Commons:Village pump/Copyright

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File:Stadeln_Wappen_2024.svg und File:Wappen Stadeln.png

In beiden Fällen hege ich den Verdacht, dass es sich nicht um offizielle Gemeindewappen, sondern um Erfindungen jüngeren Datums ohne offiziellen Charakter handelt. Die Schöpfungshöhe ist m. E. gegeben, somit gilt Urheberrecht. Die bei einer der beiden Dateien bereits abgeschlossene LD ist vermutlich falsch entschieden worden, siehe Commons:Deletion requests/File:Stadeln Wappen 2024.svg GerritR (talk) 22:10, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hier ist das Alter egal, wenn es sich um ein offizielles Gemeindewappen handelt; der korrekte Lizenzbaustein ist dann {{PD-Coa-Germany}}. Gnom (talk) 11:09, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ich bezweifle aber, dass es sich um offizielle Wappen handelt. ich vermute PR-Wappen, die wie Logos zu behandeln sind. GerritR (talk) 06:40, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Gem. [1] wurde das Wappen 1963 verliehen und ist anscheinend auch im Werk Stadler, K. : Deutsche Wappen - Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Angelsachsen Verlag, 1964-1971, 8 Bände, enthalten. Aus diesem Werk dürfte auch ngw.nl seine Grafik haben, so war es zumindest in diversen anderen Fällen. Stadeln war 1963 noch eine eigene Gemeinde. --Rosenzweig τ 07:36, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ja, ist aus dem Werk von Stadler, Band 6 von 1968, S. 68; die Zeichnung ist von de:Max Reinhart (Wappenmaler). Lt. Stadler ist das ein „1963 mit ministerieller Zustimmung angenommenes Wappen“. --Rosenzweig τ 14:52, 9 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Vogue Taiwan and possible copyright washing

Vogue Taiwan publishes videos on YouTube under a CC-BY license and English Wikipedia editors have been posting screenshots of those videos under those auspices. The problem is that many (if not all) of these videos have first been published on the Vogue YouTube page as all rights reserved. Commons has been lax in the past regarding these, although I think the discussions haven't gone through enough scrutiny (yes, I was involved in a later delete). I think we need to make an official decision. Are the editors at the Vogue Taiwan YouTube site copyright-washing, since Condé Nast is clearly not releasing them. or is the release legitimate since they are a subsidiary of Condé Nast?

Bastique ^{☎ let's talk!} 17:19, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging people involved in the previous discussions: @Verbcatcher, @Bettydaisies, @P99, @The Squirrel Conspiracy, @Krd, @Brainulator9, @King of Hearts, @RevengerTime, @Günther Frager, @1989, @Rangel's Version, @TheLoyalOrder, @Aafi, @Adry9509, @Tanbiruzzaman, @Bjh21, @Nakonana. Bastique ^{☎ let's talk!} 17:32, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Noting that I got a 3 day block over a CSD tag on this topic, so clarification would be nice. Definitely my fault, but clarity would be nice. All the Best -- Chuck ^Talk 17:44, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Would like to ping @GRuban: as well who helped develop the consensus for the images over at enwiki. PHShanghai (talk) 06:55, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Another one for the list: Commons:Deletion requests/File:Kourtney Kardashian 2019.jpg - Deleted. --bjh21 (talk) 21:49, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, yes. Delete them all, per my rationale in the first nomination. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 01:26, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

