Commons:Village pump/Copyright

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Copyleft trolling - proceeding to watermark images

The same image, cropped with CSS image crop so the watermark is not visible.

Hi, one year ago we had a major case of Copyleft trolling discovered, with over a thousand images (partly featured) being hosted on our platform as bait to sue anyone for "damages" when re-using the material. Afterwards, we created a new page (the bolded one above) to take action against those who try to indiscriminately sue re-users of Commons-hosted pictures for money. In short: After confirming that a user is copyleft trolling, possible fixes are persuasion of the user not to do this; if continued we have to delete or forcibly watermark images. Those actions prevent both innocent re-users from overlooking the possibility of a lawsuit; and less innocent users on Commons to just follow the set example.

In the case from last year, the user in question has not stopped to extract money from unsuspecting re-users (1, 2, 3) and also a DR against the images has ended in (ca.) 12:19 (Kept). This means that forced watermarking is the last resort left for the community.
Since this is the first test of a new and not fully tested process (the last time we did this was in 2019), it is only prudent to ask again for a community consensus. A script is available that can quickly attach the attribution watermark. --Enyavar (talk) 16:01, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, this is interesting especially for the known copyright trolls from Germany. Happy to provide a list. For reference, we have a designated page in the German-language Wikipedia for this phenomenon: de:Wikipedia:Abmahnung. Gnom (talk) 16:37, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support Jmabel ! talk 16:40, 26 March 2025 (UTC)f=[reply]

This is complicated. We've had many discussions about copyleft trolling as well as alleged cases of copyleft trolling, and many discussions about possible solutions. This much is clear: once we have determined someone is engaging in copyleft trolling, there are several possible approaches, including deletion and forced watermarking. There are parallel discussions about improvements we could make to the Wikipedia/MediaWiki interface to better explain the requirements of CC licenses, but that's something that should happen irrespective of actions on specific users. This particular case involves Diliff, and much text has been spilled debating what to do about these images: VP thread, another VP thread, and a DR. I have trouble determining the extent to which consensus emerged that Diliff has been "copyleft trolling" sufficient to consider an intervention, so figuring that out is probably what needs to happen first. Personally, I remain ambivalent. I don't like the idea of people using Commons to make money through a license enforcement business model, but I also don't think Diliff is as egregious as, say, Verch (who allegedly only uploaded material to Commons in order to profit). Diliff is a different case, apparently just going after commercial sites/businesses. But then again, that includes small businesses and, according to what he said in a past discussion, even when he determines there was no serious offense, he still wants money for the time he took to determine it was not a serious offense. Nearly lost me completely with that response. So yeah, ambivalent. — Rhododendrites ^talk | 01:10, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Consensus has already been established that we should watermark images that are being used for copyleft trolling unless the uploader agrees to migrate to a CC 4.0 license. Diliff rejected that suggestion as he believed that the 30-day grace period offered by the CC 4.0 license had "not been considered from the content creator's perspective with respect to the potential income it takes from them".[1] He also refused to discontinue sending legal threats via Pixsy.[2] The fact that Diliff is demanding compensation for accidental attribution errors even when the reusers have offered to correct the attribution or remove the images entirely[3][4][5], means that Diliff has gone beyond seeking fair compensation for use of his images and is copyleft trolling, IMO. The only way we can protect unwitting re-users from accidentally getting ensnared in this trap is to add a watermark to the images (or delete them). Adding a watermark seems the least destructive path. Nosferattus (talk) 21:07, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I personally think the watermark isn't aggressive enough, it reads more like a threat by the uploader than the warning about the author it is supposed to be. JayCubby (talk) 01:58, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's not elegant, but I support it, too. Gestumblindi (talk) 13:09, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'd just delete them all so that he learns the lesson. On the down side, we'd be missing on some great photos. Bedivere (talk) 22:50, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Support It gives us another tool besides deletion. Will we be able to detect people reverting or overwriting the change? Carl Lindberg (talk) 05:19, 1 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Add a category for those images, then have a process that detects whenever a user other than an admin (or bot) changes an image with that category? Ravensfire (talk) 02:18, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I doubt that Diliff would revert the change; he is largely inactive and has not uploaded new files for five years now.
We should mark the edits clearly as an administrative action with referral to the Copyleft Trolling policy, to discourage other users from reverting. And yes, a hidden category to collect all watermarked files sounds prudent. Not sure how to patrol it by bot, but even if that isn't feasible, humans could also patrol the category for a while to find out if other parties crop the images. (And on that note, determined editors could probably also remove the category as well?) --Enyavar (talk) 20:19, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There's a way to crop thumbnails without creating a new file if I recall correctly, so the watermark isn't a nuisance on mainspace articles. Perhaps make a note of that on the affected files, to discourage unwatermarking. JayCubby (talk) 20:22, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
{{CSS image crop}}. It's a little tricky and tends to require some experimentation with the exact parameters used. See example I've added at top of this discussion. - Jmabel ! talk 22:14, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support This seems like a no brainer given the circumstances around copyleft trolling on here. Although it sucks for re-users and other projects but whatever. There doesn't seem to be a better way to deal with it at this point. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:49, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. Nobody seems to be engaging with the whole "there hasn't actually been consensus that the person whose images we're about to watermark is engaging in copyleft trolling" thing. That seems like the sort of thing we need to do officially, like a topic ban or somesuch. The closest thing we have is a DR where multiple options were proposed and was closed as keep. We also have a discussion closure (fraught -- still waiting for the closing admin to clarify their intentions) that once someone is found to be copyleft trolling, follow steps xyz. Presumably the subtext is not "if you see someone doing what looks like copyleft trolling, go ahead and watermark their images". This thread may suffice to find consensus specific to Diliff, but if that's what's happening they should really be notified and the heading clarified. A little awkward to be the one who has to keep drawing attention to this, since I found Diliff's responses in the last thread totally inadequate, but oh well. — Rhododendrites ^talk | 22:10, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
- I just notified Diliff on his talk page. Nosferattus (talk) 23:20, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"there hasn't actually been consensus ...that Diliff is a copyleft ~~troll~~ enforcer"? Really? We have seen about ten examples of people coming to his talk pages asking him if the extortion letters were written on his behalf (I found three just since the DR was closed); and Diliff himself has not been willing or able to provide examples of him waiving the fees he imposed on these individuals. It doesn't matter that he claims to only charge commercial re-uses, because a) we can hardly control him on that and b) that will still affect mostly small companies and also nonprofits. c) It also goes counter to our Copyleft-trolling policy page (edit: which should be renamed, see my next post from April 5).

