer sticking to the present rule, based on the physical location of a certain permanent work. I disagree in the application of U.S. law because of the following reasons:

  1. As per my response above. But let's say, the architects of the said French architecture will use U.S. law as the basis, the French legislature as well as the copyright office may disagree, since Commons is a global site that serves multiple languages and aimed for all countries. This is in contrast to English Wikipedia, which despite its global reach is exclusively served by English, the main language of the U.S., and I think the use of U.S. FOP (w:en:Template:FoP-USonly) is reasonable there. In this case, the French authorities may unduly order the blocking of WikiCommons because it chooses to follow only U.S. law, and this deprives French Wikimedians.
  2. This proposal needs a long discussion and participation of many users, since it would impact millions of photos of contemporary non-architecture from U.K., Australia, Canada, and several more countries with adequate FOP.
  3. The proposal leads to the wastage of efforts made by Wikimedia Belgium in introducing adequate FOP in 2016, and also the effort made by Armenians to introduce FOP in their country in 2013. The introduced FOP laws of both countries are not only limited to architecture.
  4. If the efforts of Belgian and Armenian Wikimedians may lead to waste, more so for us (Filipino Wikimedians) and South African Wikimedians. There are efforts today to introduce FOP in South Africa (see meta:Wikimedia South Africa/Copyright Amendment Bill). Similarly, we are attempting to introduce FOP here, as stated at meta:Pilipinas Panorama Community/Freedom of Panorama (thanks to supportive users like @Buszmail and Ralffralff: ). The FOP provisions that we and the South African Wikimedians are attempting to introduce are not limited to architecture. Off-Commons, there are also attempts to introduce adequate FOP in Ghana, Sudan, Georgia, and Kazakhstan.

For Commons to host more buildings like Burj Khalifa and Lotte World Tower, Wikimedian intervention to the physical location countries' legislatures and sectors is highly encouraged, instead of this proposal that I think is just a temporary ("band-aid") solution.

And isn't this proposal a déjà vu to the application of U.S. FOP for unfree buildings in the English Wikipedia? (And therefore, w:Template:FoP-USonly was born?) Let enwiki host images of unfree international buildings following the U.S. law, and retain the status quo of Commons in terms of freedom of panorama. I will not comment on other aspects like logos and musical recordings, just on FOP aspect. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 18:29, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

@JWilz12345: I believe we have a misunderstanding here. When I asked "Why do we require works to be free in their source country?", I did not mean to imply that we shouldn't require them to be free in their source country. I genuinely wanted to know the purpose for this rule in order to better motivate how we go about choosing the source country. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:42, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
@King of Hearts: my apology here. Perhaps this is because I hate seeing the renewed effort for freedom of panorama introduction here being wasted. The renewed fervor is due to the 3 of the 5 pending copyright law amendment bills in our lower chamber of Congress having the sought-after FOP clause, as well as the formation of a thematic group ("Pilipinas Panorama Community" User Group) aimed for promotion of FOP and cultural heritage awareness here. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 10:32, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
The term "source country" is used in the URAA, and is specifically defined in terms of URAA restorations. The term "country of origin" is used in the Berne Convention, and is what our policy is based on, since we want to piggy-back on having works PD in rule-of-the-shorter-term countries. The two terms are closely related, but slightly different.
The Berne Convention uses the country of first publication as the country of origin. If works are "simultaneously published" in multiple countries, meaning within 30 days, then the Berne Convention says to use the country with the shorter terms. I don't think we can deviate from that. Of course, if countries change laws to lengthen or shorten terms, or countries divide up or join together, that definition can lead into weird possibilities, and I don't think there are any court cases around that. Still, I'd probably tend to just follow the definition in the Berne Convention as best we can.
The URAA "source country" is also the country of first publication. The use the Berne 30-day window, if published within 30 days in the U.S., to claim something as a "United Stated work" and thereby avoid URAA restoration altogether. However if that is not the case, then there is no 30-day window -- the source country is the one where it was first published. If first published in multiple countries on the same day, then the source country is the one with the "greatest contacts" with the work -- i.e. maybe where taken, or where the author lived, that sort of thing. More of a common-sense tiebreaker instead of using the country with the shorter terms. Again, when it comes to URAA restorations, we'd have to follow that definition to determine the U.S. status of the work. Almost all of the time, the "country of origin" and the "source country" are the same, but in very rare cases they may not be.
When it comes to situations like freedom of panorama across borders, we have to make up our own rules if there is no guidance in court cases. We try to use common sense, and perhaps go on the more lenient side, but would prefer to guess along what a court might do, in case it ever does come before a judge and then we may have to change policies to more closely hew to that decision.
As for the last question, the "free in the country of origin" is indeed a policy choice. I suspect it's because we are an international project, and many of the works will have a target audience in other countries, and that can minimize problems by making sure works are PD in the target audience most of the time. Different wikis will use different laws, and that policy tends to match up with those. Additionally, if it is PD in the Berne country of origin, that means it is also PD in the fairly large number of countries which use the rule of the shorter term. So that definition means a work is pretty widely useable. If we only used U.S. terms, there can be a wide mismatch at times with what most of the world uses. Works can be PD in the US, and not others, and the temptation may be to use such images in other language wikis when they are not PD there, but only the U.S. That decision was made long before I got here, but makes quite a bit of sense. We have little choice on the U.S. part of the policy, because we are a U.S. organization and any takedown notice will be based on U.S. law and we have to respect that (while obviously trying to not have the situation which makes a takedown notice necessary, exist in the first place). We did carve out an exception to use PD-Art at all times, and ignore the country of origin. We could do that with photos of buildings too if we so chose. Carl Lindberg (talk) 23:09, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Carl! Do you have an opinion on my question about variant logos (in abstract terms, essentially a derivative work created by the same copyright holder published in a different country from the original work) or musical recordings (in abstract terms, essentially a derivative work created with the copyright holder's permission published in a different country from the original work)? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:44, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Screenshots of non-WMF pedia sites

Does the licensing of File:Portada L'Enciclopèdia.jpg need to be tweaked since it's technically a screenshot of the main page of en:L'Enciclopèdia in Valencian? I don't believe it's a site operated by the WMF, but it seems to use similar software and have similar licensing. I know that {{Wikipedia-screenshot}} is used for screenshots of WMF project websites, but I'm not sure whether there's something similar for non-WMF pedia types of sites. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:58, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

I added the Free Screenshot wrapper template now, and I think that's the best we've got.
Wikipedia-Screenshot is very specific, and also adds the wrong license in this case. Felix QW (talk) 21:22, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you Felix QW. -- Marchjuly (talk) 10:34, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Artworks by Charles Sheeler

Hi, We have a number of paintings by Charles Sheeler (American artist, 1883-1965), which do not have a proper license. They may be in the public domain for some reason, but the license should be fixed. Here is a list. Thanks to anyone for checking the copyright status. Yann (talk) 12:18, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

OK, nobody cares, so I changed the license to {{PD-Art|PD-US}}, at least a plausible license. Yann (talk) 15:45, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

DOD-affiliated sites treating non-DOD works as being in the public domain + Flickr users requiring prior permission to reuse while simultaneously using Commons-friendly licensing

Don't know if I can combine questions like this, but one query popped into my head while I was typing up the other, and I don't think I'll be able to clear my head of said query otherwise.

Firstly, I've noticed quite a few works on DVIDS etc. which have been rather obviously created by people who aren't affiliated with the US DOD in any way but are being treated as if they were in the public domain anyway. For an egregious example, here's a Flickr mirror of a British serviceman's photographic work that was uploaded to DVIDS (and later taken down in the rush to purge the site of anything remotely looking like Afghanistan)... and here's the Defence Imagery version, complete with Crown Copyright notice. On the one hand, we probably should be deferring to the copyright situation in the actual author's home country, but at the same time the fact that such works have been hosted on DVIDS in the first place, complete with VIRINs that actually reflect the non-US origin of the work, means that the situation probably isn't so clear-cut. "What do?"

Secondly, I've come across at least a few Flickr images where the original author forbids reuse without prior permission, but at the same time the images in question are filed under Commons-friendly licensing (see more or less this entire photostream for example). On the one hand, the requirement for permission means that the images aren't as reusable as the licensing would indicate, but why then have they chosen to upload their work under something that gives them no real recourse if someone doesn't care about getting permission and that, in most other contexts, already expresses or implies permission to reuse? Theoretically the basic licensing arrangement trumps anything else (pretty sure there was some sort of discussion about this in the context of certain PD-USGov works), but the stated requirement for permission does pose something of a moral quandary. Some variation or other of "Yes, I know you wanted me to ask for permission first, but then you should have uploaded that image under a standard copyright licence, shouldn't you?" doesn't seem like a good answer if, after someone uploads such an image here, the original photographer notices this and decides to come knocking. - Dvaderv2 (talk) 04:01, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

I have no idea what you mean by your first question, but as to your second one, I would say this sets up a situation of "dual-licensed" works. That is, the works are licensed by the author under both a permissive CC and their more restrictive whatchamacallit. IANAL of course, but it seems that if you choose to use a license when releasing a copyrighted work, any court worth its salt will hold you to the terms of that license, notwithstanding your out-of-band attempts to place additional burdens on licensees. Elizium23 (talk) 04:18, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi, For the first question, it is not clear if you are taking about US or non-US works, as we have Commons:VIRIN, which is about US works.
You are right that the account on Flickr seems confused. The picture you linked above is under a free license, but the account informaton says Images uploaded to Flickr are free for dissemination by media outlets and all other interested persons or organizations for newsworthy or educational media products. They are not, however, and in accordance to Flickr policy, to be used with the intention of reproducing and selling the images without prior consent of the releasing authority... They should be contacted to make clear that the license is in contradiction with this statement. Yann (talk) 09:19, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Please escalate my deletion to speedydeletion/copyright violation

this is a direct copyright violation of my own work and i am being hindered in the process of requesting speedy deletion. i am unfamiliar with the workings of wikipedia and am requesting assistance in the prompt removal of my illegally hosted content on this website.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Powelliphantapatrickensis2.jpg VoidseekerNZ (talk) 09:42, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

The image was uploaded by your account and released more than 3 weeks ago under a free licence. While we allow uploaders 7 days to request speedy deletion in the case of mistaken upload, this is much later than that. This has been converted into a standard deletion process at Commons:Deletion requests/File:Powelliphantapatrickensis2.jpg where a more detailed discussion can take place. From Hill To Shore (talk) 10:08, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Since VNZ denies being the person who uploaded the photo, then we have a case of a compromised account. A putatively unknown user has accessed the Wikipedia account of VNZ, found this photo file on the HDD, and uploaded it to Wikimedia without the permission of the person now controlling the VNZ account. I humbly recommend an immediate indefinite block to be imposed upon @VoidseekerNZ, pending investigation and assurances that the rightful owner and creator of the VNZ account has regained control and revoked access to unauthorized persons. Elizium23 (talk) 10:23, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
i humbly suggest that a block is uncalled for and is only meant to be used as a preventative measure, not a punitive one. i'm not sure what future good it will serve. i will change my password and email promptly and secure my desktop, i dont want a repeat of this myself as this is a commercially sensitive work that was never meant to make it to the internet, lest of all in this high of a definition. this is an endangered species in NZ, a high poaching target that possibly contains sensitive exif data, and it is a commercially sensitive photo to boot, hence my urgency and annoyance at the lack of speedy deletion for clear copyright violation in my eyes.
unless you know of some further risk of my copyright being hosted against my wishes i don't see what purpose a block would serve. once my personal copyright info is removed from the site then i will be happy to let the matter rest. VoidseekerNZ (talk) 10:28, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
So which is it??? An unknown person got into your account in a way you don't know how? You've promised to change your password and email address, but what if your adversary has installed a keylogger and will capture that data as soon as you enter it here? A block is meant to protect your account and the project from harm, and since you don't seem to know any details of your compromise, we're all going to assume you're still compromised.
By the way, if you're serious about security and you're protecting sensitive data, then I suggest enabling MFA everywhere possible. It is available to editors here, and is easy to use. Elizium23 (talk) 10:33, 19 January 2023 (UTC)H
with all due respect, you are being rather antagonistic and it seems like you're trying to push me into reacting or something. perhaps i've misread, but your tone is rather dismissive and condescending, and not very helpful. i also don't see how it helps solve the issue, nor does it fall in line with a key wikipedia policy of "assume good faith". i can guarantee you my computer is secure, and if there are further issues with my posting then i could see how a block would be warranted. currently, your ambitions seem punitive, and i am going to respectfully exit the conversation here and remind everyone that all i am doing here is asserting ownership over what is legally mine - something you are advocating against. VoidseekerNZ (talk) 11:03, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
User:Elizium23 is not antagonistic, he simply points out that your version of the event relating to this upload does not make much sense. SV1XV (talk) 19:24, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
i still fail to see how any of this is relevant to a discussion on copyright of this image. it's all rather distractionary from the main issue and does nothing to solve the problem. what i am requesting is not contrversial. it is a perfectly normal routine for wikimedia to delete images with uncertain licensing history. and yet, everyone here is throwing up obstacles at every opportunity, which seems to my eyes to be a violation of wikipedia principles, such as the precautionary principle for example. there is already a strong set of policy and precedent informing us on how to deal with ambiguously licensed works. so why are we sitting around going back and forth when it's a relatively simple thing to sort and the policy documents are quite clear?
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Project_scope/Precautionary_principle VoidseekerNZ (talk) 20:36, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