just adding there's a whole category of potential images to delete Category:Screenshot images from VOGUE Taiwan YouTube account TheLoyalOrder (talk) 01:58, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think we need to be very cautious not to delete any image which originated on the Vogue Taiwan YouTube page. Bastique ^{☎ let's talk!} 04:50, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think you might be underestimating the amount of work deleting 100+ images is going to take, especially spread across multiple A-list BLPs. If a deletion happens, there has to be a process for replacing all of the lead articles affected so they don't just end up red links. PHShanghai (talk) 06:56, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is almost certainly some kind of mistake on Vogue Taiwan's part, there's no way Condé wants their content licensed like that (as evidenced by the numerous other listings of the same content with broad restrictions). OR, it's a very smart marketing move by a savvy digital editor at Vogue Taiwan who realized releasing images of celebrities under CC licenses would inevitably mean stills from their content would be the default images for those celebrities on the internet once celebrity-oriented Wikipedia editors spotted the videos as ostensibly eligible for use on Commons. But either way, it doesn't seem like a legit license for the content. 19h00s (talk) 02:57, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging @Bedivere as he was involved. All the Best -- Chuck ^Talk 02:58, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So I had to look up what exactly happened back in June [2]. So yeah, I might have been wrong on that one, or maybe not, who knows, after all Vogue Taiwan is owned by Condé Nast. Maybe asking them would clear up many things. Bedivere (talk) 03:20, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A discussion also happened at enwiki, over here PHShanghai (talk) 07:12, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just think about this for a moment- is Conde Nast as a company so incompetent that it cannot see one of their official subsidiaries has been publishing celeb content under CC for 6-7+ years now? To the point where even content of one of their biggest executives is also released as CC-BY? To have a CC license on *one* official video might be a mistake. To have a CC license on hundreds of videos spanning more than six to seven years is clearly not a mistake on Conde Nast's part. This is precautionary principle for the sake of precautionary principle.

Are we also implying that not a single person from Conde Nast corporate has ever visited a Wikipedia article as research for a video, let alone Wikipedia articles of some of the most famous people in the world, like Billie Eilish, Adele, Kendall Jenner, and Ariana Grande? I agree with Bedivere on asking Vogue Taiwan themselves as an explanation. But Wikipedians speculating that the biggest conglomerates in fashion have zero control over the release of their own content is speculatory at best. PHShanghai (talk) 07:06, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

CN and their subsidiaries have indeed made mistakes of this magnitude in the past. I would strongly caution against discounting human error as the source of this licensing choice until it can be proven that the licensing is correct. Just because a company is large & long-lasting does not mean they don't make huge mistakes that can be overlooked for quite a while. And sure, if someone wants to reach out to Condé, more power to them, but I can imagine that probably won't produce a satisfying reply. 19h00s (talk) 13:05, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@19h00s: The issue is not whether it is a mistake, but whether the license is valid. Speculating over the marketing strategy of some company is IMO complete nonsense. It is not for us to decide if the free license is intended or not. There is still a free license on YT, so how can you say it is not valid? Saying that a free license posted by a big company is not valid is undermining the very concept of a free license. So a free license by a small company is OK, but by a big company, it would not be? Yann (talk) 13:20, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I can say it is invalid because Vogue Taiwan does not have the legal authority to release that content under those licenses; they do not own the content, Condé Nast does, and if Condé is not allowing other subsidiaries to release the same content under CC licenses, then why in the world would they want Vogue Taiwan to do it? I think editors on Commons put way too much stock into the choices digital editors at publications/organizations make when they upload content to third-party sites; there's literally no way to know if the license choice was made by a staffer who didn't know better or due to the company's actual policy of CC licensing. Regardless of how y'all feel about my conjecture re: the possible aims of whomever chose that license, I don't think it's responsible to trust the CC licenses when there are multiple examples of the same content being uploaded by other Condé entities without free licenses. 19h00s (talk) 13:29, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Vogue Taiwan does not have the legal authority to release that content under those licenses" "Condé is not allowing other subsidiaries to release the same content under CC licenses" What evidence is there for these statements? How do we know they don't give the right to all subsidiaries to release as CC and only Vogue Taiwan chooses to do it, or the contract for Vogue Taiwan is different for some reason, especially if these videos have had the license for years?

999

REAL 💬 ⬆ 13:36, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah I'm done here tbh. Sent an email to Condé's licensing team, will update if I hear anything. But I don't really feel like getting into a deep argument about the nature of corporate subsidiaries and media conglomerates. 19h00s (talk) 13:41, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Flagging that it appears at least two of the videos referenced in the first deletion requests listed above have now been changed to NOT include a CC license. No response yet from Condé but I included a link to this thread in my message, so those would have been the first examples they saw if they checked out this conversation. But I have not been following this for very long, so I don't know whether the disappearance of those CC licenses happened before today or if the licenses are just being hidden from view (tried in several browsers to make sure I wasn't missing them somewhere).