People have voted to keep his images while still acknowledging that he is a copyleft enforcer because we believed that there was another way to deal with this problem. And I say "we" because I also voted "keep and watermark". I do think that the voting could have been narrowly swung the other way if we had known that watermarking were not an option.

If we're letting this slide we can just agree to delete that Copyleft Policy altogether. --Enyavar (talk) 13:47, 3 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have been soulsearching a bit and decided that I will not continue calling Diliff a "troll". Please also see Commons talk:Copyleft trolling#Name of the policy page.

Regardless of the internal motives and thought processes of Diliff as a Copyleft Enforcer, we urgently need to protect re-users from the consequences of his practice. We absolutely should watermark these images, and also keep Diliff as an upstanding (former) member of the Commons community. --Enyavar (talk) 17:20, 5 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Relevant discussion: Commons:Village_pump#Copyleft_enforcement_-_concern_about_stretching_of_a_guideline — Rhododendrites ^talk | 20:36, 5 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not going to repeat what I said here but it is relevant to this discussion. Enyavar, would you drop this please. We don't need to urgently protect stupid people from being stupid. Thousands of people have used Diliff's images per the licence conditions. Your post lists three, two of which openly admit to not bothering to attribute at all (i.e. they are of the "everything on the internet is free to take" mindset) and the other appears to have had problems with Wordpress displaying the attribution. In none of those cases do we know how it ended up. Hundreds of people ask Diliff how they can use his images and he guides them. Many who want to do so without attribution, for non-profit/charity work, are granted that permission. This is not a copyleft troll, Jmabel, and we all need to drop that kind of Twitter-rant language and start behaving more professionally. The Pixby solution is suboptimal for sure, and nobody here likes it, but there also isn't a professional outfit doing this kind of thing who behave any better.