@VoidseekerNZ: I'll admit: I'm really confused. How can you simultaneously say "anyone" could have performed an action that requires access to your drive and your account, and that you can "guarantee" your computer is secure. It just doesn't make sense. - Jmabel ! talk 20:24, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

because i have since bought a new device since that date, i have 2 factor auth, and a clean brand new email. since when did i have to provide a malware scan to assert authority over my own legal copyright? and why are a half dozen people on this website actively trying to steal my legal intellectual property in clear violation of wikipedia principles such as the precautionary principle? i really need some assistance because im out of my depth but i certainly know it is highly illegal for people to just put free licenses on my work when i have quite clearly stated multiple times this is theft and the license was given without my consent or knowledge.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Project_scope/Precautionary_principle VoidseekerNZ (talk) 20:50, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Someone using your account uploaded it with a free license and someone with your account says it is their picture uploaded with out their permission. A prosecutor is not going to treat the refusal to delete as a highly criminal act; in fact, I doubt we'd even be liable in a civil court in any situation, since we (the volunteers) are not hosting the file, and we have no duty to you. For the law to come into play, you'd need to file a DMCA notice under penalty of perjury, which might be a highly illegal act.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:56, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
what would happen if i lied and i never took the photo and im uploading a commercial photo without permission? VoidseekerNZ (talk) 22:17, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Presumably you would get a warning and be told not to do that again under risk of a block Trade (talk) 23:13, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@VoidseekerNZ: If you were to make that claim after this lengthy set of remarks that say quite otherwise, we'd probably delete the photo, but also block your account on the basis that we can't trust a thing you say. - Jmabel ! talk 02:27, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
so the best solution to a copyright issue is to lie about it? it is ridiculous to me the way this system operates. someone told me on discord that if the image had been uploaded under a different user and then i made the CC claim it would likely be deleted by now. i have to say this is an incredibly frustrating system to try deal with where i am punished for telling the truth. i was not even home the week this photo was uploaded, it occurred on december 26th and i was away for the entire holiday period so there is no possible way i could have consented to this fraudulent CC license. VoidseekerNZ (talk) 03:20, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
A key problem we have here is that you keep changing your story and you keep making false claims about the licence releases your account has made (and changed) on other websites.[2][3] While our guideline here is to assume good faith, we can't take all of your contradictory comments and actions as truthful, as that is an impossibility. If you had made an honest assertion to begin with and stuck to the one version of events, we would have looked into the situation and come to a conclusion. The more you try to change your story, the less trust people will have in you and the longer this will drag on as we try to work out what is true and false. From Hill To Shore (talk) 03:38, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
im sorry but when did i EVER change my story?? my story is very simple. i did not grant the CC licenses and if it was done by my computer, it was done without my knowledge. that is what has happened. now everywhere i go im accused of lying and nobody is listening to me. these photos are ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. any CC licences you are digging up are incorrect, hence why i am telling you. there is nothing to revoke, i am not trying to revoke a CC licence, these licenses were never grante by the owner in the first place!
please see below, inaturalist has just recently recognised my copyright claim and deleted this specific photo and they have removed the fraudulent CC license! i am hoping wikimedia / wikipedia / whoeverpedia can find their way to a prompt solution with this info that other research based organisations are quite happily respecting my wishes about this flagrant theft of my intellectual property.
https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/115638245 VoidseekerNZ (talk) 04:52, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Repeating the question I asked at DR: Why is the user that flagged the image the same as the user who uploaded the image? Usually one doesn't make copyright claims against one's own uploads. On iNaturalist it was uploaded in 2021, so I don't think you're going to get us to believe that it was uploaded with that account without authorization and somehow the owner of that account didn't notice for two years. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:03, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Obviously this request is an effort to revoke a free license, for reasons unknown. AFAIK Creative Commons licenses are irrevocable. SV1XV (talk) 05:16, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
can you please provide evidence that i ever granted a license for this image? i have stated EXPLICITLY that i have never given knowing consent of these images! if you have evidence that it was me who uploaded this photo to wikipedia than go ahead and prove it please, because these flagrant attacks on my character are uncalled for and i am close to making a post in the ANI noticeboard or something requesting mediation as these consistent allegations that i am acting in bad faith are extremely detrimental to this entire process. VoidseekerNZ (talk) 05:44, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
As I asked at Commons:Deletion requests/File:Powelliphantapatrickensis2.jpg: "@VoidseekerNZ: Have you discussed this matter with your son? Has he reached the age of majority?"[4]   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 09:17, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
im sorry but the last thing i want to do is start sharing more sensitive information about my family of all things VoidseekerNZ (talk) 09:48, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
This is a plainly ridiculous thread - you are clearly not operating in good faith, and other editors are under no obligation to accept at face value what are honestly nonsensical and constantly shifting explanations. Your account uploaded the image(s), but you don't seem willing to give a clear, thorough explanation of how it happened. The story has changed multiple times just in this one thread, and you seem to be trying to weaponize the site rules and guidelines to get your way. The editors in this thread have been clear, kind, and very helpful, and I don't think they deserve the vitriol you're throwing their way. 19h00s (talk) 13:48, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
"Your account uploaded the image(s), but you don't seem willing to give a clear, thorough explanation of how it happened. "
As stated multiple times, i am unable to give a clear or thorough explanation of how it happened. it happened without my consent and is a falsely created license. if i knew that it would solve a lot of problems.
"The story has changed multiple times just in this one thread,"
i never stated i knew the explanation. i offered hypotheticals to show that the assumption that i am the one who uploaded the image to Commons is based on unsound logic and lacks evidence.
for what it's worth, the only one currently throwing vitriol in this thread is you. i simply came here to seek request early on when i knew less about where to be posting things, and if wikipedia had a delete function i would have already deleted this thread. VoidseekerNZ (talk) 14:59, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
can i please request a lock of this topic as i placed it in the wrong forum and it seems unproductive at this stage VoidseekerNZ (talk) 15:07, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Checkmark This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. From Hill To Shore (talk) 15:18, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Doctored version of free image

File:Prime Minister Boris Johnson - Cornwall visit ahead of the G7 (51236132111).jpg

The above image is available under OGL and cc-by-2.0. It was recently in the news ([5]) after a version from which Boris Johnson had been erased was tweeted.

Can the doctored version be uploaded under the same licence(s), treating the changes as de minimis? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:52, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't think so. Removing someone from a photo invariably involves creative decisions, unless it's done by AI.--Prosfilaes (talk) 15:30, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
Google is advertising that their new Pixel 7 phone can do just that, but I'm not sure how much human involvement there is.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 15:36, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
Have you examined the image in question? My point is that any creativity involved is minimal. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:43, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
Might be small, but not sure what "small enough" is there. Something different was done with the circular emblem on the rocket, for example. Also, this would be the United Kingdom threshold of originality, which can be very very low indeed. If it was the result of an automated algorithm, then no. If it was placing part of another photograph on top, the other photo may have a different copyright, even if the doctoring process itself didn't create anything. If it was imagining what was behind there and inserting new content, then sure there could be a copyright. Could be as innocuous as inserting stains on the floor, or stuff like that. Stuff that may seem irrelevant to the point of the photograph can still be copyrightable. The details on how something was done can matter a lot. 23:25, 12 January 2023 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Clindberg (talk • contribs)
Again - please examine the image in question to which I have provided a link, above, rather than speculanting on hypotheticals. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:04, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
I did. How were the alterations actually made, or are you speculating? This is also the UK TOO you are talking about. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:09, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
I'm not speculating about anything; I'm arguing that the material difference between the images does not meet UK TOO. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:55, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
For the British threshold of originality, which follows the sweat of the brow doctrine, I doubt that we can conclude that the objective differences are insufficient to have been brought about by a sufficiently original process. For the US threshold of originality, it could well be a different matter. Felix QW (talk) 10:29, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Chinese FOP and attribution requirement

It is long held by Commons community that mandatory attribution is needed as per Chinese freedom of panorama.

But according to German Wikipedia at w:de:Panoramafreiheit#China, there is no need for mandatory attribution if the public art is not signed. The citation used is this, and it is stated that "Whether the author’s name should be specified depends on whether the sculpture at issue is signed or not. If the publicly displayed sculpture itself does not indicate that it is a work based on another’s painting, the general public can make fair use of the work, and is under no legal duty to trace and/or indicate the author of the original work." This seems to show that users who are the general public are not bound to comply with attribution requirements. But if the user is not the general public (like in the case, Shaoxing Municipal Bureau of Water Resources), they are mandated for "higher duty of care and is obligated to mention the original author."

Should this legal literature (based on the Wang Juxian vs. Shaoxing City case) have a bearing for our more lenient approach on Chinese freedom of panorama?

Tagging peoples involved at Commons talk:Copyright rules by territory/China#FoP: court rules use of photo of an outdoor sculpture on postcards as infringement: @Wcam, Liuxinyu970226, Teetrition, 沈澄心, and 廣九直通車: . Apologies for disturbing, regards, JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 15:28, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Isn't it already written in COM:CRT/China#Freedom of panorama? Also this does not exempt the attribution requirement entirely. When the attribution information is available where the artwork is on display, attribution is still mandatory. Wcam (talk) 04:08, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
Attribution is mandatory unless the attribution cannot be given due to the special characteristic of the manner of exploiting the work (由于作品使用方式的特性无法指明的除外) according to Article 19 of the Regulation for the Implementation of the Copyright Law of PRC. However, this provision can hardly apply here because one can easily give attribution when he uses images.
In this case you gave (Wang Juxian vs. Shaoxing City), Wang Juxian, the plaintiff, is the author of the 2D painting. Shaoxing City, the defendant, took the photo of the 3D sculpture and print it in the book he published. The 3D sculpture is created based on the 2D painting with the permission of Wang. The Court said that in this case, both the person who created the 2D painting and the person who created the 3D sculpture are clearly engraved on the plate of the sculpture, so the defendant must give attribution to both authors. However, the Court stated, if the 2D painting's author is not clearly indicated (not available to public), unlike this case, people who use the 3D sculpture do not need to give attribution to the original work's author but still need to give attribution to the DW's (the sculpture's) author. Teetrition (talk) 04:13, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Italian photos PD in the UK post-Brexit?

I uploaded these pics with Italy as the country of origin since they're over 20 years old. The photos in particular is of a singer from a UK-based band:

But I'm wondering if PD-Italy still stands with the rule of the shorter term after the UK left the EU. Thanks. 웃OO 15:05, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes. The UK copyright law still has many references to the EEA, so not everything changed. But the particular one for the rule of the shorter term, Article 12(6), they changed in 2019 to just say the "United Kingdom". As always, the details are in the changes they make to their own law on the matter. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:54, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
Whatever the answer to that question may be, these two photographs are not ok for Wikimedia Commons since they are still protected by copyright in the US. {{PD-Italy}} is only meant for Italian photographs created before 1976. --Rosenzweig τ 15:58, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Copyright question - conceptual art/malleable works & copyright eligibility

Already asked this and it was archived before anyone chimed in - this is a pretty unique copyright eligibility question, if anyone with high-level art copyright law knowledge can add their advice, it would be really appreciated.

Several images of works by Félix González-Torres are currently on English Wikipedia as fair use, non-free content. One was previously uploaded, I added the rest to show the different cited phases of his career and types of artistic output:

I wonder if any of these images can be migrated to Commons; there is currently at least one image of one of these works on Commons:

These works are claimed to be copyrighted by the artist's estate, via the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation. However, I'm bringing this query here as none of these works seem to satisfy the "fixed medium" requirement for a work to be eligible for copyright protections. These works are visually malleable, per the extensive certificates the artist included with the works, meaning they are not eligible for copyright protections.

  • 1: Work consists of two stacks of paper, each with a common phrase in plain text ("Somewhere better than this place" and "Nowhere better than this place"). The artist included an "ideal height" on the certificate and language allowing viewers to take papers from the work and allowing to be depleted as well as replenished, meaning it does not have a fixed state.
  • 2: Work is a simple string of lightbulbs. The certificate allows the owner to display the work in any shape or layout of their choosing, meaning it does not have a fixed state.
  • 3: Work was conceived prior to the artist's death but executed a decade after he died, consists of two marble pools sitting side by side, but they specifically are variable in their materials as he never specified what they should be made of (as described when unveiled in 2007 for the Venice Biennale). Official description of the work's medium at both the institution owning the work (Glenstone) and the artist's estate is "Medium varies with installation," meaning it doesn't have a fixed medium or state.
  • 4: Work consists of strings of beads hung in an entranceway. The certificate allows the owner to change the size to fit any entranceway of their choosing, meaning it does not have a fixed state.
  • 5: Work consists of two black-framed, battery operated clocks. The certificate specifically allows the owner to buy new replacement clocks, only stipulating the color of the frame and the fact that they must be identical to each other in size (no size specified), meaning they do not have a fixed state.
  • 6: Work consists of a pile of candy dumped in a corner. The certificate has an "ideal weight" but specifically allows viewers to take the candy, as well as allowing the owner to install the work in any layout of their choosing and allow it to deplete/replenish it on their own schedule, meaning it does not have a fixed state.

Additionally, the certificates for each of these works apart from #3 allow the owner to replace any and all components of the work with the same or similar commercially available components.

Would love some insight as to whether these can be migrated or if higher quality versions can live on Commons. Asking before I do any moving, as I made the mistake earlier of migrating a different image by another artist before asking for advice. Thanks all! --19h00s (talk) 22:38, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

For cases like (2), wouldn't the lack of fixed instructions rather lead to a co-authorship of the artist and the owner/curator than to a failure to satisfy the fixed medium requirement?
Perhaps threshold of originality could be questionable, although I suspect that for contemporary art intended as art courts may be more lenient than for industrial designs.
(I didn't want to comment earlier for lack of specific expertise, but since no-one else commented either, I figured it might be helpful) Felix QW (talk) 09:50, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
I don't see how en:File:Untitled Perfect Lovers.jpg could get a copyright. Others are not much better in this regard. I only find some creativity in en:File:"Untitled" (Water), 1995, Felix Gonzalez Torres at BMA 2022.jpg. Yann (talk) 10:07, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
en:File:"Untitled", 1992-1995, Felix Gonzalez-Torres at Glenstone.jpg could be copyrighted by whoever executed the marble pools, perhaps, as unlike the clocks they may not be considered utilitarian in themselves. On (1), maybe the two sentences of text could be copyrighted, but perhaps not. Regarding (5), I completely agree with Yann (talk · contribs) that putting two items adjacent to each other is insufficient to pass the threshold of originality as a composition. Felix QW (talk) 10:27, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
We use a similar stone in the kitchen to make Chapati. So yes, this has a direct utilitarian purpose. You can buy it online. Yann (talk) 10:36, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
Keep in mind that the requirement for fixation is optional in the Berne Convention (Article 2(2): It shall, however, be a matter for legislation in the countries of the Union to prescribe that works in general or any specified categories of works shall not be protected unless they have been fixed in some material form. The U.S. requires it but many countries do not. So, the treatment of such things could greatly vary, and we generally respect the law in the country of origin. For example, Christo and Jeanne-Claude's wrapped Reichstag likely got a copyright in Germany, but not the U.S. I doubt most of the works you list would get a U.S. copyright registration, for the reasons you question. The first one with stacks of paper might get a selection and arrangement copyright, once you add in the phrases. It's close. The rest, I doubt. The string of lights, if there was something particular in the actual sculptural parts of the light mounts, maybe, but not its positioning. I generally get the feeling that judges may be more likely to say something is copyrightable than the Copyright Office, unless cases get appealed to the higher courts, where judgements are a bit more consistent. I don't see any copyright registrations for that artist, other than involvement in a book. But, the Copyright Office typically rejects things like this from what I have seen in their appeals decisions, and attaches no significance to symbolic meaning or anything like that -- just the fixed expression which is there. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:15, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
For context, González-Torres was American and primarily worked in the U.S. - apart from the marble pools, which were technically first presented in 2007 in Italy, all of these pieces were also first displayed publicly in American galleries/museums, so I imagine we'd use the U.S. rules to make a judgement here. The artist's estate/Foundation attaches copyright notices whenever they publish any images of these and other similar works, and seems to make news outlets/publications license images of the works, so I would imagine they must have at least tried to get these works registered on behalf of the artist at some point? Or would they have known that they'd be rejected, so they just wouldn't try in order to retain the presumption of copyright eligibility? More of a rhetorical question than anything else, but interesting to think about.
What's the technical procedure for including images of allegedly copyrighted works like these on Commons? Is there a copyright tag for unique cases like this? Thanks everyone for your help - won't migrate any images until there's a consensus on what can be used here. 19h00s (talk) 17:21, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
Well, they own the copyright of the pictures they take. So, do they specify whether the copyright is for the objects or for the pictures? Unless they do, I would assume it is for the latter. Yann (talk) 08:34, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
It's a bit of both - their public archive includes some photos originating from the Foundation/estate, some photos originating from curators/members of the public/other artists. Each photo has a photo credit and "courtesy of..." language, but they've amended a copyright notice for the entire site - example from their archive. 19h00s (talk) 22:35, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Eclipse Public License