Live link for Kendall Jenner video (no license listed, default to standard YouTube license), vs Archived link for Kendall Jenner video (CC license)
Live link for Cindy Crawford/Kaia Gerber video (no license listed, default to standard YouTube license). Wayback Machine didn't archive but clearly it used to have a CC license visible if it was uploaded here.

19h00s (talk) 15:35, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Would love to here an example of a mistake of this magnitude on Conde Nast's part, purely out of curiousity. Human error is a problem yes but "human error" across hundreds of videos for 6-7 years is a clear systemic issue on CN's part if this is a mistake by the uploaders on the VT youtube channel. PHShanghai (talk) 00:41, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As I said, I'm not interested in delving into a debate over the technicalities here, and tbh there's more than enough info on Condé's various mistakes in a basic Google search. I emailed CN's licensing team and added an update based on what seems to be a change to the licensing in the two videos I linked above. If I see another update to a license or hear from Condé, I'll circle back. Otherwise, I leave it to other editors and advice from WMF. Enjoy your weekend! 19h00s (talk) 01:05, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Entirely agree with PHShanghai, Yann, and everyone else. When an agent of Condé Nast puts a license on a video owned by Condé Nast, we should take their word for it. That's called Apparent authority: "a situation where a reasonable third party would understand that an agent had authority to act". https://www.youtube.com/@voguetvtaiwan has 1.14M subscribers, and 10K videos, this is not a small channel that no one has noticed. They've been licensing videos this way for years, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KH9gcoV8u4 is one from 5 years ago, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I2ZmpJ8DO0 is one from 3 days ago. This is not just a mistake that might have slipped through. They're not all indiscriminately licensed Creative Commons either, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIICchcwZdg, 1 day ago, isn't. Every sign points to this being both intentional and authorized.

We are at a busy intersection. The official crossing signal above the crosswalk says "WALK". We should walk. "But the signal could be broken." "The signal could have been put up in error." "The signal could have been forged and put up by a troll." "The signal was put up by the town Public Works Department, and intersections are under the jurisdiction of the town Traffic department." "Another intersection on this same street doesn't have a signal, or it isn't saying WALK, so this one must be wrong." Yes, all these things are possible. (The sun might not rise in the morning; there could be an eclipse. The most powerful country in the world dedicated to the rule of law might elect a recently convicted felon to lead it. Naah, that last one is just ridiculous!). But they aren't reasonable. We can't live by assuming that everyone is either evil or an idiot, only that some people are. We need to take reasonable care, but this is beyond that. Sure, feel to write for clarification. But they put up the sign, it's a very clear sign, it's not drawn on a piece of cardboard with a crayon, and they have the authority to put it up; so until we actually have clear evidence that the crossing signal is broken, we should walk. --GRuban (talk) 14:41, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I have asked Joe Sutherland from WMF. Yann (talk) 13:58, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Perfectly put. And very funny poignant commentary. PHShanghai (talk) 00:50, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Except two of the videos in question have already had their CC license removed. Which tells me (as is the case often when one organization or branch allows some content from another) that Vogue Taiwan intended to release its own videos as CC-BY but someone did not pay attention to the default when providing other videos.

This happens all the time.

Bastique ^{☎ let's talk!} 07:12, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Also, at Commons, we abide by the Commons:Precautionary principle, that where there is sufficient doubt about the freedom of a file...we delete it. There is sufficient doubt here as expressed by not an insignificant number of active Commons editors. Bastique ^{☎ let's talk!} 07:18, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Except that this goes way beyond any precautionary principle. OK, the license of one video was changed. But what about all the others?

