Wikipedia:Media copyright questions
Media copyright questions | ||
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Welcome to the Media Copyright Questions page, a place for help with image copyrights, tagging, non-free content, and related questions. For all other questions please see Wikipedia:Questions.
If a question clearly does not belong on this page, reply to it using the template {{mcq-wrong}} and, if possible, leave a note on the poster's talk page. For copyright issues relevant to Commons where questions arising cannot be answered locally, questions may be directed to Commons:Commons:Village pump/Copyright.
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File:LouisTikas.jpg public domain?[edit]
This file is marked as nonfree. However, as Tikas died on 20 April 1914, and this photo depicts him alive, it must clearly have been taken on or before that date. While its exact source is not known, would anyone see a reason not to mark this as {{PD-old}} due to its obvious age? Seraphimblade Talk to me 07:27, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
- Yes:
- It can't be stated that the photographer has been dead for more than 100 years if the photographer is not known.
- The photo doesn't look like a selfie.
- It fails PD-old-assumed.
- The publication history is not known.
- -- Asclepias (talk) 14:13, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
The image was uploaded here in May 2014, with the unhelpful attribution "Immediate source: web". The earliest version I can find online is [1], where it is less tightly cropped (it shows two people), and is attributed "courtesy of the Denver Public Library, Western History/Geneology Digital Collection". An even looser crop (amber in tone, and showing three people) is at, for example, [2]. TinEye finds additional versions of each. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:54, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks! If that's from the Denver Public Library, I can stop in next time I'm down that way and see if they have any information on where it came from and if and when it was published or who took it. Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:11, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
Congress.gov bio[edit]
I'm curious on the copyright status of a biography pubished at congress.gov here. There is no copyright statement on the document, and it is unclear as to the author. Should I assume that it is copyrighted, or assume that it is a Federal US document? Bilby (talk) 11:40, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
- What is the page (URL) on the web site where you found this? I suspect it's PD, but it is useful to be able to look at the page where it came from for any additional information. -- Whpq (talk) 19:24, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks, but sadly I don't have a separate page. I'm asking because I came acorss David Halperin (political advocate), which is a straight copy and paste of the bio on congress.gov. My initial reaction was to be safe and assume copyvio, but given that US Government material is often PD I thought I'd dig further. - Bilby (talk) 02:11, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
- The original source seems to be Footnote 1 of his witness statement, which suggests that despite being written in the third person, it was contributed by him rather than written up by Congress staff. This would suggest that it may well be under copyright. Felix QW (talk) 23:07, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks, but sadly I don't have a separate page. I'm asking because I came acorss David Halperin (political advocate), which is a straight copy and paste of the bio on congress.gov. My initial reaction was to be safe and assume copyvio, but given that US Government material is often PD I thought I'd dig further. - Bilby (talk) 02:11, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
Book cover photo for Maid by Stephanie Land[edit]
Hi, I am new, so I am sorry if I do not use correct terminology. I created a new page for Stephanie Land's book Maid. Here is the link: Maid (book)
I uploaded the cover of the book following all instructions for using a copyrighted image under Fair Use. I provided the non-free book cover rationale when uploading the image. On Sunday, I received a bot message: User talk:Cyborgwriter#c-B-bot-20240225184000-Orphaned non-free image File:Maid Cover.webp
Does this mean I should try to upload the cover again? Thank you for your help. Cyborgwriter (talk) 23:28, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
- @Cyborgwriter I think the problem was that in this version [3] you didn't add the rationale in way the bot recognized (and it was a little short on detail). But afaict, in this version [4] you did, so everything should be ok now, image-wise. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:20, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you for your help! I'm new so I really appreciate the advice. Cyborgwriter (talk) 19:49, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
Is "King Of Jazz" (1930) in the public domain?[edit]
Someone from archive.org says so but I can't find that information anywhere else. Do you know any databases where I can check this? Kazachstanski nygus (talk) 19:23, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
- @Kazachstanski nygus The copyright databases and renewal databases are mostly on archive.org (main page [5]) King of Jazz was registered in 1930 and looking in the 1958 catalog it was renewed which keeps it under copyright until 1 January 1926 (95 years after first registration). If my reading is correct then I'm not sure why the version you've linked to is marked as being public domain. Nthep (talk) 20:28, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
- @Nthep Thank you very much for the answer. Kazachstanski nygus (talk) 21:23, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
- 2026? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:48, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
- @Nthep Thank you very much for the answer. Kazachstanski nygus (talk) 21:23, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
Image of a warship that I took[edit]
I was led here by a few fellow editors in the Help desk. Anyhow when I took a picture of the ex-USS Maricopa County laid up at the south of Vietnam, I considered posting it here yet my doubts got the better of me as it's technically a military ship still in service and would constitute a copyright violation as technically you're not really allowed to take images of military stuff in their home bases (from my common knowledge, that is).