Hi, anyone know this license? Is it o.k. for using with uploads on Commons? --217.239.3.173 21:51, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Sure. Category:Eclipse Public License. Borysk5 (talk) 11:13, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
More germanely, you may use {{EPL-2.0}}, but you will have to login before uploading here, please do that. There are also many other reasons to create an account and log in.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 12:12, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Submitting my own photo to my own Wiki page/ public domain/ commons

Hello. I am a musician, name Lenka Lichtenberg.Somebody created Wiki entry about me years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenka_Lichtenberg I just did some preliminary edits, and replaced a horrible photo that was there with one a professional photographer Bo Huang took in a session I paid for. I own the copyright. I received an automatic warning that the copyright / license info I filled out is incomplete or wrong. I am completely lost as I don't see an option how to fill description/ license for my own photo when somebody else took it but I own, or how to create the appropriate copyright tag for this. Can you please help me, what tag/ license type to write where? English is not my first language and this is SO over my head. Thank you!!! AnickaHanicka (talk) 05:24, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Why do you own the copyrights? Copyrights typically belong to person who did the photograph not the one who paid for it. Borysk5 (talk) 07:29, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
The easiest would be if you would forward evidence of permission from the photographer via COM:VRT. Alternatively, if you have a written work for hire agreement with the photographer that explicitly includes a transfer of copyright, then you can also forward evidence of that via COM:VRT. Felix QW (talk) 08:33, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Kann ich die Titelseite eines Buches einscannen und das Bild auf die Seite der betreffenden Person stellen, wenn ich das Zitat des Buches gebe? 193.81.164.223 14:11, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Schau mal Commons:Copyright_rules_by_subject_matter#Book_covers. --Túrelio (talk) 14:13, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Freedom of panorama

I'm wondering if this photo violates COM:FOP. It was a commissioned mural, completed by 16 artists. Thank you. Magnolia677 (talk) 18:37, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Have a look at this logo please. I assume that it meets the threshold of originality. There is no indication that the uploader actually is the artist (= copyright holder). Ignore? Nominate for deletion? Opinions please. --87.150.8.9 22:19, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

✓ Done Commons:Deletion requests/File:Logo Festival4Family.gif. Brianjd (talk) 04:53, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

مجوز انتشار تصاویر حاصل از نقشه های گوگل ارث چگونه است؟

گوگل ارث یک منبع نقشه متن باز است. آیا تصاویر و نقشه های ایجاد شده توسط این منبع باید به صورت تصاویر شخصی ثبت شود یا برای آن ها از گوگل مجوز انتشار گرفت؟ Alim arjmandi (talk) 20:38, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

How is the permission to publish images from Google Earth maps?
Google Earth is an open source map resource. Should the images and maps created by this source be registered as personal images or should they be published by Google?
translator: Google Translate via   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 12:19, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
@Alim arjmandi: سلام و خوش آمدید Google Earth یک سرویس انتفاعی است که توسط گوگل ارائه می شود. تصاویر ارائه شده توسط آن سرویس دارای حق نسخه‌برداری Google هستند و تصاویر و اطلاعات اصلی دارای حق چاپ توسط Google و گاهی اوقات دیگران هستند. چه چیزی باعث می شود فکر کنید منبع باز است؟
Hi, and welcome. Google Earth is a for-profit service provided by Google. The images provided by that service are copyrighted by Google, with underlying images and information copyrighted by Google and sometimes others. What makes you think it is open source?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 12:19, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
سلام و خوش آمد به شما. سلام شما را می‌پذیرم ولی حالا بعد از 10 تا 15 سال در ویکی پدیا بودن یکم برای خوش آمد گویی، دیر نیست؟؟؟
ببینید شما سوال من را با سوال پاسخ می‌دهید. شما باید بگویید مثلاً طبق ماده فلان، تبصره بهمان آیین نامه ویکی پدیا مثلاً مجاز یا غیرمجاز به گذاشتن فلان تصویر هستید.
از تهدید به تعلیق عضویتتان خیلی ممنونم. پیش از این دوستان قبلی هم از این تهدیدات کرده بودند.
گمان نمی کنم من آدم این اندازه نفهمی باشم که منطق شما را نفهمم و شما با تعلیق عضویت مرا تادیب نمایید.
به حق مولف اعتقاد راسخ دارم و همواره تلاش کرده ام آن را برآورده سازم. من در ایران زندگی می کنم. قوانین مشخصی در خصوص حق مولف داریم. تصویر را از یک وبسایت امریکایی برداشته ام. از جزئیات قانون حق مولف در ایالات متحده اطلاع ندارم.
حالا می رسیم به سوال شما، این که چه چیز باعث می شود که من گمان کنم منبع باز است؟
من برای رسیدن به این تصاویر از هیچ گذرواژه، رمز عبور یا قفلی استفاده نکردم. شما هم توانایی استفاده از آن را با همین شرایط دارید.
در صورتی که جزئیات قانون حقوق مولفان و مصنفان ایران و امریکا و ویکی پدیا را برایم بگویید، ضمن قدردانی، حتماً آن را رعایت خواهم کرد. Alim arjmandi (talk) 09:20, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

@Jeff G.: در ضمن من تصور می کنم صداقت بیش از اندازه به خرج دادم که باعث شده است شما این رفتار را با من بکنید. این پرونده یکی از نقشه های مشابه موجود در ویکی انبار است: https://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%BE%D8%B1%D9%88%D9%86%D8%AF%D9%87:Karunrivermapfinal.jpg

ایشان دقیقاً کار مرا انجام داده است. یعنی نقشه را از یک سایت دارای حق مولف برداشته است، ولی به جای اشاره به پدید آور آن، نام خودش را به عنوان پدیدآور ذکر کرده است. این کار دزدی است نه کار من. من صادقانه گفتم نقشه از یک شرکت ماهواره ای است که من آن را ویرایش کرده ام.

اگر با این روش مشکل حل می شود؟؟ باکی نیست. من خودم را پدیدآور اثر معرفی می کنم. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alim arjmandi (talk • contribs) 10:47, 17 January 2023 (UTC)


Google Translate of the Persian input: Hello and welcome to you. Hello, I accept you, but now after 10 to 15 years of being on Wikipedia, I'm the first to say hello, isn't it too late???
See, you answer my question with a question. You have to say, for example, that you are allowed or not allowed to post a certain image according to such and such article, Bahman's note of the Wikipedia rules. Thank you very much for threatening to suspend your membership. Before this, previous friends had made these threats.
I don't think I am such a stupid person that I don't understand your logic and you punish me by suspending my membership.
I firmly believe in the author's right and I have always tried to fulfill it. I live in Iran. We have specific laws regarding copyright. I took the picture from an American website. I don't know the details of copyright law in the US. Now to your question, what makes me think it's open source?
I did not use any passwords, passwords or locks to access these images. You also have the ability to use it under the same conditions.
If you tell me the details of the copyright law of Iran, America and Wikipedia, I will definitely comply with it.
@Alim arjmandi: (in English) Google Maps content are not freely-licensed. You took a screenshot or a photo of a part of it, you just made a derivative work of it. It is still under Google's copyright. To make it simple, anything from Google Maps is off-limits here. Copyrighted website and contents, cannot be exploited commercially. Commons requires freely-licensed content that can be exploited commercially in a free manner, as per COM:Licensing. This is the link for your question on the details of Wikipedia copyright rules (to he exact, Wikimedia Commons as it is a sister website of Wikipedia). For Google's Terms of use (in English, you may need to translate those to Farsi/Persian), see this. For the permitted uses read here. A common rule on the use or Google Maps is that it is not allowed to be used in advertising. This alone makes Google Maps incompatible with Commons:Licensing. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 09:52, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
See also User talk:Alim arjmandi#File copyright status.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 15:05, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Is this file allowed on commons?

File:Maurice Ravel - Jeux d'eau (Martha Argerich, 1962).flac
This file is listed as being published in 1962, ergo it is no longer protected in the EU. But does it also need to be unprotected in the US, as stated in Commons:Copyright rules?:

Files uploaded to Commons should be free both in the country of origin (as defined by the Berne Convention) and in the United States of America, . . .

Does the lack of protection in the EU carry over to the US? In its listing on IMSLP, it explicitly states "Non-PD US".

I'm compiling all the royalty-free recordings I can find of Ravel's music, and I set a rule that if it can't go on Wikipedia, it's not going in the compilation. If this file should be deleted, I have found another recording of the same piece under a free license.

Thanks. - Toast for Teddy (talk) 04:00, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

@Toast for Teddy I am not familiar with sound recording copyrights, but I note that Wikimedia Commons is not Wikipedia, and some Wikipedias allow some fair use and FoP works that are not allowed on Commons. Perhaps your rule should be ‘if it can't go on Commons, it's not going in the compilation’. This probably wouldn’t apply to sound recordings, but I like to mention it anyway. Brianjd (talk) 05:12, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
@Brianjd Probably should've specified that.
Amended rule: If it can't go on Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons, it's not going in the compilation.
- Toast for Teddy (talk) 05:19, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
The recording is still protected in the US, both by copyright (because of URAA, US sound recordings would not have a federal copyright) and as a sound recording per the MMA/CLASSICS/CPAA act. Yes, that is confusing, but from what I gathered (see the long version in my deletion rationale for Commons:Deletion requests/File:Conservet Deus su Re.ogg) the protection for sound recordings by the MMA/CLASSICS/CPAA act is not the same as copyright, even if it basically works the same way. The term used by the MMA/CLASSICS/CPAA act (instead of copyrighted) is protected from unauthorized use. Anyway, the URAA-restored copyright runs to the end of 2058, while the protection per the MMA/CLASSICS/CPAA act lasts up to and including February 14, 2067 (see the terms at Template:PD-US-record-expired). --Rosenzweig τ 13:13, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
Basically right, but one note -- it's not the same as normal U.S. federal copyright, but it's still copyright, just with some different contours. Recordings made since February 1972 have normal U.S. federal copyright; earlier recordings had only been protected by U.S. "common law copyright", which relied on state laws and court rulings, so could differ state to state (but over time strongly protected commercial recordings, without a firm end date of protection). See Capitol Records, Inc. v. Naxos of America, Inc. for a court case over that situation. The MMA/CLASSICS/CPAA law finally pre-empted common law copyright in sound recordings (as the 1976 Copyright Act had done with unpublished works). But, to preserve some aspects of the common law copyright I guess, the terms and contours for those pre-1972 recordings are a bit different than regular federal copyright (though the penalties are the same). It's still messy, but it's better than the common-law copyright situation. The upshot though is that the U.S. protects sound recordings longer than other types of works. Pre-1923 recordings expired last year, and 1923+ recordings will start expiring next year annually for a while (but with pauses to further increase the term of protection for recordings made closer to 1972). Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:16, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
17 U.S. Code § 1401 is very careful not to call it copyright though, it's protection against “unauthorized use of pre-1972 sound recordings”. --Rosenzweig τ 17:39, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
Right, as it is not the same thing as the "copyright" defined in 17 USC 101, i.e. "federal copyright". But, neither was "common law copyright". It is, however, part of the protection required by the Berne Convention (as was common law copyright before it). If you want to call it something other than copyright, or copyright but an entirely different type with very special rules for that particular type of work, I can't argue. It is basically however a replacement for what was "common law copyright" for pre-1972 recordings. Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:58, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Are auto-creative sculptures copyrightable? (I originally asked this on the Wikipedia forum but was referred to this forum instead, apologies to anybody who sees me double posting)

Context: I have an image taken in Chicago (so we are talking US copyright law) of David Medalla's auto-creative kinetic art sculpture Cloud Canyons. It is a sculpture series and a good description of the sculpture can be found here:

"This work is a kinetic sculpture consisting of wooden boxes arranged in a circle on the gallery floor with a tall plastic tube placed at their centre. At the bottom of the tube is a quantity of soapy liquid that is turned into foam by compressors located inside the wooden portions of the sculpture. This results in the foam being projected upwards and out of the tube, forming a jet of bubbles that extends above head-height. [...] Although the materials and construction for Cloud Canyons No. 3 are controlled by Medalla each time it is installed, the sculpture changes constantly once it is on display due to the varying shapes formed by the foam."

Based on my cursory, uneducated understanding of US copyright law, there is a requirement that it be fixed in a tangible medium (something to that effect). So this question is not at all on the "originality" requirement. I am just curious whether the work would meet the fixation requirement, as there is no consistency in the auto-creative work. An American case that has come up from my Googling is Kelley v. Chicago Park District (7th Cir. 2011). On that note, does it raise an issue on authorship as well? [Edit: Someone brought up that the base and tube would fit the fixation requirement, which makes a lot of sense. I guess I'll keep this query up if anybody has any counter-arguments although I think the base and tube thing pretty much answers this.]

The question came up because I uploaded the photo onto Wikipedia under fair use [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:David_Medalla,_Cloud_Canyons.jpg], but am wondering if it would actually be possible to upload it to Commons. The photo itself was taken by my brother so I guess he is the copyright owner of the photo, but he is OK with me uploading it to Commons (granted it is acceptable/not infringing on the copyright of the artist, if any). Kting97 (talk) 15:37, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

I'd see a rather more substantial objection to its copyright as being US limitations on whether "robots can create art", and if they do, they certainly can't copyright it (neither can animals).
The design of the base and pipes is utilitarian, not artistically creative. The shape of the bubbles thus generated is either random (not copyrightable) or created under the influence of the mechanism (of varying sophisitication) and again, that's not copyrightable.
A similar machine using PU foam (which sets rigid) would certainly be "fixed in a tangible medium", but it would still have the same exclusion from copyright.
I dimly recall there's some case law on this (as applied to a book cover) where designs had been produced by a harmonograph. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:58, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Are New Mexican Mugshots in the PD?