Commons is an image repository of freely licenced or PD images. It's primary purpose is to serve as a common host for the Wikipedias and other WMF projects. If you guys decide to vandalise images in this repository, Wikipedia is just gonna fork and you'll be irrelevant. The above image with attribution/warning caption is then displayed as an example of use on Wikipedia with the caption cropped off. Are you insane? That's only going to make it worse. Please pursue Wikipedia/WMF to help fix their terrible image use UI. Every other publisher on the internet displays CC images with attribution in text below the image. Wikipedia does not, and seems to think a subtle hyperlink is enough. But it (and your stupid cropped solution) both teach our reusers that attribution is not important. This is Wikipedia/WMF's fault. They should fix it. Let's not vandalise our repository. These images do not belong to us. -- Colin (talk) 14:24, 9 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Colin: I will respond to only one part of this: you can either take back calling it "stupid" that I demonstrated that something is technically possible when JayCubby alluded to it but did not know how to do it, or I can start a complaint against you for that at COM:ANU. - Jmabel ! talk 01:22, 10 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Colin -- I think the inline attribution is an interesting prospect, actually. MediaViewer fills the role for the most part, but it could be justified with things like PotD, where there is enough space. JayCubby (talk) 01:51, 10 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose for now. It is messy. And this going to be a long comment unfortunately. Please at least address the first point.
- Point 1. The added watermark text is questionable, particularly in the atmosphere of a copyright holder enforcing the licence terms. Looking at the CC-BY-SA 3.0 legal code (and I am not a lawyer):
  - Is "Photo by DAVID ILIFF" indicating the copyright holder adequately? Use a "©" surely. It may be indicating a work-for-hire.
  - The code says "credits and in a manner at least as prominent as the credits for the other contributing authors" - does this illegible-at-thumbnail-size watermark do that for all use-cases?
  - The code says "If You create a Collection, upon notice from any Licensor You must, to the extent practicable, remove from the Collection any credit" - so in this case by maintaining the watermark you are violating the licence terms.
  - The watermark says "Keep this attribution intact to avoid legal action". You should confer with WMF Legal before baking poor legal advice into files. I am not aware of any cases where Diliff has started legal action, but legal threats and payment requests for sure. Incidentally, the watermarking on File:LL Cool J 2013.jpg doesn't offer legal advice but does it meet the "You must not distort, mutilate, modify or take other derogatory action in relation to the Work which would be prejudicial to the Original Author's honor or reputation" part of the legal code when it is associating the copyright holder with litigation? I mentioned that because of the call to take the watermark further to warn people about the author - ie make a disparaging comment on the copyright holder's behaviour.
- Point 2. We have editors saying we have consensus for taking action copyleft trolling but please link to me the consensus to designate Diliff as a copyleft troll I must have missed it. And then we have other editors wanting to change the name of the guideline (Copyleft trolling), but wouldn't that make any theoretical consensus designating Diliff a troll invalid. I can't keep up, and going by the comment above and parallel discussions in various forums I am not the only one.
- Point 3. There is the problem of further damaging the reputation of Commons within the Wikimedia space. I don't think anyone is claiming that this watermarking procedure improves the value of Commons for Wikimedia projects. I understand that Commons wants its own identity, but it won't have any identity if merged into Wikipedia due do making free works inaccessible. I am not sure how the {{CSS image crop}} feature works when used outside of Commons, for example for a Wikipedia to use the file without the watermark they will have to wrap it in a template?
- Point 4. About the use of "watermark": The term is not 100% clear, to me at least, as it is not used in the traditional postage stamp or digital sense it is more of a non-destructive additive copyright notice modification to the work, and you may have better luck implementing it if you make that clear - you are extending the image canvas with a notice.
- Point 5. There have been multiple discussions surrounding this topic over the years covering various suggestions that were never implemented, like:
  - putting a {{Copyright holder aggressively enforces licence terms}} on file pages
  - a simple credit line at the top of the file pages
  - getting Wikipedias to lead by example with credit lines
  - the WMF providing a service to track down copyright infringement of Commons uploaders - using the same style of tracking software used by pixsy for example - to get them to comply before copyright holders even notice and legal threats are launched (this is my idea, but I am sure I have seen it somewhere before. It defends free-culture and can also list legitimate uses which uploaders typically desire anyway)