Six months onward, I am now considering posting said image again, yet I would have to confer to someone experienced in this area... So should I post it here?
Kind regards, e (talk) 12:49, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
- Whether or not you broke the law (of Vietnam) by taking that picture is not a matter of copyright. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:32, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
Empire of Dreams[edit]
Hello, I have a copyright question. There is a documentary on Star Wars that was made for a Star Wars DVD box set. It has also been uploaded to YouTube by multiple channels. I'm assuming those uploads are copyright violation, but I wanted to ask anyways. If they are, is there any way I can direct editors to YouTube to watch the documentary? It's been cited 40 times in the Star Wars article, and I was hoping to find a way to let future editors know that they don't have to track down a DVD in order to watch it. Thanks! Wafflewombat (talk) 16:14, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
- No you may not link to it if it is a copyright violation. See WP:COPYVIOEL. If the channels have the right to show it, then it would be okay. -- Whpq (talk) 17:59, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks for the reply. Is there any way to tell if the channels have the right to show it? Wafflewombat (talk) 20:33, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
Photograph of contents of doll accessory pack?[edit]
Hi there. I am trying to determine what an appropriate image could be for the page "Barbie's careers". I understand that photographs or promotional photos of career-themed dolls or accessory packs would be copyrighted by Mattel, in terms of derivative works. What I'm trying to understand is if it still counts as a derivative work if i were to, for example, take out the contents of a career-themed accessory pack and lay them out and photograph that, without any of the accompanying packaging.
The reason I want to add an image is I have heard from some people that "a doll isn't a person and thus can't have a career" and I think the image would support the understanding of how a career can be "depicted". I'm just struggling to figure out what would be a viable illustration. What about "fan art" or drawn representations of a career doll or contents of an accessory pack? Is that a derivative work?
In any case, I'm mostly interested in understanding the copyright aspect, not debating whether or not this specific article "deserves" an image. Thanks! Antihistoriaster (talk) 12:15, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
- See c:Commons:Derivative_works#I_know_that_I_can't_upload_photos_of_copyrighted_art_(like_paintings_and_statues),_but_what_about_toys?_Toys_are_not_art!. Toys are generally copyrighted, so this unfortunately wouldn't be permissible. The Quirky Kitty (talk) 17:06, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
Lithograph copyrights[edit]
According to this listing this lithograph was published by Landfall Press, Chicago in 1981, so there is a chance that it fell into the public domain if it was published without a copyright notice and not subsequently registered. Does anyone here know what the common practice was with lithographs? I have not been able to find an entry in the copyright catalog, but that doesn't mean much. Felix QW (talk) 15:08, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
- User HMAwiki uploaded File:Philip_Pearlstein-Nude_on_a_Bamboo_Sofa.jpeg as their own work. I have doubts about this, but don't what to do about it. Do I need to raise this at WP:FFD? Or what is the process? The user has not edited since 2014 and Pearlstein died in 2022. RudolfRed (talk) 00:27, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
- The "Own work" claim is clearly bogus. I was planning to send it to FFD, but then it occurred to me that the lithograph may conceivably be in the public domain if it had been published without a copyright notice. Should no one come up with any better ideas over the next days, I would go to FFD, but do please go ahead with it yourself if you would like to! Felix QW (talk) 07:31, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
- As there were no more responses, I opened an WP:FFD discussion here. Felix QW (talk) 19:36, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
Can I use File:Willy's Chocolate Experience advertisement.png freely in Canada?[edit]
The UK offers limited copyright protection to AI-generated works, but Canada does not. If I use this image in Canada, can I use it free of copyright, or does the UK law take precedence since it was generated in the UK? Félix An (talk) 07:26, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
- @Félix An: Normally, the law that applies to the use of a work is the law of the jurisdiction where it is used. That is merely information about a basic principle. But Wikipedia does not give legal advice about what you do. For legal advice, please consult a professional in the relevant jurisdiction. (For my personal curiosity, can you please share the source for the statement that AI works are copyright-free in Canada?) -- Asclepias (talk) 15:34, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
R C Anderson, The Rigging of Ships (etc.)[edit]
I would like to check that the book The Rigging of Ships in the Days of the Spritsail Topmast, 1600-1720 is out of copyright. It was published in Salem, Ma in 1927, per[6]. The copy that I have to hand is a facsimile edition ("an unabridged republication") published by Dover Publications, New York in 1994 with the ISBN978-0-486-27960-2.