Hey y'all I'm creating an article for Solomon Peña on the English Wikipedia, and I was wondering if in his US state, New Mexico, makes mugshots fall into the Public Domain. His mugshot is located here. Knightoftheswords281 (talk) 00:12, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

@Knightoftheswords281: Sorry, no per COM:US and en:Copyright status of works by subnational governments of the United States.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 00:25, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

The ending credits of a movie (screenshot)

The movie is 'Home of the Brave' (c)1949 Screen Plays II Corp.
I want to highlight that a leading black actor's movie credit in 1949 was placed at the end of the credits, even though his was the leading role.
If I cannot use a frame or screenshot from the movie, see 'Home of the Brave Full Movie' on Youtube at time 1:25:48, can I still just list the ending credits in a text field? Lacis alfredo (talk) 11:33, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately, copyright in the movie has been renewed in 1976 (see page 90 of the July-December Copyright records of that year, available at https://archive.org/details/1976motionpictur3301213libr/page/90/mode/2up), so the movie will be in copyright until 2045. Felix QW (talk) 12:38, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
@Lacis alfredo: However, the image may still be uploaded to English Wikipedia in compliance with en:WP:F because we don't allow Fair Use here.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:11, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
Although uploading under non-free use regulations on the English Wikipedia would require the screenshot significantly to enhance the reader's understanding beyond the mentioned alternative of listing the ending credits as a text quote, which may not be obvious. Felix QW (talk) 13:59, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
 Comment: If it's a screenshot of just the credits, then is there a reason {{PD-text}} wouldn't apply? Ixfd64 (talk) 18:57, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Definition of derivative work?

I was adverted that several files I uploaded were derivative works. I was bit puzzled how FOP licensed works, or others that are in the Public domain can be deemed as derivative and not properly licensed for derivative works. To all the files I uploaded I added that I was one the author of the file and also its source and if they had an original creator I added ...by ... in the description of the file. If this is really seen as no properly licensed, I'd be glad if someone would explain it to me. The one adverted me, was not really communicative as also to an other editor who's files he also deemed as derivative works. Other so called derivative works are those, some are newspaper articles from Brazil of the 1800a one a street name plaque in Brazil, which would probably count with a FOP. How does AFG work in commons?Paradise Chronicle (talk) 23:45, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

IMO Xunks is overly expansive and not careful enough at tagging images for deletion (see Commons:Deletion requests/File:Jaanilinn.jpg for the conversation we were just having). I just noticed File:Brave Search.png in your list, which was previously kept at DR. For a derivative work, while source information for the original work is nice to have, we have in practice never considered it mandatory when it can be clearly inferred from the rest of the file description that the image is free, such as sculptures in countries with FoP or works indicated as being over 120 years old in 70 pma countries. (And in the case of the latter, having an incorrect license is not a reason to nominate the image for deletion, but to fix the license.) -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:52, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
Yet Xunx is on the lose and believe they are doing the right thing... If that file of a painting of 1480 or similar get deleted... The file of 1480 is of a new editor with their first edit on commons on the 12th January and created an account on any project of Wikipedia on the 11th January. There was a AlbertBenchea08 who made 5 edits in August 2021 also to a consort of a Sultan and the current uploader has also a focus on consorts of sultans. I guess AlbertBenchea won't come back until a week and then the files will be lost except someone fixes it. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 18:17, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
This file didn't have a license (I fixed it), the date was wrong, and there is no category. Yann (talk) 16:41, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Yeah great, one of the mentioned here in the discussion tagged for deletion was fixed. How about the newspapers from the 1800s or the street name plaque from Brazil? Will you bring them back from deletion? Xunxs creates a lot of work for many of us and if this discussion does not stop Xunxs I will report them somewhere else. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 17:55, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Truth Truck - original, derivative, licensable?

Hi, I found File:Truth Truck OSU.JPG uploaded by @Ibagli. It does not appear to be the case that Ibagli is the builder/designer of the truck, but probably took the photograph. The truck appears to have a collage of photographs, paintings, embellished text, etc. The copyright status of its component parts should be questionable: the photograph of Father John I. Jenkins could be from anywhere. The painting of two hands clasped seems to be a creative work; who could begin to guess its provenance?

The associated websites are dead links; in fact Planned Parenthood USA has usurped one of them! They are the only Truth Truck now, boyo! All gallows humour aside, there do seem to be a plethora of Truth Trucks of various build quality and budget size.

Taken as a whole, I would say that the "Truth Truck" would be either copyright of its owner, or uncopyrightable due to infringement by components. Does Ibagli have standing to place this photograph of it into the public domain in the United States? Elizium23 (talk) 01:58, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

@Elizium23: I tagged it as an unsourced DW.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 04:39, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Copyright a image for a wikipedia page

How to have correctly copyright this image for the Gizelle Bryant page.

The BET Honors 2016 - Arrivals Featuring: Gizelle Bryant Where: Washington DC, District Of Columbia, United States When: 05 Mar 2016 Credit: Derrick Salters/WENN.com Davinia Priscilla (talk) 15:12, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

@Davinia Priscilla: Hi, and welcome. Please have Derrick Salters/WENN.com send permission for it via VRT.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 16:09, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

File:Physics wallah logo.jpg

I'm concerned that this file was uploaded "from Physics Wallah platform", by User:Owaisahmadwiki giving no evidence that they have legal standing to license it. On the other hand, it may be that it is simple enough that it is not protected by copyright at all (which is why I haven't simply nominated it for deletion). --ColinFine (talk) 11:14, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

@ColinFine Part of the standard procedure for deletion requests is to ensure they are linked from the file description (for an open request) or file talk page (for a closed request). I have added a link to this section to the file talk page.
According to the Wikipedia article, Physicswallah is based in India; the Indian threshold of originality is similar to the US, where I suspect this file would indeed be below the threshold. But I am no expert at this; I hope other users take a look too. Brianjd (talk) 11:53, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
Yann has tagged this file as {{PD-textlogo}}. Brianjd (talk) 09:08, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
  • I'd be inclined to leave it until en:WP has looked at whether it passes WP:NOTABLE or not. Then (if needed) clean up on the basis of non-notable spam. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:25, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
    •  Question Why would we defer to a sister project discussion instead of simply applying our own Commons:Project scope policy to the subject? It seems to me that the question is one of licensing, not notability here--if it passes the licensing question, it can be kept regardless of en:WP's notability guidelines. Josh (talk) 07:41, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
      @Joshbaumgartner The original question here is about copyright, but in many cases, it’s easier to avoid the copyright issues by just deleting the file as out of scope. We can’t do that as long as the file is legitimately in use on another project, but when you see comments like Decline G4 - article differs from deleted version in that the sourcing in this version is somewhat better than the sourcing in the deleted version. I reccomend a new AFD. That said, if this one is deleted too, I reccomend this title be salted., it’s a strong indication that we will eventually delete this file as out of scope. Brianjd (talk) 09:06, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
        • Clearly this does not meet the threshold of originality, so notable or not, there is no reason or need to delete it. Ww2censor (talk) 12:05, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
        • @Brianjd: I understand WP deleting on notability grounds, but my question is what relevance that has to us. Files do not need to be in use by a sister project to be retained, or we'd be deleting half the files we have, so WP's deletion is irrelevant to Commons policies. Josh (talk) 13:52, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
          • It does not directly -- our policy is "must be realistically useful for an educational purpose". If the subject is notable (and we usually piggy back on en-wiki's definition for those), then it's educationally useful. Obviously if a file is in use, it's automatically useful. Failing that, it can be harder. Should we accept any logo for any company at all, if below the threshold? We would probably want some way a logo could be useful, other than just being below the threshold of originality, if the company it represents is not really notable. Anyways, it's in use right now, and the en-wiki article has some grounding in notability (and I don't think it's under discussion yet). I think it's definitely PD-textlogo as far as the U.S. is concerned. If the article is ever deleted from Wikipedia, then there could be a DR to debate the merits, but I wouldn't worry about it until then. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:31, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
          @Joshbaumgartner Basically agree with what @Clindberg said. I have said repeatedly that we have poor guidance on when things like this count as notable (or realistically useful for an educational purpose, to use the policy’s words). Brianjd (talk) 08:07, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
          Thank you, Clindberg for the additional rationale. It will be interesting to see the impact on the volume of unused files we currently have if that approach takes hold...might even make my life easier over in categorization. Well best of luck! Josh (talk) 17:42, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Canada

Has anyone here a particularly good knowledge of Canadian copyright, court cases and legal commentaries? If yes, then their help would be welcome in the tricky case of Commons:Deletion requests/File:Ice sculpture in Quebec city downtown.jpg. Thank you! Gestumblindi (talk) 19:39, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

also, please note that someone has erroneously instated the false "creative commons" license back onto the photo which i never approved in direct conflict with my wishes and requests. this is a particularly egregious action i am not happy about. VoidseekerNZ (talk) 09:45, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you're talking about. The photo is by Wilfredor and you didn't touch it, as far as I can see. Are you the sculptor? Or maybe you are in the wrong thread? Gestumblindi (talk) 11:05, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Doubts about the copyright status of a 2019 photo in the article Lucile Randon

I originally asked this at Wikipedia:Teahouse and someone who replied to me, said I should ask here. Below is what I said on Wikipedia:Teahouse, which I have just copy and pasted.


The main photo from 2019 in the article Lucile Randon is licensed as having been released into the public domain by Gerontology Wiki. I have several doubts that this is true however, and am leaning towards it being removed due to it being copyrighted.

Anyone can edit the gerontology wiki, so the photo doesn't belong to that wiki itself as far as I am aware. The person who uploaded it to the Gerontology Wiki licensed it as puiblic domain there, but did not provide proof they are the copyright holder. Many of the photos uploaded there are copyrighted and can be found elsewhere online, so clearly no one is actually checking copyright status on that Wiki. Also the person who uploaded the photo to Wikipedia has a different username than that of the user who uploaded it to the Gerontology Wiki.

Should the photo be removed until it can be confirmed that it really is in the public domain? Or never added back if it is proven that the photo is still copyrighted, or it's supposed public domain licensing cannot be confirmed? Greshthegreat (talk) 05:41, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Link to file in question: File:LRandon.webp. From Hill To Shore (talk) 05:58, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
In this French local newspaper article from 2021, the photograph is labelled as "photo VLP", but I have no idea what that means. Skimel (talk) 11:05, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
@Greshthegreat, From Hill To Shore, and Skimel: Then VLP needs to send permission via VRT.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 16:11, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
ping @Interstellarity who uploaded the image from Gerontology Wiki. @Jeff G. "V.L.P" stands for Valérie Le Parc, who is a photographer for the newspaper Var Matin. Skimel (talk) 16:32, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
@Skimel Ok, then Valérie Le Parc or Var Matin needs to send permission via VRT.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 17:29, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Ok, so until Valérie Le Parc, the photos copyright holder gives permission to use that photo of Lucile Randon on Wikipedia, it cannot be used on Wikipedia due to it being copyrighted. I will remove the photo from the article Lucile Randon until such permission has been given, if any is ever provided. Greshthegreat (talk) 20:03, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Hello @Greshthegreat, @From Hill To Shore, @Jeff G., and @Skimel and thanks for the ping. I agree with your assessment that the photo is likely copyrighted. While I do not to the image being deleted from Commons, it could qualify as a fair use image that could be uploaded to enwiki directly. I'm not sure if you know anything about nonfree images on Wikipedia since this is a different project than here, but I would be interested in your input. Interstellarity (talk) 23:37, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
It would be hard (not impossible perhaps but pretty hard) to justify the use of this image as non-free content in en:Lucile Randon per en:WP:FREER and en:WP:NFC#CS. Since Randon has just recently died, a new photo of her cannot certainly be taken, but that doesn't mean a previously taken photo cannot be found that is either (1) already released under an acceptable free license or (2) could possibly by changed by its copyright holder to an acceptable license. When it comes to recently deceased persons, it's expected that a reasonable effort be made to find a free equivalent image instead of just immediately uploading a non-free one right after a person dies. How "reasonable" is defined depends on who you ask, but many feel that this involves something more than simply a cursory Internet search for "free images of XX". There are some who also feel that "reasonable" also includes trying to contact copyright holders using en:WP:PERMISSION emails and ask them if they'd be willing to relicense an image for Wikipedia purposes. This doesn't mean you need to start emailing the persons family or firends while they're still grievieng over their loss, but it could me contact others not be personally connected to the deceased and asking them. It could also mean waiting a reasonable amount of time before trying the email approach with family or friends. Again, how much time is "reasonable" depends on who you ask, but some feel a few months is OK. Some users have been able to obtain freely licensed images this way since some copyright holders are apparently more than happy to help out. If you're going to try this approach, it's been to look for personal photos posted on social media or personal websites, or perhaps organization websites; any images you find being used in newspapers or other publications, most likely have some commercial value (particularly if attributed to stock image companies like en:Getty Images) since those images have been monetized and pretty much never allowed to be uploaded and used a non-free use. Another thing to consider whether there are already some freely licensed or PD images of the subject already being used in the article. This makes it harder to justify the use of a non-free unless the non-free image itself is somehow the subject of sourced critical commentary. Obviously as people get older, their appearance will change but Wikipedia articles don't really require non-free images to show this unless there's something about the subject of the article's appearance that is covered in the article and would be strongly contexutually tied to seeing a non-free image of the person. Now, having posted all of that, there are lots of people who also feel that a non-free image of an individual is OK to use regardless immediately after someone dies. So, you often see non-free images being immediately added (sometimes within the hour) after someone (particulary someone who's death is covered by mainstream media outlets) has died. In some cases, this might be OK because quite a bit of effort was made into trying to find a free equivalent image to use while the person was still living, but in others it's just done because some feel all articles should have infobox images, regardless of their licensing. When that happens, the non-free image usually ends up being the subject of some dicussion (often quite heated) either at en:WP:FFD, en:WP:MCQ or en:WT:NFCC with each side arguing their side is right. Generally, nothing ends up being resolved since there's no agreeable middle ground; so, the same thing pretty much happens again the next time someone else uploads a non-free image of a recently deceased person. Bascially, it's a roll of the dice in which suchnon-free images are assessed on a case-by-case basis; sometimes the image is allowed and other times it's not. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:59, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@Interstellarity: You could contact Valérie le Parc and ask for permission to publish the photo under a free license, if you haven't already done so. The worst that could happen is she says no. Ixfd64 (talk) 18:21, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Ixfd64: , I am not entirely sure on how to contact her although I am willing to do it. I didn’t see an email on where I can contact her from, but if you could help out, great. There could be a chance she says yes, no, or doesn’t respond at all. Interstellarity (talk) 19:10, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
I wasn't able to find any direct contact information either. Although I did find her LinkedIn and Facebook profiles, VRT generally requires an email. Ixfd64 (talk) 17:39, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Great news

Works by AFP / Reuters are cc-by-sa-3.0: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ListFiles/Gandalfosaurus&ilshowall=1 C.Suthorn (talk) 19:56, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't think these are OK. See REUTERS PICTURES LICENSE TERMS, linked from the EXIF data. Yann (talk) 20:12, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
I think this comment is ironic. Borysk5 (talk) 21:30, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Apple Lisa TV advertisement

Is this advertising under the public domain? I don't see a copyright notice, and it doesn't seem that Apple Computer Inc. (the likely copyright holder of such piece) registered it. A search in the Public Catalog doesn't give me any results. Lugamo94 (talk) 05:34, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Call to add rules about algorithmic and non-human authorship to Commons:Copyright rules by territory

For those who like researching copyright law in various countries: I've been having a discussion on Template talk:PD-algorithm about countries that the template may apply to. While doing so, I've noticed that the law around this can vary by country, and in many countries there are relevant authoritative comments or legal decisions, but we lack that information in most Commons:Copyright rules by territory country pages. I think this is becoming an increasingly relevant subject and should be explicitly addressed for as many countries as possible, just like Freedom of Panorama and Threshold of Originality are.