So instead, we let the copyright violations throughout the world accrue until we realised that the payment demands had started. And now we have this reactive watermarking process that does nothing to help those reusers already affected. Ideally those most passionate about protecting reusers (which includes those wanting watermarking) can get something done about educating reusers so they meet licence terms and this money demand situation can be prevented in the future. It is not ideal to have to oppose a proposal so that something gets done, but in this case that something is reducing future harm. I also wanted to note that the section of CC-BY-SA 4.0's legal code of saying you must "if You modified the Licensed Material and retain an indication of any previous modifications" is a nightmare for non-WMF Project resuers so we are going to be having these discussions in perpetuity.--Commander Keane (talk) 05:30, 12 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Commander Keane: Without addressing most of that, on Point 1 third bullet point, "upon notice from any Licensor… is an operative phrase. That is, the obligation to remove a credit would only arise upon notice that the licensor wanted the credit removed. - Jmabel ! talk 06:14, 12 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the way I understand it is that the copyright holder informs the reuser that the credit must be removed. Then if not done, copyright infringement has occurred. An aggressive one will say "remove the credit or pay me $900" and if you can't (I have seen cases where the reuser can't pay for website/file server adjustments) they are liable for legal action - contrary to the proposed watermark. I was curious about what licence the file has if credit removal is requested, but that is not relevant here. Commander Keane (talk) 07:10, 12 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding Point 5, if you want to implement a different solution, by all means, have at it! So far though, watermarking is the only solution that has anything close to consensus. It's easy to shoot down ideas, but quite another thing to actually build consensus on a solution. Nosferattus (talk) 03:15, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support. I believe 1) the watermarking process has consensus, and 2) based on OP's description and the linked discussions, the copyright enforcement actions around Diliff's files makes them eligible for watermarking per that process. I agree that WMF legal guidance on the wording of the watermark would be appreciated, but that shouldn't stop us from making a good attempt today (the watermarks could always be amended based on WMF guidance). Consigned (talk) 17:52, 13 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If we're going to make them unusable for any project we may as well just delete them. PARAKANYAA (talk) 02:47, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Diliff - closed as Kept. Nosferattus (talk) 03:17, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Further comment. It wasn't clear to me if the next step is revdeleting the original un-watermarked versions. In any case, Diliff's images have 23,372 mainspace uses across Wikimedia projects. I assume that m:Forum and at least the ~50 wikis with more than 100 uses will get notified with time to react. The exposure of watermarking on this scale may prompt other uploaders to retrospectively apply watermarks to their works, which is fine per Commons:Watermarks. Someone mentioned a grey list for copyright holders that have engaged in copyleft trolling. This would be useful as derivatives of Diliff's works won't be welcome without a watermark, and uploading free content found on the web from those on the list will also require a watermark. Any progress on improving the watermark text?--Commander Keane (talk) 01:07, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
- I would really like to see some improvement on {{CSS image crop}} (or a wrapper around it for this purpose) before we go ahead with that. I honestly had no idea these were that heavily used on other WMF wikis. (I wish Colin had focused on things like that rather than insulting my intelligence, which quite honestly left me unwilling to engage with the rest of what he said.)
- Possible wrapper template would have a parameter for the height of the watermark at the bottom of the image in pixels of the underlying image, and a parameter either for the desired width or height of the resulting displayed image (ideally a choice of either) and would do the right calculation to call {{CSS image crop}}. - Jmabel ! talk 02:39, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  I didn't realise before, but some uses are transclusions - stub templates etc.
  
  Would it be possible for the wrapper to pass caption, alt-text, thumb/no thumb, etc too? By the way, {{CSS image crop}}'s description field isn't documented and I can't remember if templates like that get globally rolled out. I am not sure how a crop template would look versus a normal image with caption in an article, or if it would work at all in an infobox. If a standard watermark height (maybe percentage) is selected, could a further wrapper then have a default "Commons Watermark" value to make it easier for wikis?
  
  Despite all of these suggestions, I would still like to see a "copyright holder confirmed as engaging in copyleft trolling > added to grey list > {{Beware trolling}} template added to file pages > watermarking schedule announced to wikis > watermarking script run" process.
  
  I would also be interested in a commonsUS.wikimedia.org fork that will hold all top quality free files that can be used on with US servers (with a red banner saying trolling may occur). That discussion is for another day though. Commander Keane (talk) 04:28, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have amended the example image so that David Iliff's original work is not altered. I created a derivative work (File:Skylark 1, Lake District, England - June 2009, CC credit-warning - en.jpg). The previous edits were neither in accordance with our Commons:Overwriting existing files guideline nor the licence terms and conditions. User:Nosferattus's caption is a work of copyright in itself (certainly in the UK) and the combined image is a derivative work. The licence terms of the original photo require that any derivative work documents the changes made and credits both authors. It is not permissible, per the licence conditions, to claim a derivative work is the sole creation of the author of a source image. -- Colin (talk) 08:11, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think several participants here have forgotten what Commons is about. Let's look at the first entry in the FAQ:

"Wikimedia Commons" (short form "Commons") is a media repository that is created and maintained by volunteers. It provides a central repository for freely licensed photographs, diagrams, animations, music, spoken text, video clips, and media of all sorts that are useful for any Wikimedia project, the most well-known of which is Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The name "Wikimedia Commons" is derived from the umbrella project Wikimedia that manages all Wikimedia projects and the word "common" as it is a common project (commons) that stores media for use on all Wikimedia projects.