GRuban's message above says it all. We should abide by the law, not by some imaginary reasoning. I doubt a judge will accept a reasoning with "Sorry, but the license which was published by our subsidiary company there for years is wrong." Yann (talk) 09:53, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Others are being changed too. Most probably a result of this discussion and backroom contact with the organization, making the scenario even more likely that Vogue Taiwan was making a mistake and are currently fixing it. It takes a lot of time and effort for the average user to change licenses on multiple videos on YouTube. I looked into it when this first came up and it wasn't entirely obvious how to do it--and there's no way to do it with multiple videos.

The argument "we can get away with it becuase Vogue Taiwan didn't catch their mistake for years" or "oops, your bad--we got it while it was out there and now it's ours forever" should not fly.

It is entirely likely that:

1) Vogue Taiwan was making a mistake for years and that

2) Conde Nast didn't catch on because the videos weren't being reused as a whole by anybody and that 3) nobody from CN or VT recognized the screenshots on Wikipedia as they came from a single frame of those videos and that

4) nobody from CN or VT searched for links back to the YouTube channel (because why would they?) so they didn't know that Wikimedia was reusing their content.

The surprising thing is the doubt that this is quite possible coming from active Commons admins who have dealt with this sort of thing before many times in the past. Bastique ^{☎ let's talk!} 19:21, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"It takes a lot of time and effort for the average user to change licenses on multiple videos on YouTube." well, these are not average users, but trained payed staff. And yes, there have been similar cases, and they usually were closed as kept. There are more and more people and corporations using free licenses, and the people most reluctantly recognizing that are people on Commons. Now I won't argue for keeping the files when the license was changed, even if I doubt they could do anything if it comes to court. Yann (talk) 19:59, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think that is an over-charitable interpretation of how media companies work and who works there. I know I said I didn't want to get into the details, but I very much agree with Bastique, I don't understand the doubt here. Nor do I get why it's such a big leap in logic to assume a media company doesn't want their intellectual property freely licensed; if this were any other type of company, I would be way more open to the idea that they really made this choice on purpose.

There is quite possibly a single person - or, at the most, up to two people - who work at Vogue Taiwan whose specific role is interpreting and applying their rights and responsibilities as a subsidiary of Condé using licensed Condé content. Or, even more likely, there is actually no one whose job is dedicated to that, and the function has been rolled into the purview of their in-house counsel or a hired counsel. How often does that person or people interact with the staffer arguably at the lowest end hierarchy-wise of a media company's social media team (i.e., the person who loads and structures social media content via a platform like Sprout or other professional tool in order to post it to YouTube)? I would guess they don't interact that often, and the social media staffer has probably had very limited training on the more complicated aspects of licensing like Creative Commons licenses because Condé and Vogue Taiwan are not in the business of releasing their content for free reuse; they are media companies, their single greatest financial asset is the intellectual property they own. And the person in charge of licensing for Vogue Taiwan - again, very easily just their in-house counsel - probably has a million other things to worry about, including ensuring that the print publication and website have correct licensing and copyright terms, a pretty big task given that Vogue Taiwan both licenses content from Condé and creates/commissions original content as well. So I actually find it incredibly likely that this was a) a true mistake, b) made by someone without much knowledge of licensing, c) overlooked for quite a long time by the people who are actually in charge of handling licensing content for Vogue Taiwan, and d) a very difficult thing to undo in a short period of time, even for social media professionals - even pro tools don't have the ability to change licenses en masse, I just checked in the business Sprout account I have access to.