I may want to use some of the illustrations in this book, but obviously only if they are copyright free. I am not sure what the significance of the "unabridged republication" statement is. Strangely, this book is not fully available on Google books, which makes me wonder what is going on. I could probably obtain a copy of the 1927 original edition without too much difficulty if that made a difference. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 14:02, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
- Anything first published in the US before 1 January 1929 is now PD. Subsequent republication doesn't change that. Nthep (talk) 14:25, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
Question about Fair Use on Wikipedia with respect to Crown Copyright[edit]
This file: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_Calgary.svg has been marked for deletion due to apparently infringing on Crown copyright. Given that it is a municipal flag, though, doesn't it fall under fair use? What are the rules here? DeemDeem52 (talk) 16:30, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
- Relatedly, assuming the image itself is permitted on Wikipedia, would it fall under fair use to be used in the infobox for, say, 2013 Calgary municipal election so the infobox doesn't have any visible wikicode? DeemDeem52 (talk) 16:58, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
- @DeemDeem52: The statement in the nomination deletion is very dubious. There is no evidence that the flag was made for or published by the Canadian government or by the Alberta government. There is no evidence that this flag has to do with Crown copyright. If this flag is copyrighted, it would be by ordinary copyright, owned by Yvonne Fritz, author of the flag, or successors or by the city. -- Asclepias (talk) 18:04, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
I took this photo[edit]
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I took the photo File:Crusifino Fight at Crystal River FL Feb. 9 2024.jpeg. Can someone help me? Everything is detailed in the description, but it still says it’ll be deleted. Can someone fix this and tell me when they do? LordBirdWord (talk) 20:14, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
Is Kate Middleton's Mother's Day photo alright?[edit]
Per Talk:Where is Kate?, I'd like to know if the Mother's Day photo would be alright to upload. Here's a BBC article with the photo included, in case it helps. Slamforeman (talk) 20:29, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
- What part of "Source: Prince of Wales/Kensington Palace" did you not notice? Copyright is not waived in any way. --Orange Mike | Talk 01:13, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
- I did not mean to ask about copyright, (apologies, I can see now I did not clarify), I meant to ask if it was useable as Non-free content. It is currently being used, but it has been called into question so I wanted to be sure. Slamforeman (talk) 01:51, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
- Slamforeman, in my opinion, the photograph is fine from an NFCC perspective because its section is dedicated to significant, sourced commentary about it. ⟲ Three Sixty! Talk? Work. 04:03, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
- I did not mean to ask about copyright, (apologies, I can see now I did not clarify), I meant to ask if it was useable as Non-free content. It is currently being used, but it has been called into question so I wanted to be sure. Slamforeman (talk) 01:51, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
Who owns the copyright of book covers?[edit]
If no cover artist is named, it's generally the publishing company, not the author of the book, right?
And if no author is named, then is it an anonymous work? The Quirky Kitty (talk) 01:30, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
- It is usually the publisher, yes. I don't think it's ever been practice for cover artists to retain the rights to their work—it would be a lot of leverage when your client is copying it over and over and over. Remsense诉 01:31, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
[edit]
Hello,
I found this image of JoAnn Jayne on the official Navajo Nation website, but after a lot of research, I'm not sure of its copyright status. I did not see anything in the Navajo Nation code which expressly deals with the copyright status of works created on behalf of the government (though to be fair, I don't know if it is a work created on behalf of the NN government), and cannot figure out if this would be a federal issue or not because of tribal governments' unique status in US law.