Note the words "repository" and that you are here to serve the Wikimedia projects by storing images for them to use. Commons is not a publisher (other than crudely to display the contents of its repository). Users on Commons have no power to dictate what images the Wikimedia projects display. Those images are selected by editors on those projects and changes to the content of those projects is a matter for editors on those projects alone.

As someone pointed out elsewhere, Diliff's images are very very widely used across Wikimedia projects. Of the 2,760 freely licenced professional-class images Diliff uploaded here, 1,699 are used on WMF projects. But that underestimates the scale of usage. Those images appear 23,415 times. That's over twenty three thousand times that someone on a WMF project has select a work of Diliff's and embedded it into their publication. Commons users do not have the power to change those editing choices. We host the images on behalf of those projects. We check they have a free licence or are PD. We describe and categorise them. And no more.

Careful readers of the filename of the derivative work I created above will spot "- en" on the end. Of those 23,415 images, less than 4,000 are on English language projects. The proposal here, to deface Diliff's work with an English-language caption that is the wrong language on over 19,000 (five sixths) uses strikes me as quite remarkable on a project that is supposedly international.

If editors here think that Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, Wiktionary, etc would best serve potential re-users taking work from those projects by serving up images with copyright captions and warnings literally embedded into the JPG, then here's what you need to do. Create derivative works of at least all the 1,699 images used, or all 2,760 if your life is especially meaningless. You can follow the example of the one I did above. Explain that this is a derivative work, where you added a caption to Diliff's original photograph, and that now joint attribution is legally required per the licence conditions. Then you need to go to an article that uses the images (e.g., Royal Albert Hall). And you could be BOLD and just replace the original with your captioned derivative. And no, the fancy CSS image crop thing doesn't work for "Infobox building". Maybe you can persuade the template designers of infobox building to incorporate that feature? Let's assume you do. Someone on Wikipedia reverts your bold edit, saying the original was better. What do you do then. Well you need to go to the talk page and get consensus for your change. On that one usage. Rince and repeat 23,415 times. Each Wiki project has its own templates, btw.

What Commons cannot do, is enforce all the other Wikimedia projects to publish your derivative work. Writing a bot to overwrite Diliff's works with a copyright caption and warning is very very much not permitted. It instantly would have published your vandalism 23,415 times. Multiply that by the number of viewers of the kind of very educational subject Diliff specialised in and you have an awful lot of eyeballs seeing your caption and warning. And an awful lot of French and German and Spanish eyeballs saying "WTF" in whatever that is in French and German and Spanish.

I have no doubt, no doubt whatsoever, that doing that sort of thing on this scale would result in a Wikipedia revolt against Commons and in turn WMF action against Commons. WMF would forcibly remind Commons and the Admins that are supposed to be protecting this repository, of its servant role. Given past WMF responses to Commons disobedience, I wouldn't put it past them to create a new "WMF locked" flag and enforce it on all of Diliff's works.

Wrt the other idea: "just delete them all so that he learns the lesson". Well, aside from the pointlessness of teaching someone a lesson who has already left the project: we do not damage the project to make a point to individual users. These images have a free licence and were uploaded in good faith for freely sharing educational media and their use on Wikimedia projects. They are in scope and most of them are in use. Both Wikipedia and WMF would look very dimly on Commoners removing such works on a mass scale. 23,415 images across the WMF projects all making the Commons Delinker super busy would, em, get noticed. It would not end well. -- Colin (talk) 09:04, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The proposal here, to deface Diliff's work with an English-language caption that is the wrong language on over 19,000 (five sixths) uses strikes me as quite remarkable on a project that is supposedly international. I assume the watermark would be hidden in cases where the file is being used on other projects per the examples at the top. Ergo, the watermark being in the wrong language (as you put it) is a non-issue. Although it probably would be anyway since most, if not all, supposedly non-English projects use English to some degree regardless and most of the readers of those projects speak the language. You'd probably have an argument otherwise but like 80% of the population in Germany speaks English and, again, the watermark will be hidden anyway. So it's nonsense to act like the watermarks would have any effect at all on the German language Wikipedia or it's readers. That's even putting aside that your only talking about less then 0.006% of the articles on there that would have an image from Diliff to begin with anyway. But let's not watermark the images because of the 0.0000001% of articles that they are being used on. --Adamant1 (talk) 09:44, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Colin You might disagree with the guideline Commons:Copyleft trolling#Forced watermarking but you should not unilaterally revert actions which follow the guideline and which follow community consensus. If you disagree with the guideline feel free to start a discussion to amend it. Consigned (talk) 10:36, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Colin: your re-upload manoeuvre was exceedingly POINTY for a file not in use. However, I do agree that modification experiments should have been done on a new file with new description page outlining the changes.