I apologize if this or my other replies came off as snippy. I'm just very confused by the doubt. 19h00s (talk) 22:01, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia editing community is so small and the Commons community is even smaller than the enwiki community. It is extremely unlikely that a CN or VT staffer reads the village pump and that reading about it would it have any impact on their content uploading.. The only actual realistic way their CC policies may be revoked is through, as you said, personally messaging and emailing the corporation and asking if VT is copyright-washing. If they already know that their content is being uploaded as CC and therefore makes the motion to have their CC licenses revoked, they're being very confusing and inconsistent about it as they are still uploading content under CC as recent as yesterday. PHShanghai (talk) 08:20, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not trying to nitpick here, and I am using a machine translation for this purpose so there could easily just be a mistranslation, but: The caption for that linked short, and the rest of Vogue Taiwan's shorts, includes language about VT's use of Condé content. The machine translation is telling me it says this: "Taiwan VOGUE is affiliated to Condé Nast Interculture Group. All foreign films are authorized by foreign countries for use in Taiwan. Taiwan VOGUE adheres to serving netizens and allows more Chinese-speaking audiences to see international films and Chinese subtitles, so we share them with everyone on this channel. If you like our channel, please subscribe to us. We will continue to work hard to bring more high-quality content." Presuming that "films" should be "videos". But that language is different from the CC license and is quite vague - "for use in Taiwan" could mean a range of things - implying that there is some sort of other agreement/license underpinning VT's ability to republish content. Again, machine mistranslation could be source of my interpretation here, but it's notable that they do include language about their rights in the captions. 19h00s (talk) 16:46, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt we have an apparent authority defense to agency right now. To have that defense, we must believe CN-Taiwan has the authority to publish the material with a free license. If CN-Taiwan were the only entity publishing the material, then that belief is reasonable, and we would have an apparent authority defense. However, if we know that other CN divisions are publishing the same material with all rights reserved, then the defense evaporates. We have or should have doubts about CN-Taiwan's authority. All is not lost. Presumably, the principal CN has now been notified and must act. If the principal fails to act within a reasonable time (say 30 days), then the principal will ratify the acts of CN-Taiwan. If the principal acts and the free licenses are removed, then we should remove the affected material. If I were CN, I would issue takedown notices. Glrx (talk) 17:21, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that we should wait for a response from CN in 30 days or so, and if they do not respond nor change their continuous and consistent use of uploading CC content under VT, then the acts of VT will be ratified and free for Wikimedia Commons to use. PHShanghai (talk) 08:21, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just found another video where the license appears to have changed: Live link for Margot Robbie video (no license, default to standard YouTube license), vs Archived link for Margot Robbie video (CC license, takes a super long time to load the caption/YouTube interface). A screenshot is currently the subject of a deletion discussion.

Also noting that Vogue Taiwan either has not released a video on YouTube under a CC license in a while or they have gone back and retroactively changed the licenses on all of their most recent videos. I've been scrolling for a bit and can't find a recent video with a CC license.

And finally, I noticed in one of the Chinese-language captions on YouTube that Vogue Taiwan staff had noted that the video was a re-upload with subtitles and closed captions (they used the abbreviation "CC" in the video caption) after suggestions from commenters asking for either better quality captioning or a different style/technical form of subtitles or captions. I do not want to impugn the English language ability of any Vogue Taiwan staffer, as they obviously have a great command of the language if they're working for Condé, a primarily English-language company. But is it possible that when uploading videos with closed captions ("CC"), someone at Vogue Taiwan mistook the "CC" of the Creative Commons license as the marker for closed captions, which seem to be broadly referred to in Chinese-language sources by the English-derived acronym "CC"? Could be wrong on any number of these conjectures, but the situation simply doesn't add up from where I sit - Condé has no reason to want their subsidiaries to release Condé-owned content for free use, this is not a company that has ever demonstrated any sort of commitment to open access or free reuse, especially when the content at issue is worth quite a lot of money in terms of licensing fees, which they can and do charge - so I'm trying to think through the most obvious possibilities for what happened here. 19h00s (talk) 17:25, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

All recent shorts appear to me as CC-licensed. The normal, widescreen videos seemingly aren't CC licensed at all Bedivere (talk) 19:46, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I can't imagine that a language issue is to blame because the YouTube interface is available in different languages, so I'd expect that the staff has set the interface to their local language, especially if they doubt their English proficiency. Nakonana (talk) 22:18, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In the English interface of YouTube Studio it does not say "CC" anywhere, it just says "Creative Commons - Attribution". I tried changing my language to Chinese simplified and traditional, Simplified does not have "CC" in English but Traditional does. But this is only in the license dropdown menu, it is not visible till you click the dropdown and the default option is Standard YouTube license, so the only way I can see someone thinking this is closed captions is if they were pressing random buttons looking for closed captions without reading properly and/or not did not understand Chinese.