I intend to update the United States page now, but wanted to encourage anyone else who wants to research this to find the information for their own countries and record it. – BMacZero (🗩) 18:34, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

For now, I will use the section heading "Algorithmic and AI-created works". – BMacZero (🗩) 18:36, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Photo of deceased artist with copyrighted art in background

This photo of the deceased artist Barkley L Hendricks is claimed to be freely licensed by Duke University, but it has a large portion of a copyrighted painting in the background, photographed in the United States. Does de minimis come into play here, or should this just be deleted?

19h00s (talk) 21:11, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Separate to any issues of de minimis, the uploader claims to have been given permission to upload the image to Commons via an email from the institution. A copy of that email (or replacement evidence) would need to be sent to Commons:VRT or else we delete it for lack of evidence of permission. From Hill To Shore (talk) 21:24, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
Will add a notice on their talk page asking for that evidence to be sent to VRT. Thanks all. 19h00s (talk) 01:03, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
I think it's out of focus enough to be OK. The artist obviously consented to the photograph being taken. No opinion on the license of the photo... that really should have gone through COM:VRT. Carl Lindberg (talk) 21:47, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
As far as the focus, if it's considered too focused, then a Gaussian blur is easy. That part should not be a reason to delete anything more than a version. - Jmabel ! talk 02:41, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
I clicked on the "No permission" tool, so now there are two notices on the uploader's talk page. 😁 Elizium23 (talk) 03:03, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Yellapragada Subbarow's pictures and stamps

Hi, What is the copyright status of these stamps: Category:Yellapragada Subbarow and the source picture? It is a derivative work of [6] which is IMO from around 1940. Here is another picture, probably taken around the same time. If they were from India, they would be in the public domain. But according to Yellapragada Subbarow, he made his career in the USA, so these pictures were most probably taken there. I can't find any publication history for them. Any idea? Thanks, Yann (talk) 20:19, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Jasper Johns painting - threshold of originality + image location

This photo of the artist Jasper Johns' seminal painting Three Flags (1958) is currently on Commons licensed under CC-4.0. There is no location listed, so I'm not sure if the photo was made in a country with Freedom of Panorama laws. I'm also wondering however, does this painting pass the threshold of originality? Johns was American and published this painting in the United States, so it would need to pass U.S. copyright muster. Does this sort of design count as original, when it is technically derived from the American flag? Thanks all.

19h00s (talk) 18:27, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

(for context, the original Three Flags is owned by the Whitney in New York: link, so it's likely the photo was taken in the U.S., but it could have been on loan when photographed) 19h00s (talk) 18:29, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
If it were three pre-existing images of the flag placed like that... might be borderline. They are not completely centered, but basically just positioning three PD elements. But given the particular brush marks which are visible, the shadows, etc. -- yes easily copyrightable.
It might be OK if it's PD-US-no_notice, or PD-US-not_renewed. The photo should probably use {{Licensed-PD-Art}} though if that is the case. I don't see any copyright registrations or renewals under that name, but unsure of exhibition history and stuff like that. Carl Lindberg (talk) 19:03, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
It seems to have been first published in a catalogued exhibition at the Guggenheim in 1963, see the catalogue, which should justify PD-US-not-renewed regardless of notice modalities. Felix QW (talk) 20:31, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
Wow impressive catalogue archive searching skills. I can update the license tag. Thanks all! 19h00s (talk) 21:08, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
My general rule of thumb is that anything painted with a paintbrush covering an entire canvas (as opposed to, say, a calligraphic signature) is above COM:TOO US, even though it usually tends to be on the high side for works of graphic design like logos. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:09, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

"Wrong license" added to hundreds of photos

Greetings Commons editors,

Today I noticed that this user, Matlin, in February 2022 added {{Wrong license}} to hundreds of photos, possibly about 600 or so. First such edit is here. The one I examined is File:Akt urodzenia Heleny Kowalskiej.jpg which seems completely legitimate as its description indicates that it was cooperatively released from a Polish agency. This user has left no trail of rationale or discussion about why they may consider the licenses to be invalid or wrong, and the user may not speak much English as home wiki is the Polish one. The photos seem to be Poland-related. The user also has many warnings and deleted photos, so I am raising the issue here for deeper scrutiny. Thank you! Elizium23 (talk) 03:01, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi, These files are certainly in the public domain, but the license provided (CC-0) makes no sense. Only the copyright holder can attributes a CC license. However the copyright of these files expired long ago, and the license can't be attributed by the agency which owns these documents. So the {{Wrong license}} template is useless, but it is not technically wrong. So just revert this, and add a useful license. Yann (talk) 22:04, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
@Yann I would love to get right on 600 reverts, but I don't have tools or automation to make that less painful. For the same reason, there is much friction before I consider nominating multiple files for deletion, because Commons's deletion process requires that each file be tagged, and I haven't come across any automated methods for doing that. I've used Twinkle and RW/Ultraviolet. Is this a job for Huggle/AWB/JWB? Elizium23 (talk) 05:41, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
Commons:Archiwum Państwowe w Poznaniu was last updated in 2014. It says very clearly that "the State Archive in Poznań has opted for the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 license". So have things changed on the ground? Was that wrong from the get-go? Could @Polimerek follow up on this? Elizium23 (talk) 05:48, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
@Kustoszka, @Crashzeroo as uploaders. Elizium23 (talk) 05:50, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
VisualFileChange on the meta category Category:Media contributed by the State Archive in Poznań can probably do the job. Yann (talk) 08:01, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Strange permission tag

I just came upon a file where the uploader added a tag saying "The copyright holder of this file allows anyone to use it for any purpose, provided that the copyright holder is mentioned."

Now I wonder: How does this work, without a VRT ticket? The uploader is a publishing company that may own the usage rights to the photo but not the copyright. So how can they speak for the photographer?

This appears to be a Munich-based independent photographer, and by law there is no way this publisher can have the Urheberrecht.

Thanks, --87.150.10.172 23:58, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

The {{Copyrighted free use provided that}} tag is deprecated. Looks like this should have used {{Attribution}} instead. I won't speak to whether the uploader owned the economic rights enough to license the image that way. Carl Lindberg (talk) 00:43, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
Presumably, given the account name, the uploader is associated with the publisher https://mixtvision.de/en/imprint-german/. My guess is that someone with better German than mine can contact them at the email given on that page, and that there is a fair chance they would help us sort out a proper license, including getting the actual copyright holder to contact VRT as needed. - Jmabel ! talk 04:25, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Category:Pirelli Tower (Milan)

Is there a good reason why this 1958 building is in PD? The architect died in 1979. I see some provision about public buildings at Commons:Copyright rules by territory/Italy, but I do not quite see why it should apply. Thanks. Ymblanter (talk) 20:29, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Current consensus is that de facto Italian FOP starts at 0 pma. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 20:39, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
Great, thanks. Ymblanter (talk) 21:53, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

GODL-India only applies to works with a DOI, URI, or URL.

I think {{GODL-India}} only applies on files published with a URL, URI, or DOI. This is because according to this gazette notification, [t]he user must acknowledge the provider, source, and license of data by explicitly publishing the attribution statement,11 including the DOI (Digital Object Identifier), or the URL (Uniform Resource Locator), or the URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) of the data concerned.. Failure to do so means the GODL is terminated per Section 7a of the Gazette notification. Of course, you can't credit a URL/URI/DOI if it doesn't exist, so GODL-India only applies to files published online (with a URI/URL) or with a Digital Object Identifier. --Matr1x-101Pinging me doesn't hurt! {user - talk? - useless contributions} 17:01, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

"Including" means if available. You interpretation makes no sense. Ruslik (talk) 19:59, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
"Including" does not mean "if available". According to Britannica, including means having (someone or something) as part of a group or total. The DOI/URL/URI must be part of the attribution statement. Failure to do so (i.e. if there is no DOI/URL/URI to attribute) results in termination of the license per Section 7a of the Gazette notification.
Think about it. If a legal document asks you to include a signature, including a signature is not optional. Including does not mean "if available". --Matr1x-101Pinging me doesn't hurt! {user - talk? - useless contributions} 21:20, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
If a license says a uri must be included then the uri to be included must be provided. Otherwise it would look like the license was issued in bad faith. So, to avoid this interpretation, one concludes that uri inclusion is compulsory if and only if an uri has been actually provided. Ruslik (talk) 20:20, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
Actually, it says either DOI, URL, or URI, meaning that at least one of those must be included. Bsslover371 (talk) 06:59, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
@Bsslover371, does it say "must"? Where does it say "DOI, URL, or URI must be included"? It would seem that "must" attaches to the requirement to uniquely attribute the source, rather than the method used to do so. Elizium23 (talk) 10:41, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
You underestimate the flexibility of URI naming schemes. A URI can refer to practically anything, especially anything digital. You could generate a hash for a digital file. You could mint a tag for it. You could create a new URI scheme for the type of thing you're describing. You could use one of the hundreds of existing schemes. This restriction you're imagining is no restriction at all; it's a license to let our imaginations run wild. Elizium23 (talk) 03:13, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
Nice save, @Elizium23! I only thought URIs extended to http(s), irc(s), ftp, ssh/scp, rsync, etc. So you're saying we can generate a SHA 256 hash for the file and attribute it via that "Named Information" URI scheme? --Matr1x-101Pinging me doesn't hurt! {user - talk? - useless contributions} 12:45, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

{{PD-algorithm}} seems too good to be true

{{PD-algorithm}} states that "the work of a computer algorithm or artificial intelligence" is in public domain because "it has no human author in whom copyright is vested." However, this seems too good to be true. If anything generated by an algorithm was PD, then this would mean we could just copy any AI art to Commons. It would also mean we could publish screenshots of any software (or at least video games that don't use textures) because almost all computer graphics are generated by algorithms. So I don't think it's that simple. Furthermore, there are claims that AI-generated images are derivative works of the data used to train the programs. [7] Is there any validity to this?

I also know some AI programs like Midjourney only allow paying subscribers to use the generated art for commercial purposes. [8] If "the work of a computer algorithm or artificial intelligence" is really in public domain, then does this mean these terms are unenforceable? Or is there something I'm missing? Ixfd64 (talk) 23:09, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

In general, software screenshots are a derivative work of the creation of the human authors of the software, even if the specific arrangement at the time is computer-generated. A screenshot of a game is usually derivative of the artwork drawn by the human artists, though in extreme cases there are exceptions, e.g. Commons:Deletion requests/File:Dwarf Fortress - mapa świata.png.
As for AI specifically, the legal situation is not 100% clear, but de facto consensus on Commons seems to be that it is allowed in general. For sure, Midjourney's terms cannot be worse than an AI model that does not have explicit terms of use. So if we choose to treat Midjourney's conditions as enforceable, then we must not allow any model that does not explicitly permit unrestricted commercial use. For the record, it is my personal opinion that model owners do not hold any rights to the output of their models, regardless of what their terms say. I am undecided on the question of whether the human creator of the prompt holds any copyright: one possible interpretation is that the output is a DW of the prompt (in which case the output would be copyrightable by the human prompter unless the prompt is below COM:TOO), but another possible interpretation is that it's nothing more than a human teaching a monkey how to take a selfie (note: this is not actually what happened in the Slater case, but that's what it would be analogous to). -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:49, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
What is this "Slater case" you refer to? AFAIK, there has been no such case. The question of the validity of David Slater's claim to hold the copyright there has never been tested in court. Nor has the PETA case (thrown out beforehand) because that wasn't even about Slater's copyright (or not), it was making a claim for the macaque that had already been rejected by earlier precedents.
The point is that there is no Slater case (and no precedent established), so cannot be analogous to AI generation. Andy Dingley (talk) 01:14, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
I see. So it looks like we're operating on the assumption that the courts will rule that AI-generated art is not copyrightable. Hope we won't have to deal with DMCA takedowns or lawsuits down the road. On a related note, would it be a good idea to create something like Commons:When to use the PD-algorithm tag in the not-too-distant future? Ixfd64 (talk) 01:24, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
We have Commons:AI-generated media which is in progress. Borysk5 (talk) 11:41, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
The US Copyright Office refused to register a work with an AI listed as author, so we have their opinion on it. Most computer games, even without textures, use 3D objects that are basically virtual sculptures. I'd say that a computer program that simply displayed a 3D object wouldn't add anything to the 3D model copyright, any more than Adobe Acrobat does. For 3D models, there is the Toyota case where they successfully argued that an exact 3D model of a Toyota doesn't get its own copyright; this might apply to some computer 3D models, thought games are almost always going to be able to argue a creative reduction of a real life object into a usable and appealing computer model.
I've played around with NightCafe some, and I'd be wary of too broad use of this tag. Throwing elf into the machine doesn't produce copyrightable output, but a complex enough prompt and complex enough settings should be copyrightable, and the output a derivative of that.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:54, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Photoshopped or otherwise altered hoax images

I'm wondering how Commons treats photoshopped or otherwise altered hoax images. I'm guessing that such images might be considered COM:DERIVATIVEs if they incorporate copyright content created by others and could be licensed as such. In some cases, a photoshopped hoax image may actually be the subject of commentary (e.g. political satire, a meme) based on the fact that it's been photoshopped; so, such an image could possibly satisfy COM:SCOPE. What about cases where the image is simply intended to misrepresent and realistically has no potential encyclopedic value at all. Are these treated as COM:CSD#F3 or COM:CSD#F10 When it comes to English Wikipedia and hoax articles, there is a way to tag such things for speedy deletion per en:WP:G3; however, there no doesn't seem to be a corresponding speedy deletion criterion for hoax files uploaded to Commons. Do such images simply need to go to DR to be deleted? FWIW, I'm asking about this because of Commons:Deletion requests/File:Bruce Lee and James Demile.jpg, which does seem to be a case of photoshopping to create a hoax image having zero educational value. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:27, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