@Consigned: you reference consensus in your support above and link to a section in a guideline in response to Colin. But directly below is a section entitled No standard practice.

Colin made some good points about indicating derivates and the language issue. I had assumed that as the English (extra licence condition?) watermark text was poor legal advice it would never get used, and suggested the copyright symbol instead of "Photo by".

@Adamant1 if you think German Wikipedia isn't proud about their language and doesn't mind a sprinkling of English here and there you should ask them (in German preferably).

There is also the general assumption that the css-crop is a magical implementation. As far as I'm aware, every image usage in an article need to be ammended, it won't work in templates like infoboxes and when captioned the image element won't resemble its previous state.

I understand that pixsy doesn't care who they get money out of and by any means necessary is fine for them, but copyleft trolling is associated with minor mistakes and the examples I am aware of are: the initial Diliff complainant on Commons that knew enough about copyright law to know they didn't have to bother with attribution for Public Domain works but didn't scroll down before downloading a Diliff photo; the reddit post where the IT guy told his boss that they got a royalty free file from WikiCommons years earlier and that the Commons licence info page must have been clandestinely changed since then to trick them; the most recent one on Diliffs en.wiki talk page where the not-for-profit's representative is highly sensitive about copyright and paying photographers but a clerical error led to zero attribution; and finally the case (I heard this second-hand) where the attribution got hidden behind a website element, an honest mistake and I feel sorry for them. How many "innocent" third party reusers are we protecting at the cost of annoying 20k+ Wikimedia primary reusers.

Commons is trying to be great at everything for everyone, but is ending up being average for all. I have participated here enough, please no pings but my talk page is always open. Commander Keane (talk) 11:49, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's a non-issue since the watermark would be hidden anyway. Your just missing the forest for the trees and intentionally being obtuse. --Adamant1 (talk) 12:48, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion made use of an image where the caption had been inserted and overwrote what was there. Once the discussion is over, and you all go back to doing something productive rather than proposing to vandalise thousands of images you don't own, that version would be reverted in due course. A "not in use" file is not a thing to play with. We are a repository of freely licenced educational works mostly belonging to other people. Which includes that file. And once it got reverted, the discussion would make no sense because the cropped file would be missing the bird's feet, or whatever. So what I did was make the effort so this discussion makes sense in future.

There's nothing POINTY about doing what Commons users legally and by-guideline have to do if they want to use files in this repository to make an example during a discussion. What was done to the "not in use" file was itself POINTy (disrupting the project to make a point) but I think that was more out of ignorance of licence conditions and our guidelines on overwriting files, rather than deliberate disruption. What I did is what users on Commons have to do thousands of times over. Anyone thinking there's a shortcut to this by overwriting files and instantly changing 24,000 uses on Wikimedia projects, has a WMF action coming their way.

Adamant1 go do some learning before you bang on about "non-issues" The magic css crop thing is a template on many but not all Wikimedia projects, but it is "Détail image" in French and "Recortar imagen" in Spanish and "CSS-Bildausschnitt" in German and "Ritaglio immagine con CSS" in Italian and so on for dozens and dozens of languages. Who is going to wrap Dillif's 24,000 image-uses in dozens of language-variant templates? You? But even then, only a portion of Diliff's images are in a standard thumbnail. Many are in info boxes. Which don't support that. The point is, choosing to display an image with this baked in English caption, is real work for the people on each and every one of the projects Diliff's images appear on. And good luck persuading proud Germans that they should edit 730 articles just so an English language warning doesn't appear. And there's no way on earth the French, who love their language, will waste their short time on earth editing 1237 articles to hide your English-language vandalism.

And do I really need to remind you that creating an image with a hard-coded baked-in caption saying "Do not remove this text" and then.... removing it in front of our readers very eyes.. is well, a stupendously terrible idea.

