File:1916ManStandsOnWreckedRailLines.jpg

• File:1916-13.jpg
• File:1916DebrisLitteredTheBeaches.jpg
• File:1916HouseDamagedByWind.jpg
• File:1916LocalHotelDamaged.jpg
• File:1916ManStandsOnWreckedRailLines.jpg
• File:1916MuchOfCityLostPower.jpg
• File:Building destroyed by the 1916 Texas Hurricane.jpg

These images were all sourced from a webpage of the US National Weather Service. However, we have no evidence that any of these images are in the public domain or available under a free license. I have been able to identify many of them as prints in the Corpus Christi Public Libraries Digital Archives, creating significant doubt that these images were created by federal government employees performing their duties. Besides of which, photographic surveys of storm damage by the NWS do not seem to have been performed as early as this.

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

• public submissions to the NWS all entered the public domain and/or
• all files hosted on NWS websites were in the public domain unless they carried a formal copyright notice

An extensive review of this rationale in 2024 revealed that neither of these beliefs held up to scrutiny. These findings were confirmed in an RfC conducted from August to October 2024.

Per COM:ONUS it is the responsibility of the person uploading an image to the Commons or anyone arguing for its retention here to provide evidence of permission from the copyright holder. Nevertheless, I reached out to NWS Corpus Christi on September 23 to ask about the sources of these images, but received no response. (VRT ticket:2024110510006455).

I also attempted to match the images with those in online archives, and discovered that most (if not all) of these images are held by the Corpus Christi Public Libraries Digital Archives in the form of photographic prints (positives). Identified on a first pass:

• File:1916DebrisLitteredTheBeaches.jpg -- [2] and [3]
• File:1916HouseDamagedByWind.jpg -- [4]
• File:1916LocalHotelDamaged.jpg -- [5]
• File:1916ManStandsOnWreckedRailLines.jpg -- [6] (note the hand annotation by a previous owner, identifying the man in the photo as their father, and the location near their home)
• File:1916MuchOfCityLostPower.jpg -- [7]
• File:Building destroyed by the 1916 Texas Hurricane.jpg -- [8]

Prima facie, it seems at least as likely to me that each of these archival images found its way onto an NWS webpage as that these were all NWS images that found their way into the Corpus Christi library archives. The digitized versions on the two sites seem to be scans from the same physical prints; note identical blemishes.

I am also aware of a copy of File:Building destroyed by the 1916 Texas Hurricane.jpg hosted on an NOAA webpage and attributed to the NWS.[9] I regard this attribution as highly suspect, as NOAA attribution of historical images tends to simply indicate where their web developer found the image, not who created it or owns it.

Since these images were created in the US before 1989, their copyright statuses rest on knowing not only who took them, but when and in what context each of them was first published. Currently, we do not have any evidence that any of them were published before they appeared on the NWS website in 2002. Each of their copyright statuses are completely unknown and we must delete all as a precaution under COM:PRP. If they are genuinely orphaned works, they will pass into the public domain 120 years after their creation, in 2037.

Closing admins should familiarise themselves with the evidence and discussions at this RfC when closing this request.