@Marchjuly: Generally speaking (I will leave it to others to deal with the DR):
  • Altered images (the alterations may use any software; the images may or may not be hoaxes) are generally derivative works. Where they violate the copyright of the original work, they are eligible for CSD F3.
  • These images may or may not be in scope, as you explained (but note that the criterion is educational value, not encyclopedic value). Where they are not in scope (and therefore not a constructive contribution) and any other contributions by the uploader are also non-constructive, they may be eligible for CSD F10.
  • Actually, Commons does have a CSD that is similar (in some respects) to enwiki’s G3, also called G3: Content posted with the intention of creating/spreading hoaxes may also be deleted under this criterion.
  • If the file’s presence is not doing immediate harm and there is reasonable doubt about how to handle it, it should always go to a DR.
Brianjd (talk) 10:35, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you Brianjd for all that information. Just for reference, I'm aware of COM:EDUSE, and I thought I touched on that at the very end of my post. My apologies, however, if that wasn't clear. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:44, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
Deleted. I warned the uploader. Any more issues should lead to a block, as they were already warned several times. Yann (talk) 10:45, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you Yann for taking a look at the file. Just for reference, while I was pretty certain the photo was fake, I have no way of knowing who created it. It could've been someone other than the uploader. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:44, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
Yes, but it doesn't matter. The abuse is in uploading. Yann (talk) 08:19, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Similar photos

Is it ok to replace File:Alexandru Pesamosca.jpg with this? - Coagulans (talk) 04:44, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

What do you mean by "replace"? If you meant, replacing the image on the project(s) where it is currently used, that should be discussed on the projects, not here. If you meant deleting the 1st image to replace it by the 2nd one, no. If the 2nd image is also under a valid free license, you might upload it under a different filename to Commons. --Túrelio (talk) 08:38, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
This is the same picture, so if the license is valid for one, it is also for the other one. Yann (talk) 08:47, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
this looks way better... Stemoc 09:16, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. Indeed, "replace" wasn't the right word to use. - Coagulans (talk) 11:35, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

en-native-speaker willing to adapt a COM:CB-paragraph?

See here: Commons talk:Copyright rules by subject matter#COM:CB-statement about Noticeboards/signs is incorrect. Thanks. --Túrelio (talk) 11:59, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

File:Чехов А.П. Три сестры. Радиоспектакль МХАТ, 1947.opus

File is licensed pma 70+4 as per COM:Russia. Is performer’s copyright valid on Commons? If so, many actors there are died less than 70 years ago. What local policy one can find on this issue? --188.123.231.62 20:21, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

In any case, this recording would still be protected in the US since it was still protected in Russia at the URAA date. Therefore, we should not host it here anyway. Felix QW (talk) 00:02, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

In Russia copyrights for audiorecordings are regulated by neighbouring (related) rights (RU: Смежные права), not by copyrights (RU: Авторское право). If base work (text, music, etc.) is in the PD or uncopyrighted, then record company copyrights for audiorecording expire after 50 from record date and perfomer's copyrights for audiorecording expire on Jan.1 year after 50+4 after from record year or on Jan.1 year after perfomer's death year, which are later. See for example Файл:Gagarin-Poyekhali.ogg Alex Spade (talk) 20:22, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Licensing concerns about 3 images

I'm concerned that File:Cardano_Founder,_Charles_Hoskinson_and_Professor_Brummer.jpg, File:Charles_Hoskinson,_Keynote_Binance_Blockchain_week_2022.jpg, and File:Aggelos_Kiayias,_Chief_Science_Officer_at_Input_Output_Global.jpg have all been uploaded as CC licensed but they don't appear to be the uploader's own work and there isn't any indication they're CC licensed at their sources. JaggedHamster (talk) 17:03, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

✓ Done Tagged, user warned. Yann (talk) 19:39, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Picture is not own work.

It is not possible to identify users registered, but the names they choose tells something about them. User:SteinarGlimsdal has uploaded File:Kjetil Haga.jpg as own work. The picture is created by Kathrine Nygård and is previously published here - https://www.glogerfestspillene.no/artist/kjetil-haga/ . User:SteinarGlimsdal is an employee at Blå Kors Norge https://no.linkedin.com/in/steinar-glimsdal-ba6a5542 where Kjetil Haga used to work. This does not make him the owner of this workout it is possible he in this role had access to photos of Haga. This picture lacks a licence from its creator Kathrine Nygård and probably should be deleted.  ツツ Dyveldi  ☯  16:02, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Sounds to me like a classic case of referring the uploader to COM:VRT. Felix QW (talk) 17:07, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
Probably years to late for OTRS. The user made a few edits: user edits and then stopped. All of the edits was connected to Blå Kors who Steinar Glimsdals employer at the time. The user should have been contacted at the time and made aware of Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest. Probably would have helped the user.
- Glimsdal uploaded two pictures. The other one is File:Geir Gundersen - foto Steinar Glimsdal.jpg and as is typical of own work this file does give information about the camera that was use. File:Kjetil Haga.jpg does not give any such information.
- Steinar Glimsdal used to work for Blå Kors and they might well have bought the right to use a copy of the picture from the photographer. This might have led to a misunderstanding of what own work means. Blå Kors may have owned the right to limited use of the picture. Blå Kors might have a contract with the photographer which could have resolved the matter. Glimsdal no longer works for Blå Kors and it is highly unlikely that he have bought the rights to publish it on commons as a private person.  ツツ Dyveldi  ☯  14:57, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
First of all I do not think I am the right person to refer the user to OTRS (COM:VRT) or follow up. I am not that experienced on Commons.  ツツ Dyveldi  ☯  15:06, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
I am sorry if it came accross as explicitly telling you to do something. I just wanted to point out that in these situations, the community usually requires VRT approval to keep the image. While what you are saying sounds plausible, I doubt the image would be kept should someone file a deletion request without evidence of permission or transfer of copyright from the photographer. Felix QW (talk) 16:11, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
No you did not come across as telling me. I just was very reluctant here and as you say what I think about this picture is plausible. It is not a fact though. I have tried to nominate the page for deletion, but am unsure if I used the correct procedure. -- ツツ Dyveldi  ☯  19:43, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
It was almost correct - the right tag was "no permission since" rather than "no license since". I fixed it now - thanks for bringing this up! Felix QW (talk) 21:39, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Indian banknotes

There is currently conflicting information regarding the copyright status of Indian currency. According to COM:CUR India, Indian banknotes are released under the GODL, while the header text at Category:Rupee (India) suggests that only banknotes before 1962 are in the public domain and uploading images of later banknotes is not admissible. Do we have any actual evidence that all (or even any) Indian banknotes have been released under the GODL? See also the potentially related discussion at Commons:Deletion requests/Media in Category:Unreviewed photos of GODL-India. Felix QW (talk) 13:50, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't think anything is automatically released under the GODL. Like the British OGL, it needs to be specified somewhere. Carl Lindberg (talk) 14:30, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
@Clindberg: according to this gazette notification, it applies to anything generated using public funds by various agencies of the Government of India. It doesn't need to be specified --Matr1x-101Pinging me doesn't hurt! {user - talk? - useless contributions} 16:56, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
There was a long discussion about it at Commons:Deletion requests/Media in Category:Unreviewed photos of GODL-India. That document you link to does say the open license for data sets published under NDSAP and through the OGD Platform remained unspecified till now, which implies then that that license only applies to "data sets published under NDSAP and through the OGD Platform", which are generally all on the data.gov.in website. The license and policy does seem to be targeted at "data", which is defined fairly broadly but not sure it really is meant to apply to all works of government -- the policy seems to require a vetting process to make sure it is covered data. Many Indian government websites do have a pretty open policy, but I never see this license in particular mentioned anywhere else. It's definitely a fairly nebulous situation. The license does explicitly say that it does not apply to any "data subject to other intellectual property rights, including patents, trademarks, and official marks" -- I do wonder if currency comes under that. Carl Lindberg (talk) 18:32, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
@Clindberg: The quote you said "the open license for data sets published under NDSAP and through the OGD Platform remained unspecified till now" is simply an acknowledgment that data sets published under NDSAP and through the OGD platform didn't have a license. In the legal sense, it doesn't imply anything. --Matr1x-101Pinging me doesn't hurt! {user - talk? - useless contributions} 22:11, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
The other issue is that even if we assume that the license holds automatically, does it hold for works published before it came into force? For an official document, the gazetted scope remains terribly cryptic. Felix QW (talk) 21:43, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Date of Template:PD-BR-1937

Since Brazil's URAA restoration date is 1 January 1996, shouldn't this template only apply to works finished before 1936? If a work was finished in 1936, my expectation would be that it entered the public domain in 1936+60+1 = 1997. —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 02:33, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Would have to agree. Not entirely sure if there were any earlier, shorter terms in Brazilian that may have still been in place (and not retroactively restored), but on the face of it a 60-year term which started in 1936 would only have expired on January 1, 1997, and been restored by the URAA. Carl Lindberg (talk) 00:40, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
@DarwIn may want to participate here. He told me once that it’s until January 1, 1936 or something similar (I would have to check), but certainly not 1937. RodRabelo7 (talk) 09:01, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Handwritten annotations (inscriptions) on a published work - copyright or not copyright?

Hi all, apologies if this question has been asked before. A friend previously uploaded an image of the title page of a published work that includes 2 handwritten additions (by family members of the authors, no relation to the uploader) which has been noted by a patroller as "a derivative work, containing an "image within an image" ", the original being in copyright, and therefore subject to potential deletion; the page in question includes the title to the work as printed characters.

My question is, if the image were cropped to remove the title of the work (i.e., to show just the handwritten annotations), would that still be an image (photograph by the uploader) that could be released as CC4 or whatever, or would permission be required from the annotators themselves (i.e., would their handwritten annotations still be copyright?). All advice appreciated. Regards, Tony Rees, Australia Tony 1212 (talk) 06:29, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

In case it helps, the particular item under discussion is here: File:Time_means_Tucker_signed_by_Dule's_daughter_&_nephew-837.jpg - however the question can be construed as a more general one, I think... Regards Tony Tony 1212 (talk) 20:39, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
In theory, it is possible for inscriptions to be long enough to qualify for a literary copyright. In the U.S., and most countries, there is no copyright on short phrases, or perfunctory text or bare information. Titles usually fall under that. Additionally, most countries do not have any copyright on the typographical arrangement of printed editions -- the UK and Australia does (or did); its was 25 years though so that has passed. Something like signatures ... usually not copyrightable, but there are some countries where it might be -- see Commons:When to use the PD-signature tag. These issues are complicated and not generally the subject for speedy deletion; at most that should be converted into a regular deletion request so it could be discussed. From what I see, the inscriptions are not copyrightable, nor is the title. The graphic of the person might be, if it was original to that work. Title pages of books are almost never problems (just the book text, or images). The only real issue is the graphic of the person; if that is blurred then no problem. And if that was something common to that publisher, it could be older than that and thus PD by age. Or it could be considered Commons:de minimis for this photo -- it's certainly not avoidable. Carl Lindberg (talk) 21:11, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
On the other hand, this photo appears at https://blog.bushmusic.org.au/2018/05/visit-to-tritton-hall-by-duke-trittons.html , with a photographer credit. That may well be the uploader, but it might be best to have them send a private email using the process at COM:VRT to confirm that, if the free license cannot be specified on the source website. Accounts here are anonymous, and it's easy to use a name which looks like an author to falsely upload images they cannot license. We delete lots of uploads every day. Carl Lindberg (talk) 21:23, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Carl, I happen to know that the uploader is the same person as the photographer credited in the blogspot mentioned. Maybe she/we can just replace the image with a new version with the graphic suitably blurred then, and add a note somewhere to say that the issue has been addressed? Tony 1212 (talk) 21:43, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
If a work has been previously published on the internet, and the source page cannot be updated to mention the license, we do require those private emails, and the VRT team (volunteers) should provide the OK once confirmed. Since 2007, we don't accept forwarded permissions, basically. See Commons:Volunteer Response Team#If you are NOT the copyright holder (or the photographer can look at the previous section, and follow those steps, since she does own the copyright). That would be the most likely reason for it to get deleted, honestly. It can be aggravating but we have constant people uploading copyrighted internet photos without permission, and have found that the email templates work the best, including to make sure there are no misunderstandings (for example, the photo can't be licensed just for Wikipedia). But yes, slightly blurring the graphic would eliminate any other possible problem (and even that might be OK; I'd argue to keep it probably). Carl Lindberg (talk) 22:05, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
Alternatively to VRT, since the page of interest is clearly two-dimensional, a crop could suffice to make it eligible for PD-Art? Felix QW (talk) 17:45, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
Thanks all, I have alerted the uploader to the discussion above and added some advice of my own. It seems there are 2 separate aspects to deal with, one the potential derivative work originally flagged as the trigger for possible deletion, and two, the fact that she previously published the image without an appropriate licence, both of which will require attention, so we will await her decision as to what next steps she will take... Also the original patroller deleted both this image and another from the relevant Wikipedia article unilaterally, so ideally they could be restored there as well. Regards Tony Tony 1212 (talk) 18:14, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Can this album be uploaded to Commons? There’s no FOP in Argentina, but ithe author of those images is the same person who photographed them. RodRabelo7 (talk) 05:11, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Eve (Davidson) of IUPUI

One public art listed at w:en:User:Ww2censor/FOP statues, w:en:Eve (Davidson) (1931, by w:en:Robert William Davidson), may actually be in public domain, if erected up to 1977 without copyright notice. However, I need assistance from other users to know if it is in public domain ({{PD-US-no notice}}) or not. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 02:47, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

The entry of this sculpture at Smithsonian Institution's public art catalog is [9]. Ping @Jameslwoodward: to help me determine if this can be {{PD-US-no notice}} (or {{PD-US-not renewed}}) or not. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 09:49, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
According to its enwiki article, this statue was erected in the public Ball Gardens by 1937. So if it did not carry a copyright notice then, it would certainly be {{PD-US-no notice}}. Felix QW (talk) 21:35, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
@Felix QW: the Smithsonian's public art catalog states the inscription as: (On base:) Robert Davidson (On side of base:) Priessmann Baver v Co. Munchen Bavaria signed Founder's mark appears. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 00:42, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Surveillance camera footage question

Would the surveillance camera footage of the beating of Tyre Nichols (source here) be covered by copyright? The direction the camera is pointing changes at the beginning of the video but I'm uncertain of whether that's due to a human changing it or something automatic. Per Commons:Copyright rules by subject matter#Surveillance camera footage this seems rather ambiguous but would be good to know. Elli (talk) 07:21, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Usually CCTV videos are in the public domain. {{PD-ineligible}} is OK for this case. Yann (talk) 12:09, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

PD-CSPAN question

This is related to COM:HD#File:David Bunning Confirmation.jpg and has to do with the licensing of File:David Bunning Confirmation.jpg. The file was uploaded under a {{PD-USGov}} in March 2022 and according to its source it is a screenshot of 2006 US Congressional Committee hearing that was broadcast by C-Span. According to C-Span's licensing information page and {{PD-CSPAN}}, broadcasts of US Congressional Committee hearings taking place within official chambers are within the public domain, but this screenshot is from a hearing held in Dirksen Senate Office Building and not the US Senate's official chamber. The original licensing of "PD-USGov" is probably not correct, but I'm wondering if "PD-CSPAN" could be used instead. If not, then I'm not sure this file can be kept by Commons. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:11, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

No. PD-CSPAN is in reality a synonym for PD-USGov, since it only applies to the material broadcast from cameras in the main chambers, which are government-owned and therefore PD-USGov (despite the C-SPAN logo being added). Any footage that CSPAN films itself is their copyright, and not allowed by that tag. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:59, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you Carl. I've nominated the file for deletion at Commons:Deletion requests/File:David Bunning Confirmation.jpg. -- Marchjuly (talk) 07:55, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

North Carolina State Judge photos

File:Robin Hudson.jpg and File:Samuel Ervin IV.jpg are uploaded under a {{PD-USGov}} license by the same uploader. These two files appear to be official photos attributed to the "North Carolina Judicial Branch", but it's not clear if this is part of the US federal government or is a state-level body that wouldn't be covered under "PD-USGov". According to Harvard University's State Copyright Resource Center, works created by employees of the State of North Carolina as part of their official duties are not clearly within the public domain. So, if these files aren't covered by "PD-USGov", then I'm not sure Commons can keep them.