Thank you for any help on this question,
JohnSon12a (talk) 14:41, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
- Barring any declaration to the contrary, the material would be copyrighted by default. Although the particular page and its home page carry no terms of use link, the Navajon Nation main site terms of use does declare its material as copyrighted. -- Whpq (talk) 15:42, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
How much of copyrighted poem ok to copy?[edit]
On Talk:Descartes' theorem/GA1, the Good Article reviewer (Kusma, please correct if I am misrepresenting your position) is pushing to include more lines from a still-copyrighted poem (published in UK 1936, author died 1956, so still in copyright for a few more years) and its slightly later and also-still-copyrighted extension by another author. The poem consists of three ten-line stanzas, with one more stanza in the extension (it can be found in full in its original publication at https://www.nature.com/articles/1371021a0 and elsewhere). Currently we quote two lines, properly formatted and cited as a block quote per WP:NFCCP, an amount I'm comfortable with being within the bounds of fair use (for a poem that made the topic famous and itself is discussed in more detail in the article). The quoted lines appear in the lead, with the double intent of serving as a summary of part of the article discussing the poem and as an accessible summary of the theorem itself. However the reviewer feels that material in the lead should be expanded later and that the later discussion of the poem doesn't count as an expansion: to quote the poem in the lead we need to quote more of the poem later. I guess the MOS:LEAD question is off-topic for this board, but a better question for this board would be: is there a valid fair-use case for quoting the poem at any greater length, for instance for the purpose of expanding the lead? —David Eppstein (talk) 06:36, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
- @David Eppstein Interesting, I've not seen a poem used as a summary before. Per NFCC#8 it's down to contextual significance and is the poem itself the subject of sourced commentary. The other test would be, does including any more of the poem increase the reader's comprehension of the article? On a brief reading of the poem in full and the article, my personal opinion is no (but then Wikipedia articles on maths make my eyes glaze over after a short whole, so perhaps I'm not the best judge), the couplet is succinct and gets its point across. Nthep (talk) 08:03, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
- (If the question above is there a valid fair-use case for quoting the poem at any greater length, for instance for the purpose of expanding the lead is actually about WP policy regarding fair use then my comment here isn't very helpful)
- Generally, copyright law allows the reuse of small amounts of material so long as they don't interfere with the rights of the original. So the first test is: would the amount quoted deter someone from purchasing the book, because they had already read most of the poem? The second test is, whether the snippets taken serve the stated purpose of criticism and review of the poem. If the snippets are needed to explain the points being made, then that is fair use. If on the other hand, they repeat points already made, then you'd need to explain that the repetition is the point your are explaining; if the sense added is just giving the reader greater enjoyment or aesthetic appreciation, then fair use proabably doesn't apply.
- To be on the safe side, I would say that whatever explanation of the poem should appear with its use.
- If you want to be cautious, repeating the same quote might be unwise (it could be seen as "unecessary")
- I don't think that internal questions about the use of the material have any relevance to copyright law. The whole point is whether the use interferes with the rights of the author, and whether the use itself is for a reasonable purpose (that couldn't be completed without the use of the material).
- Where I think you may have a problem is that the poem doesn't seem to be central to the question. It's being used for explanation, rather than "criticism and review". That might interfere with the rights of the author, and it isn't clear that the poem is in any way necessary to explain the theorem, it's just nice to have.
- Thus, quoting it to say "this is really [simple / neat / complicated], so much so that someone wrote a famous poem, the essence of which can be seen in this quote" might be OK, but using it as a tool to take the reader through the issue, feels like you would need to argue "educational purposes" but again that feels hard to claim since the poem isn't the topic of the article. US folks may have a wider view on educational purposes though. It might work better if the article was an explanation of how to explain concepts with poetry, as a worked example, or if thr article was an explanation of how the poet / poem explained the theorem. --Jim Killock (talk) 08:23, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
- I do think the fair use case is good enough to quote an entire stanza of the poem, which is usually quoted at length when the theorem appears in the recreational mathematics literature. Some of the poem is in my view necessary to include simply because it introduced and popularised the terminology "bends" and "kissing". That said, I do not think I am "pushing", I am merely suggesting, and I know that my own view on lead sections (I believe they should be a summary of the body that makes sense on its own, and also that the body should make sense independent of the lead, so they are like putting the Micropædia and Macropædia together) is not fully aligned with everyone else's, so following my GA review suggestions is certainly not mandatory. —Kusma (talk) 09:05, 19 March 2024 (UTC)