An awful lot of effort is being made pursuing a dumb ass solution with countless better alternatives. WMF have spent approximately 50 pence on Commons since they created it. They get millions in donations. Ask them to make a proper UI for our images so that all re-users know exactly how to do it. Here's one idea: I'd disable the ability to easily get to the full size image (other than for logged-in users, perhaps with a preference check box). Our readers then have to press a Download button to get the image. Doing that pops up text explaining the image is not free and not public domain. You can only use it if you follow the conditions. Especially about attribution and naming the licence. That's just one idea, and maybe there are better ones.

Vandalising our repository to solve the fact that WMF created a terrible UI for images is not the way to go. Go put your thinking caps on. This is not an approach that takes Commons anywhere useful. -- Colin (talk) 20:14, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'll make you a deal go learn about CSS as soon as you cut the condescending attitude. It's not like the stuff your throwing a fit about can't be dealt with. God forbid the Italian language Wikipedia has to push a button or copy and past some code from another project to enable cropping. Let's all freak out about it though. Your throwing a fit over nothing. Go outside or something. It's not my problem. I really just don't get who the hell you think that kind of moral grandstanding is going to appeal to. Like anyone is going to read your little tirade and be like "you know he's right. Everyone on here is a bunch of vandals!!" Get real. What a waste of keyboard strokes. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:27, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Let's all cool it down a bit here. Colin has some super valid points, even if their delivery is a little intense. I personally have been very convinced by what they've brought up throughout this discussion; appending these English-language watermark captions will have huge implications across various Wikis, to say nothing of the fact that this seems to be almost a punitive action against an uploader for exercising their legal rights as a copyright holder/licenser. 19h00s (talk) 21:40, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedia Commons follows community consensus, formalized in policies and guidelines. Commons:Copyleft trolling is an official guideline, we should follow it. Again, feel free to start a discussion to change the guideline if you disagree with it. Consigned (talk) 23:10, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Much though it pains me to admit it, Colin has a point in at least one of the problems he identifies with the proposed solution here. I don't think his argument that the license bans this approach is valid, and I wouldn't shed a single tear if he were blocked for his characterization of other editors and their ideas as "dumb ass", "stupid", and "vandalis[m]," but he is probably right about the technical difficulties of the proposed solution. I suspect he would have been heard on that earlier if he had come here in a collegial fashion. I would urge whoever is trying to move forward with this to re-read what he wrote, ignore the tone, ignore the dubious claims about the license forbidding this, and look at the actual issues he raises about implementation. - Jmabel ! talk 07:03, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For those complaining about collegial or condescending attitude... You guys opened a proposal to proceed to vandalise several thousand images you don't own which are individually published twenty four thousand times across Wikimedia projects. How many hundreds of Wikipedians are you overruling with this proposal? Wrecking someone else's work is not collegial. Proposing to run a bot that impacts hundreds of Wikimedia projects you haven't given a moment's thought to, and captioning in a language they do not speak, is super arrogant and thoughtless. Vandalising the repository when the solution should be done in HTML/Javascript on the hosting website is terribe. Adamant1 continues to think this is "nothing".

Diliff spent four months travelling across England photographing cathedrals. WMF UK gave him some petrol money, but otherwise this was all done while he was between jobs. Each of his stitched photos takes hours to create from dozens of individual images. They are priceless and irreplicable images of England's finest architecture. There is nobody in the UK who did or might do anything like that. And then there's all his other photos. Which are all professional-class images. If you aren't angry about this proposal, you shouldn't be curating an image repository.

@Jmabel this isn't like you uploaded a photo and it was out of focus and I mocked you mercilessly in a cruel manner. You and others are proposing to vandalise thousands of Diliff's images. Because you didn't think hard enough about the problem to realise the problem is the website, not the JPG. We all agree that WMF do a shit job of informing reusers how to be licence compliant. Wikipedia itself sets a terrible example, by hiding attribution behind a hidden mouse click. That some careless people on the internet are getting hassled by Pixby because they didn't bother to attribute at all, should be a wake up call to Commons/Wikipedia that it is long overdue for the websites to improve. Vandalising content, other people's content, is far far more rude than my comments about this idea.

Consider: if Jmabel threw a tin of paint over a painting in a museum (like the Just Stop Oil people do) and I saw them do it and said "Why the fuck did you do that?". Which one of us goes to jail? That's exactly how terrible this idea is. Tone policing my response to your stupid ideas is evading what the real problem here is: that there are people in commons who don't respect other people's work and don't respect the repository. Throwing a tin of paint over Diliff's work because you don't like how he enforces CC is not the solution. Fix the website.