In addition to the aforementioned two files, there are also File:African American Justices of the NC Supreme Court.jpg (which has been cropped various times) and File:Justice Anita Earls.jpg. The group photo and its crops are all licensed as "PD-USGov", but once again these are not federal judges and it would seem that the photo was taken by an employee of the State of North Carolina and not the US federal government. The photo of Earls was uploaded under a CC license as "own work", which seems quite questionable given that this looks like an official photo and thus likely a copyvio. At the very least, the "own work" claim would seem to need to be verified by VRT or the licensing converted to something else. I'm interested what others might think about these photos regarding whether they're OK for Commons. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:23, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

@Marchjuly: These photos are copyrighted by the photographers. See en:Copyright status of works by subnational governments of the United States#North Carolina, and the lack of mention of North Carolina at COM:US#US States.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 02:43, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
Possible new additions for Category:United States law deletion requests/pending, unfortunately. Those files need to be taken down. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 02:47, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you Jeff G. and JWilz12345. I've tagged the first two photos and the one claimed as "own work" as copyvios. The other photo might be better off discussed at DR since it's been cropped many times and it's been sourced to two different sites. -- Marchjuly (talk) 08:10, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
@Jeff G., JWilz12345, and Clindberg: Would you mind taking another look at File:African American Justices of the NC Supreme Court.jpg? In particular, take a look at the file's description. I missed it the first time I looked at the file, but it states that photo was taken by the "Staff of G. K. Butterfield". en:G. K. Butterfield, who's in the photo, was a former justice on the North Carolina State Supreme Court who was first elected to the US House of Representatives in 2004 after retiring from the court. He's still serving as a US Congressman which means this might actually be "PD-USGov" since the file's description states the photo was taken on August 31, 2017. -- Marchjuly (talk) 12:44, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
@Marchjuly: Is that staff member a direct employee of the US federal government? Is taking photos of the Congressman a part of the official duties of that staff member?   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:07, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
The source is a house.gov website. So yes, would be PD-USGov, pretty clearly, if taken by the Congressman's staff. Carl Lindberg (talk) 14:40, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you Carl for looking at this. As for who took the photo Jeff G., I'm not sure who actually did only that it's attributed to a "staff member" and is sourced to the verified Twitter account of US Congressman Butterfield and this official US government website for Butterfield, which says the photo comes for Twitter. It might be best to assume COM:AGF here unless there's strong reason to doubt the claim of "PD-USGov". -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:38, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Bonn zoological bulletin

Files in Category:Bonn zoological bulletin were from the Internet Archive Book Images on Flickr where they were changed from "No known restrictions" to CC0 public domain in 2022 (example: https://flickr.com/photos/126377022@N07/19771746504) but they are from https://archive.org/details/bonnzoological6122012zool which has a noncommercial licence by-nc-sa/3.0. There was a deletion request in 2020 (Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Bonner zoologische Monographien (2011)) where files with the same licence from the same publisher were deleted, but that was before the licence on Flickr was changed to CC0. Was the 2020 deletion the correct decision, and if it was then should a deletion request be made for the Bonn zoological bulletin category? Is the licence on Flickr likely to be correct, and does the change to CC0 make a difference? Peter James (talk) 21:45, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

I suspect that Archive.org does not hold copyright to that bulletin and the reason they published it is because it was published in United States in 1971 without a copyright notice, making it public domain. Borysk5 (talk) 09:48, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
As far as I can see, most of the pictures in this category are from around 2010. However, the publisher itself releases the journal under a CC-BY-4.0 license, so as far as they are not courtesy images it should just be a matter of relabelling the files. Felix QW (talk) 10:30, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Commons:Deletion requests/File:Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music.pdf‎

Hi, This requires opinions from people understanding complex US copyright issues. Thanks, Yann (talk) 11:14, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Photographs of artwork in public domain, relicensed to Creative Commons

Hi, I discussed copyright issues with this user last May. They have taken and uploaded numerous photographs of artwork in European locales, typically with a public domain status, give or take local FOP regulations. Unfortunately this user has claimed authorship and copyright for themselves. They have attempted to relicense each photograph as Creative Commons, despite having no standing to do so, and if the original works are already PD, then they cannot be encumbered with more-restrictive licenses. This editor has only taken photographs, and I don't know what credit can be conferred as an author of a digital reproduction, but I have ensured that none of these photographs are claiming spurious Creative Commons licensing, which is patently impossible. The user denied wrongdoing and refused to fix any problems. I am unsure anyone else was unaware of the issues, but a recent mass-nomination for deletion seems to have culled a few of the photos, but unfortunately did not bring scrutiny on the poor licensing and authorship claims. I've repaired them as best I could. Elizium23 (talk) 12:58, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Couldn't this have been resolved with {{Licensed-PD-Art}}? We include both the PD licence for the depicted object and the Creative Commons licence for the photograph. For legal jurisdictions that only need the PD tag, they have that available. For legal jurisdictions that protect the copyright of the photographer, we have that too. From Hill To Shore (talk) 13:06, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
My uploads are better licensed than the uploads I was inspired to upload. At least my uploads have a license, others often not. I'd also like to point out this really fabulous rant by Elizium which in no way is anything constructive. If such behavior is not addressed and warned for, what do you support?Paradise Chronicle (talk) 13:29, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
While your diff clearly indicates that I removed that message nearly immediately, I stand by what I said: you've claimed authorship and copyright control for works you didn't create. That's wrong and dishonest, and probably illegal. Elizium23 (talk) 13:32, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
To most of my uploads I add (work) ... by (painter/sculptor)... many do it the same way as for example EinDao or Roland ZhCourtesy pings to EinDao and Roland zh. Mine of the same sculpture has a FOP license his not. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 13:43, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
Two more files here and here with now FOP license but mine has. Another one here and mine has. If it is forbidden, it should be forbidden for all. Here even author, own work and attribution goes all to the editor with no FOP license, mine had. Either rules go for all, or else we need to expect that others follow their example. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 14:42, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
Here again. Same sculptor, same rail station. Editor mentions own work, but no FOP license. Mine of another statue at the same railway station has a FOP license but also mention own work as many many other editors as well. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 15:07, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
Here and here works that were nominated for deletion having a license. One a FOP and another in public domain created somewhere in 1780. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 15:24, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
  • We have in the past here deleted photographs of old PD works on the basis that the photographer hadn't also released or licensed their copyright. This is wrong under most jurisdictions (for a "mechanical reproduction of 2D art", at least) and is not required under any Commons policy or practice that I know of. And yet, still there are attempts at deletion.
We have a large ongoing DR regarding old photos in modern books, on much the same basis.
So I'm not going to criticise any photographer who tries to clear that up by also relinquishing their own rights to an image. Even if there had been nothing there that was under their rights in the first place! Andy Dingley (talk) 15:27, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
That's fine if Paradise Chronicle elects to dedicate their photographs to the public domain. But they've attempted to: claim authorship of the entire work, and then restrict the rights of reuse by attaching a Creative Commons license that is, by definition, more restrictive than the Public Domain designation on the original work.
I can see cases where a photographer, claiming authorship of the reproductive/derivative work, wishes to restrict usage of that photograph, but it'd need to be clearly articulated who is the author of what, and what rights attach to what work. Elizium23 (talk) 18:44, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
@Elizium23: I have taken a quick look through Paradise Chronicle's recent uploads and they are all correctly licensed using {{Licensed-PD-Art}}. Now it is possible that there are older uploads I haven't seen that are problematic, but I can't see any evidence that they are deliberately making false claims. In this scenario it is best to assume good faith and work with the uploader to improve any historic problems rather than come to a public forum and take a confrontational tone. From Hill To Shore (talk) 19:50, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
I just spotted this "fix" which is clearly wrong.[10] While it is arguable that the author field could have been clearer, we have gone from a validly licensed file to an invalid file that could be deleted at any time. @Elizium23: I would strongly encourage you not to make such edits. You are not improving the situation. From Hill To Shore (talk) 20:00, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
The photograph itself has a copyright, where the author (photographer) must be credited, and they can license that part of the copyright however they like. A photo of a statue does mean that the statue's copyright must also be satisfied, either via a FoP provision in the location's copyright law, or if it has expired. You can certainly make a copyrighted photo of a public domain statue -- at that point there is no derivative rights, so the photograph is the only copyright to be credited. I restored the author claim in the photo mentioned above, because it's completely accurate. There was already FoP tag which explained why the derivative copyright was not an issue here. It's only straight-on photos of paintings or other 2D works (which basically amounts to a copy) where {{PD-Art}} is used, and we have {{Licensed-PD-Art}} for when the uploader wants to give a free license for the photo in case it helps in certain jurisdictions. Photos of 3D works however have a new photographic copyright which must be licensed just like normal photos (before we get to the derivative aspect). They have every right to claim authorship of the photographic copyright. Carl Lindberg (talk) 01:54, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
@Clindberg and @From Hill To Shore, I acknowledge that I was hasty and uninformed in my edits and pursuit of this dispute. I see that there are finer distinctions made. I am still skeptical about the "authorship" of a work depicted being erased, in favor of the author of a photo. Surely there is a way for them both to receive proper credit.
Perhaps I am still unclear on the boundary of when a photograph may be licensed by its author and when it is forced into the public domain by virtue of its being a faithful copy of a 2D work of art. But I'm withdrawing my accusations at this point and recusing myself from further dispute. Apologies to @Paradise Chronicle for my misunderstandings. Elizium23 (talk) 09:50, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
@Elizium23 and Paradise Chronicle: The ideal way to describe the author in these situations is, "Paradise Chronicle (photographer), after [insert name of creator of PD work]." Note that this is best practice, where possible, but we don't penalise uploaders who don't include both names in the author field. As Paradise Chronicle seems to know the name of the original creator in the cases I have looked at, perhaps adding the second name (where known) in the author field will help resolve this dispute? From Hill To Shore (talk) 10:14, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
We have {{Photo}}, which should be used as best practice. The template is translated to many languages, while "photographer" may not be universally understood. Of course the author of the original work should also be told where possible. I agree that you don't need to know best practices as uploader, or not know how to implement them in a specific case, and that that shouldn't hinder an upload. –LPfi (talk) 16:30, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
The primary work being licensed is the photograph, so that is the "author" of the work in question. In these cases there is also some expression from a different author, so yes they should be named as well (though doesn't necessarily need to be in the Author field). The photographic copyright has to do with angle chosen, framing, and that sort of thing. By all means add the author of the underlying work to the description, and if there is no license tag satisfying that part of the copyright, there is a keep/delete issue. But the "author" field is often more the "copyright holder", and the photographic copyright is what comes first, so it's find if that part is the photographer only. But sure, both authors can also be mentioned in there. Taking out the photographer is 100% wrong though, and far worse than the original problem. Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:11, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi, I don't see much issue with Paradise Chronicle's uploads, but a small technical mistake: {{Licensed-PD-Art|PD-old-auto|{{self|cc-by-sa-4.0}}|deathyear=1879}} produces an error. The correct license is {{Licensed-PD-Art|PD-old-auto|cc-by-sa-4.0|deathyear=1879}}. Yann (talk) 18:13, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the correct license @Yann. Also noticed mine produces some more script and thought it was a bug. It was a (a mishap) copy-paste of a license I found somewhere else. To be able to add the death year is really good so I kept it. Will go around and fix the license from time to time. Thanks for the many other replies as well. I actually assumed that my uploads were in order (not perfect, I know others do it better) and was supportive of Elizium23 reporting me. I hope that in the future I'll give you less concern or reason that someone does report me.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 20:47, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Treshold of originality

Do you think this book cover meets the treshold of originality? It’s the cover of a book published in Portugal, if that matters. The photograph of that face is already in the public domain. Maybe this template can somehow be useful. RodRabelo7 (talk) 19:57, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

IMHO there is nothing copyrightable in this book cover (expect the photo). Ruslik (talk) 20:36, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Super Bowl Rings

I have just come across Category:Super Bowl rings, after first seeing File:Super Bowl LIV Ring - NFL Draft Experience 2021.jpg. I opened up a deletion request on the Kansas City ring, since the image prominently features a copyrighted logo and jewelry seems to me like it could be copyrightable. I see there have been multiple discussions on it in the past, and COM:CB#Jewelry seems to be in agreement. However, since there have been multiple discussions on jewelry before, I am hoping for other opinions on this: Are NFL Super Rings, including but not limited to the ones which feature the team's logo, a piece of art that therefore falls under copyright and COM:FOP? Elisfkc (talk) 18:33, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

If the jewelry is original enough for a copyright, it can be registered. The U.S. Copyright Office appeals rulings have several related to jewelry where they show what is on the borderline. I would suspect most Super Bowl rings (if not all) would be copyrightable. I'm not sure any have actually been registered for copyright, as fake rings tend to get seized on trademark violation grounds by customs agents (easier to prove) rather than copyright. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:16, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
Since older images of Super Bowl rings have not been flagged for this reason, would it be safe to say that we can keep status-quo? Cards84664 (talk) 21:29, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
The arguments about formalities such as registration would only matter for pre-1989 rings though, so those after that date would certainly be questionable on threshold of originality grounds. Felix QW (talk) 07:53, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

John Fielder, billed as “Colorado’s most famous nature photographer,” has donated more than 5,000 photographs to public domain

I'm not sure if your images should be uploaded as CC0, but citing his website: "THIS SPRING HISTORY COLORADO WILL MAKE ALL OF MY PHOTOGRAPHS AVAILABLE FOR FREE DIGITAL SEARCHES, FOR PERSONAL AND COMMERCIAL USE BY THE GENERAL PUBLIC, AS WELL AS HOST ONGOING EXHIBITIONS FEATURING MY WORK." It look like CC0, but public domain actually is not a license. https://www.johnfielder.com/ Wilfredor (talk) 16:17, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

There is also another discussion about this at Commons:Village pump#FYI: Celebrated Nature Photographer Donates Life’s Work to Public Domain. User:Koavf has apparently been in contact with the organisation digitising the files "to see if there's some way to collaborate on showcasing the work." From Hill To Shore (talk) 16:42, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
Not anything like CC0, unless there is more info. There is nothing saying derivative works are allowed or that the author doesn't need to be attributed. –LPfi (talk) 16:34, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
It's not CC0 unless actually labeled as CC0. I see different claims, one that he is giving up his rights, and others that he is donating his rights to the "people of Colorado", which may in effect just be transferring the copyright to Historic Colorado to license as they please. There is a mention of commercial use, so there is quite a bit of hope that the actual eventual license will be free, but we should wait to see what the license text specifically says. They may well not go full-blown PD (so that he's still credited), and at worst maybe they go CC-BY-ND to preserve some ability for Historic Colorado to recoup some expenses (by giving out other licenses to paying customers). Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:03, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Sent to https://www.johnfielder.com/contact/

Hello from Wikipedia!