999

REAL 💬 ⬆ 22:46, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I can see both sides of this argument. However, speaking from a purely legal standpoint, I don't think it's reasonable to assume that one entity can republish content under a more permissive license when that content was originally published by another entity with all rights reserved, simply because the republishing entity doesn't own the content and therefore does not have the authority to republish it under different terms. This is true even if the two entities share the same parent company (and even if the republishing entity has a license to re-upload the material). Even if for some reason the shared parent company did intend to re-release the material under a CC license, I don't think that is something for us to assume. Aoi (talk) 01:35, 9 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Any idea why PD-Afghanistan is "invalid"?

Category:PD-Art (PD-Afghanistan) is a child of Category:Invalid PD Art categories, and has been since its creation in 2013. Does anyone know why this license would be "invalid" with PD-Art? Optimistically pinging the creator User:Foroa. – BMacZero (🗩) 03:56, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I went ahead and moved it up for now. – BMacZero (🗩) 18:26, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Personality rights template for public figures

To split off a theme from the previous topic. Do public figures, like Luisa Neubauer from Fridays for Future (see right), require Template:Personality rights templates? Luisa is pretty well known in Germany at least. TIA, RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 23:43, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've added it for you. Abzeronow (talk) 01:05, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, my take on {{Personality rights}}: there are potential personality rights issues in using any picture of a living or recently deceased person, whether we add the template or not. Reusers are responsible for a certain amount of diligence in using images, and would be well advised to know the laws of the country in which they are publishing. I tend to add {{Personality rights}} for (1) pictures with nudity; (2) pictures showing anyone doing a performance with a significant visual component; (3) pictures that could potentially be embarrassing if context were missing; (4) not a whole lot else, because any issues the image raises are completely par for the course. - Jmabel ! talk 08:06, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Abzeronow and Jmabel: Thanks both. (On a more general note, I am very happy that Wikimedia exists and provides a good outlet for historically significant images.) RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 08:39, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

German copyright length for screenshots of films

When does the copyright expire for a German film?

According to Section 65 of this law, it is 70 years after the death of:

The director
The author of the screenplay
The author of the dialogues
The music composer

In the case of Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, the first three died 70 years ago, but the composer didn't die until 1973. Nonetheless, Category:Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (film screenshots) has a bunch of screenshots.

Most of us might assume that the music composer's date of death has no bearing the screenshots. But that's not strictly what the law says - it says the copyright remains on the film. The law often turns on technicalities!

I believe the issue is murky enough that a German court might rule either way. Is there any case law that addresses this subject? Magog the Ogre (talk) (contribs) 00:03, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Magog the Ogre: Curiously, German copyright law actually treats film stills differently from the film itself (or parts thereof). Gnom (talk) 08:52, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Magog the Ogre: Actually it's even more complicated for German films from before July 1995, see Commons:Village pump/Copyright/Archive/2025/01#Composers for silent films. --Rosenzweig τ 10:00, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Gromit unleashed

I have some concerns on all images under this category. While COM:FOP UK allows free uses of monuments and sculptures meant for permanent location in public spaces, the sculptures under the said category appear to be part of a sculptural exhibit (w:en:Gromit Unleashed), and many of the said sculptures have been sold in auctions (possibly ended up in private collections or residences). Intervention from other users/admins needed. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 03:43, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We'll have to determine which ones are still in permanent public places and which have ended up elsewhere, but yes, if it's not permanent, it's copyrighted. Bastique ^{☎ let's talk!} 04:48, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Even if it is permanent, it's copyrighted. That's not the issue. FoP doesn't remove copyright, it just allows you to publish pictures. You cannot, for example, duplicate the sculpture. - Jmabel ! talk 08:09, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Derivative work copyright question

I came across File:UpdatedandExistingTTCMap.png, which appears to be a future TTC transit map. It claims to have been created by a user on the UrbanToronto forums and may not be an official TTC map. However, its design is nearly identical to the official TTC map here. Even if this was created independently and freely licensed by its author, would it still be acceptable on the Commons? Or is it too similar to the copyrighted official map to be considered an original work?

Separately, I cannot find any evidence it was freely licensed. Maybe there's a post on the forum I missed but the CC 2.0 'Flickr' review links to a reddit post of a different unrelated map, and there is no release in the comments. PascalHD (talk) 01:49, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Clearly derivative work (even has the copyright notice in the same place, though a different year). And no indication of even a claimed free license at source. Looks to me like a straight-out copyvio. - Jmabel ! talk 19:55, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is an artist's drawing published in a US government publication PD?

File:Artist's impression of new US Navy destroyer in 1958.jpg is claimed to be in the public domain because it was published in All Hands and "All photographs published in ALL HANDS are official Department of Defense photographs unless otherwise designated" (see page 1. However, it's not a photograph, it's an artist's drawing. Is that still considered covered by the Credits published in the magazine? Can we assume that the artist was a government employee and drawings such as this one that he created as part of his job are thus PD? Huon (talk) 18:53, 9 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's definitely public domain in the US, All Hands did not renew copyrights: https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/cinfo/allhands PD-US-not renewed would cover it. Abzeronow (talk) 20:03, 9 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Human intervention needed for PD-Art maintenance

I've been working through Category:PD-Art (PD-old default) with a bot filling empty PD-Art templates with actual licenses, and I'm hopeful that more files can be processed automatically. However, I just created Category:PD-Art (PD-old default) with PMA inside 70 for files with a creator deathyear inside the last 70 years. These files are very likely to require human intervention to fix no matter what, so if you want to hunt down some international licenses, click through to Category:PD-Art (PD-old default) with PMA inside 70. – BMacZero (🗩) 21:52, 9 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why did File:DER BRANDENBURGER ROLAND VOR DEM NEUSTÄDTISCHEN RATHAUS.PNG and File:DER ROTE BETER (THE RED PRAYER).PNG show up in this category? I'm guessing it's because BMacZeroBot added the proper creator template, but the data for the category was apparently pulled before that change.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:07, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Prosfilaes: I checked it out. The bot uses the creator's Wikidata entry to determine the date of death, and it looks like that entry has a competing deathdate entry of 1960; I guess the Creator template doesn't show it because the other is marked as preferred. The bot uses the most conservative (i.e. latest) deathdate available. – BMacZero (🗩) 05:55, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Files count reduced below 400 now. Yann (talk) 16:24, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

US tag for images published in France after 1930

The images File:Marc_Bloch.jpg and File:Lucien_Febvre-Strasbourg.jpg have license templates for public domain in France. Do they also need license templates for public domain in the US and, if so, which ones? Phlsph7 (talk) 09:35, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Works that were first published in France in 1930 or later and not published in the US within 30 days and aren't by US authors are under copyright in the US and can't be hosted on Commons. They should be deleted.--Prosfilaes (talk) 09:59, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

These files are OK if published before 1937, as the copyright duration before 1996 was 58 years, not 70. So File:Lucien Febvre-Strasbourg.jpg taken around 1935 is OK. I added a license for USA. Yann (talk) 10:24, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the input! Phlsph7 (talk) 17:09, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I nominated File:Marc_Bloch.jpg for deletion, see Commons:Deletion requests/File:Marc Bloch.jpg. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:38, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Apple Maps

I am new to the world of uploading images, so apologies if I am asking something obvious or dumb. I have an screenshot of a function of Apple Maps which I took and plan to upload. Does anyone know if this screenshot would be copyright protected? Thanks, Lynch44 (talk) 19:37, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Lynch44: Anything from Apple Maps would be copyright-protected, and none of it would be free-licensed. So, no, don't do this. - Jmabel ! talk 21:30, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Uploading the svg logo of a political party

I recently came across a Wikipedia page for a party (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9publique_souveraine) that had no svg version of their logo. I found one in an official pdf found of their website and extracted it using Inkscape. What should be the copyright and license to use? Thanks y'all! MacTemporal (talk) 19:41, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