We Wikipedia editors saw your photo donation notice because we watch around the world for such donations to happen. Thanks for what you are doing!

Wikipedia is a free and open project which has specific legal rules for what images we can archive, show, and share. We have been discussing your notice in discussions including

and

We observe you using the term "public domain", which is a legal concept in the United States but not everywhere, and also lacking some clarity in the United States. I am writing to ask if you would be willing to apply a "Creative Commons Zero" license, explained here - https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ Any lawyer, curator, or archivist will be familiar with this license.

If not that license, but you or anyone at History Colorado would like to discuss some extent of archiving and mirroring in Wikipedia, then I and others would discuss further. There are other license options.

Thanks for your consideration. From our perspective, Wikipedia is a major archiving and distribution platform for media, and we want to get the best images distributed as broadly as possible through the Internet.

Thanks for your consideration - feel free to forward this to the History Colorado team.

Bluerasberry (talk) 14:52, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

A little confused at this point. News reports have used the term "Public Domain" but I don't see where Fielding himself has invoked it.
History Colorado's only license/copyright verbiage is here, which hasn't been updated since 2021, and says, in part: Publication or reproduction of photographs or other materials from our collections requires written permission from History Colorado and may entail use or reproduction fees.
I could discern no way to discover alternative licensing for individual items in the collection, which has a rudimentary web interface and seems only capable of displaying an enlarged photo of the item along with basic classifying information.
If Fielding truly wishes to attach permissive licenses to all his photos, it looks like HC will need to update their website... Elizium23 (talk) 15:11, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
Since neither Fielding's statement nor HC's statement said anything about PD or any other licensing terms, I fear that all news sources are uncritically parroting the original scoop on this which may have prematurely or overzealously assumed a PD designation. Elizium23 (talk) 15:18, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

(I originally posted the same text in the main Village pump, not realizing that there's a separate board for copyright)

The copyright template for Swedish photographs (Template:PD-Sweden-photo) is in need of a clarification, since a few years back. Right now it has two sections.

  • Terms and conditions for copyright expiration, with auto-updating years that increment for every year that passes.
  • A long text which is technically correct but not very useful.

How about replacing the entire second part, with something like this?

Photos also need to comply with {{PD-1996}} to be legal in the United States. This limits the practical use of the template to photos created up until 1968.

This clarification exists in an obscure place on the template's page, but it would be more clear if it was presented directly.

Here's a good example with how Romania's old copyright terms are shown to the reader of a file page: Template:PD-RO-photo

- Anonimski (talk) 11:16, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

There is one bullet for photographic images, although called "non-artistic works" in the English version, and a second bullet for photographic works. Then there is an addition on PD-old and two in small print: on USA and on other countries.
The "non-artistic works" is definitely misleading, as photos that are regarded works are not covered by that bullet. I don't remember the cut-off years, and thus not whether a work being artistic is significant, but where it is, the question is whether it has "artistic or scientific value", not whether it is artistic.
Of the three additions only the one on USA can be covered by the suggested text. Mentioning PD-1996 would be good, but there may be other reasons, such as simultaneous publication without notice. I would have added PD-1996 to the template, but I don't see where the real text is (it is included in the call of the template; I don't know how it is called).
–LPfi (talk)
Ah okay, thanks for the answer User:LPfi. I see that it's a complicated macro behind the template. But I think that Template:PD-Sweden-photo/en is the place to edit.
As for the years, you mentioned in the discussion page the year 1926 for artistic works. However, shouldn't they follow Template:PD-US-expired (1928 with auto-update) instead? Anonimski (talk) 22:38, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
@Anonimski: The year 1926 is because of {{PD-1996}}. The new law with the 70 pma term went into effect before 1996 (I think 1995) so 1926 is the cut-off year for PD-1996 of works.
PD-1996 is irrelevant for works that are PD in the USA anyway, and this includes PD-US-expired works. However, the cut-off year of 1928 (as of now) is about year of publication. If the work was published posthumously (or some years after creation for anonymous works), PD-1996 may still be relevant, and thus the year 1926.
–LPfi (talk) 17:44, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
Okay, I guess all of the US limits (with their specific conditions) are known then? Could they be added as an extra explanation in their own section at Template:PD-Sweden-photo/en? - Anonimski (talk) 17:59, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
I see that the duration for anonymous works is based on the publication year (according to COM:Sweden, I should of course check the law), and for non-anonymous works 2023-1996 > 95-75, so you are right, 1926 is no more relevant for this template, at least not for common cases. I am editing the English text right now, hopefully making it clear (and not doing any mistakes). –LPfi (talk) 18:18, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
Done. And yes, it was after publication. –LPfi (talk) 18:40, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Flickr photo crop and de minimis

File:Dr Gaositwe Chiepe (cropped).jpg is a crop and enlargement taken from File:Samantha Budd with Dr Gaositwe Chiepe.jpg. The uncropped photo is sourced to Flickr and is released under an acceptable license. I guess it could be argued that the photo of Chiepe being held by Budd in the uncropped Flickr photo might be a case of de minimis or incidental, but that personally that seems a bit of a stretch. However, I also think that any kind of de minimis or incidental claim for the Chiepe photo becomes invalid for any crop on only the Chiepe photo unless it can be clearly shown that Flickr account holder took both photos. If they didn't, then the crop woould seem to need to be treated as a COM:DW and the Flickr license for the uncropped photo can't be applied to it. For such reasons, tagging the crop with {{Dw-nsd}} or starting a COM:DR for the crop might be warranted, but I'm interested in what others may have to say before doing either. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:33, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

@Marchjuly: I think we need permission from the original photographer for the crop.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 02:39, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you Jeff G. and I agree with you. Are we missing something here Carl? It does seem that any attempt to claim de minimis for the original photo uploaded to Flickr wouldn't apply to the cropped image of Chiepe, right? -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:13, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
No chance on the crop. It's a straight copy of the original photograph, with nothing of the larger photo left. Carl Lindberg (talk) 03:19, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
I would agree with your argument. BUT and However, the photo and the "photo in the photo" are both owned by Bristol University. They understand copyright and I was given the explicit permission by the university to use it and a series they were publishing. Of course you may decide that we should overrule their permission as you understand the law better than the university, but let us be clear that there is a valid rationale that many (including a leading UK university) would consider entirely reasonable. Victuallers (talk) 08:40, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
​​​ I don't think there's any way for anyone to verify the provenance of the Chiepe photo based on what's posted above. If the university posted the full photo of Chiepe on their Flickr account and released it under an acceptable license, then that would be one way their intent could be verified. If they sent a COM:CONSENT email to VRT for verification, then that would be another. By licensing the file the way they did, the university isn't only giving you permission, and it's not only giving permission to use the photo only on Wikipedia; it's giving everyone in the world permission to use the photo pretty much any way they want as long as they comply with the terms of the CC license. It is because of this that I think the university intent for the "photo in the photo" needs some sort of formal verification. -- Marchjuly (talk) 03:20, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
If they gave us a license on the outer photo, and they have rights on the internal one too, then they only gave us a license for the internal photo as it is shown in the outer one. The crop is a straight copy of the internal photo, and unless we have a license for that photo, and that photo only, we should not keep it. Carl Lindberg (talk) 06:50, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
Di minimis isnt relevant here. This is not a photo that has been found per chance hanging in the top corner of a room that has now been enlarged to become a new photo. This photo WAS the focus of the published image. The text is all about the photo being in the image. The point made above, that if only the donator had realised that they needed to send an email to confirm that they were Bristol University (not in doubt), that they knew that there was a photo in the photo (not in doubt), that they understand copyright law (not in doubt) so that they could anticipate that Wiki commons would start a debate to find reasons why they could reject the gift (they may have thought this unlikely, but we exceed nearly everyones expectations on this one). Can you please look at all the images in this set. They were released by Bristol University to help our cause. They made a mistake and gave them a restrictive license. One of our volunteers (me) took the time to intercede with the University. Amazingly!! they understood our mission and they changed the license so that we could achieve our aims. It is depressing to see that the project now wants to sacrifice that gift during the start of BlackHistoryMonth but you have your priorities I guess. I have been trying for years to get a university to release commons compliant images. The closest I have ever got to achieving this was getting the Bristol Uni management to agree to this change. Its depressing how tenacious you/we are in looking for reasons to override the few people of those who understand the law in this area and are/were trying to help. We could ask for further proof but why would they/I bother. We appear to be the project who wont take yes for an answer. Victuallers (talk) 08:49, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
The Of course you may decide that we should overrule their permission as you understand the law better than the university, but let us be clear that there is a valid rationale that many (including a leading UK university) would consider entirely reasonable. part of your first post wasn't really a very subtle attempt at sarcasm, but it also wasn't really something worth commenting on. However, I'm not sure what the It is depressing to see that the project now wants to sacrifice that gift during the start of BlackHistoryMonth but you have your priorities I guess. of your second post is trying to imply and how it's relevant to anything being discussed above. I don't think that any of the comments made above have anything to do with the skin color of Budd and Chiepe. All the comments so far, as far as I can tell, are strictly related to copyright matters. Are you implying that the copyright status of the cropped photo is only being questioned because both Budd and Chiepe are black? Are you implying that the copyright status if the cropped photo is only being question because February is celebrated as "Black History Month" in the United States, even though the University of Bristol is located in the UK and October appears to be when Black History Month is celebrated in the UK. Anyway, the only person so far to mention their skin color has been you; so, if their skin color is relevant to the copyright status of the cropped photo, please clarify how. If not, then perhaps you have your priorities for introducing their skin color into the discussion I guess. -- Marchjuly (talk) 15:46, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
Just as an aside, wouldn't it seem unlikely that the university even have the rights on the inner photo, as it is explicitly credited to Jessica Augarde Photography? If the university had actually claimed to have authored the portrait, then I think the release argument would be much more reasonable. Felix QW (talk) 16:50, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
Delete both files under PCP. We do not know who took the internal picture. Gaositwe Chiepe attended Bristol in 1959, and she is clearly older than a typical student. The information at https://www.flickr.com/photos/bristoluniversity/45949489252/ says nothing about rights for the internal photo. It does say "Portrait by Jessica Augarde Photography." Perhaps Augarde Photography is unintentionally Flickr washing. Perhaps the Gaositwe Chiepe photo is a free photo from the Botswana government, but we do not know that. We do not know anything about the internal photograph, so we should not assume it is free. Glrx (talk) 16:57, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
@Marchjuly: Sigh. Given the above, I nominated both files for deletion.
Glrx (talk) 19:23, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Sharlott Hall scan of Federal publication in their collection

I want to apply an abundance of caution in my uploads.

I want to upload two higher-resolution crops of the USDA Forest Service's 1976 Kaibab National Forest road map. The Sharlot Hall Museum possesses a copy of this map in their map archive, which they catalog as Map #175, and provides a low-resolution scan of the map for public view.

I purchased the right to access the Sharlot Hall high-resolution scan of the map from which I made two clips for intended use on Wikipedia. The museum staff recognized that the map is public domain and that they are not permitted to charge for U.S. government publications, and I recognize that the museum has rights to their scan of the map.

I submitted a Sharlot Hall Museum Permission to Use Material application to upload the two clips to "Wikimedia Commons file space per Creative Commons license" the "cropped sections of map #175". The specific crops are identified in the application.

The Sharlot Hall Museum has approved this application. I wish to know for certain from the Village Pump if it is indeed safe for me to upload these images. (I think so because intent for Creative Commons license is stated.)

Files to upload:

  • Kaibab National Forest Map 1976 Ash Fork-CJ-Williams.jpg
  • Kaibab National Forest Map 1976 Cucamonga Junction.jpg
  • Kaibab National Forest Map 1976 Sharlot Hall PTO 2023-01.pdf

IveGoneAway (talk) 02:30, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, while you may recognize that the museum has rights to their scan of the map, Commons generally considers faithful reproduction insufficient to attract new copyright (cf. PD-Scan). If you want to keep a record of the Creative Commons license too, you could use Licensed-PD-Art, which enables you to specify a separate license for the reproduction. Felix QW (talk) 17:42, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for the response, but I am having trouble parsing a yay or nay. "faithful reproduction insufficient to attract new copyright" I think this is telling me that the museum may not claim rights to control the use of their scans.
However. my recollection was, perhaps mistaken and/or out-dated, that the scanner has certain rights to the scan. In initial discussions, the museum assumed that all of the maps were Arizona government and could not let me use it "for free". But, they in the end saw that is was US Government PD.
How do I use those templates with PD U.S. government documents?
The scanner acknowleges that the original work is PD. The scanner states that they aggree to CC as far as the two clips of their scan are concerned. My original question was is whether the PTO (I can upload) with that statement indeed confers CC to the clips.
IveGoneAway (talk) 22:11, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
Supposed I upload just the PTO, would I be able to get a yes or no then? IveGoneAway (talk) 20:16, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
Clipped scans of 1976 PD US government maps uploaded. IveGoneAway (talk) 13:41, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
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