From a US copyright perspective, the logo is below COM:TOO-US because it is only text plus some simple geometric shapes; {{PD-textlogo}}. I do not know about COM:TOO France, but there does not seem to be much personality of the author in the work. The PNG, File:Logo République Souveraine.png, is already on Commons under a CC license. Glrx (talk) 20:41, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that looks unproblematic. - Jmabel ! talk 21:31, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Descargar y publicar aviones desde Airliners.net

Buenas se puede publicar fotografías de aviones desde el sitio web "Airliners.net" ,por ejemplo si publicó una fotografía de aviones creada y públicada (en Airliners.net) por Lars Hentschel es posible agregar el Template {{LarsHentschel}}?? AbchyZa22 (talk) 22:39, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sí. Si es tomada por Hentschel sí. Por cierto, ya te lo han dicho otras veces, pero no es necesario que preguntes por cada imagen que quieras subir. Simplemente súbela y si es problemática, se borra y ya. Aunque después de tanto tiempo y tantas consultas, muchas veces repetitivas, ya deberías saber qué se puede subir y qué no. Bedivere (talk) 22:46, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Uploads by Mohana hari balu

The uploads by Mohana hari balu contain at least some pictures that are copyvios; I suspect that applies to most, if not all, of the uploads. - MPF (talk) 01:47, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Military Survey of Hungary (1941)

Hello, I noticed that there are already some pictures from Map of the Military Survey of Hungary (1941) [hu: Magyarország Katonai Felmérése (1941)].

Do you think that parts of this map would be uploaded and if so, under which copyright? Probably relevant provisions:

LXXVI/1999-2019 Art.31 (3) : If the identity of the author cannot be established, the term of protection is 70 years from the first day of the year following the first publication of the work.
LXXVI/1999-2019 Art.1(4) : Laws, other legal instruments of public administration, court or authority decisions, official or other official communications and documents, and standards and other similar provisions made by law

From https://maps.arcanum.com/en/map/hungary1941 it is only known, the layers are provided by Arcanum Adatbázis Kft. May be used PD-HU-unknown - for anonymous works published before 1943? (Commons:Copyright_rules_by_territory/Consolidated_list_Eastern_Europe#Hungary). Thanks! ScholastikosSVK (talk) 13:04, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If the author is indeed unknown, then {{PD-HU-unknown}} should apply. It would be fine if there is a further basis for its being in the public domain, but we only need one. - Jmabel ! talk 22:01, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

can I know the what's the process of the uploading the image of the other artist's wikipedia.

I would like to know the process of uploading the image of the artist's wikipedia. The copyrights and protocols to to follow for uploading the image. 2406:B400:33:A009:B2:75EB:4D67:7552 07:16, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, and welcome. Uploading is limited to those who login. See also COM:FS. — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 07:31, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Besides what Jeff said, I'm not certain what you mean by "uploading the image of the artist's wikipedia". Do you mean uploading an image of the artist for use in Wikipedia in some language or languages? Or do you mean something else?

The link Jeff suggests is probably of some use to you. Also, you might want to see Commons:How to#How do I upload content I created? and the following section there about uploading third-party material, and maybe more on that page. - Jmabel ! talk 20:47, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'd guess "the artist's wikipedia" refers to the artist's page on Wikipedia. Bastique ^{☎ let's talk!} 01:02, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Does this meet TOO?

The Keyoxide logos as they appear on https://design.keyoxide.org/ ...

The author, Yarmo Mackenbach is Dutch, and COM:Netherlands says that it passes the TOO if it "bears the personal mark of the maker", and I'm just wondering what counts as that? Would the bubbles on the logo count as that?

Either way it's AGPL (see the Codeberg repo which contains the logo), but it would be nice for it to be PD, because I'd like to use it in a topicon... QuickQuokka ^{[⁠talk • contribs]} 16:30, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say those bubbles are creative. - Jmabel ! talk 17:05, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Jmabel: Thanks for your input! Anyways, they're CC BY-SA, which does require attribution. User box it is then... QuickQuokka ^{[⁠talk • contribs]} 17:17, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]