-- Colin (talk) 16:01, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wrt "dubious claims about the license". Go read the licence. A derivative work MUST credit all authors equally and MUST state what the changes are. Adding a banner along the bottom of the JPG creates a derivative work. This is CC-BY SA 101. And our longstanding policy on overwriting files forbids anything beyond a minor change and anything contentious. This fails on both accounts. Hundreds of Wikipedians chose those images as they were when they chose them. Commons making in-place edits of this kind is saying "fuck you, we know better" to hundreds of Wikpedians. I can't emphasise enough how rude that is to those editors on those other projects. And how doing that on this scale would invoke a WMF action against Commons. It is not what this project is about. -- Colin (talk) 16:09, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Lol (to both comments). --Adamant1 (talk) 16:16, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

CCTV in the United States Ineligible for Copyright - A Complete Legal Fiction

The template PD-automated has been turned into something for which there is zero legal justification for in the United States. Any time a CCTV footage or picture in the country takes a shot of something notable, users upload it to Commons, thinking, erroneously, that the picture cannot be copyrighted. That is a complete legal fiction and the usage of this template for images originating in the US should be curtailed and all such images being justified under this template should be removed. Two of the best examples to counter this ridiculous claim are, first, the Andy Warhol movie Empire, which is an eight-hour film that is composed entire of a still shot of the Empire State Building. The second example is Wolfgang Staehles' time lapse work, "2001", that captured the 9/11 attacks. The former has been inducted into the National Film Registry and is under copyright.

There is no legal precedent in the US that CCTV footage is copyfree. Further, the template is now being used to try to claim that bodycam video in copyfree. There is no end to how this template will be abused because there is no clear directive or policy when applying the template. There are dozens, probably hundreds, of YouTube channels that exclusively use CCTV, bodycam, or otherwise fixed, automated photography for their content and all their content is rightfully copyrighted. I believe this template should be nixed for any all all use within the US and that those photos and videos currently uploaded under this template should be removed or blanked unless their verified authors upload them themselves. -- Veggies (talk) 22:05, 13 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In COM:CRT/US, we have a sentence that reads "In the United States, copyright can only be assigned to "works independently created by a human author"[6]." This is corroborated with COM:TOO and COM:TOO US. Your hypothesis "There are dozens, probably hundreds, of YouTube channels that exclusively use CCTV, bodycam, or otherwise fixed, automated photography for their content and all their content is rightfully copyrighted." about the copyright status seems flawed. Most fixed camera installations simply lack the human input that is necessary for and behind (receiving) copyrights. The Warhol and Staehle examples aren't opposed to this concept, as these humans used material to make a human expression of ideas, to make a human communication; by this intent, there's a foundation for copyrights. You cannot go by simple technical characteristics, but you have to consider the purpose and intent of something that may be a copyrightable work. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 22:24, 13 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Most fixed camera installations simply lack the human input that is necessary for and behind (receiving) copyrights. The Warhol and Staehle examples aren't opposed to this concept, as these humans used material to make a human expression of ideas, to make a human communication Sorry but that is a distinction without a difference. If the owner of a CCTV camera decides that their random footage is now (ahem) "material to make a human expression of ideas, to make a human communication" who are you to say it isn't and would that suddenly validate their copyright claim? -- Veggies (talk) 18:47, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If a owner of a rock decides that is now "material to make a human expression of ideas, to make a human communication", the Copyright Office has said it's not. Even if the human polished it up. You don't get to take stuff that exists and claim a copyright on it. Warhol intended to create an artistic work from the start.

If someone edited a work out of a CCTV camera, I wouldn't be arguing it. But those are never the cases on here; the videos are obvious cuts to the video to the parts of interest. Taking a PD movie and making a shorter cut could be copyrightable; taking a PD movie and cutting it to a scene, especially when there's one or two obvious scenes to cut.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:03, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If a owner of a rock decides that is now "material to make a human expression of ideas, to make a human communication", the Copyright Office has said it's not. Even if the human polished it up. A rock is a natural object. Rocks are not created by men. Rocks existed before humans. There is a natural process by which rocks come about. CCTV videos are not natural objects. CCTV videos are created by people. CCTV videos did not exist before humans. There is no natural process by which CCTV videos come about. You just made my point for me.

If someone edited a work out of a CCTV camera, I wouldn't be arguing it. That's exactly what is on Commons. Uploaders don't upload the entire CCTV feed, they upload the short clip or still image that they find relevant. Second, you're still presupposing that CCTV video is PD. It isn't. There's zero legal precedent for claiming that it is. -- Veggies (talk) 04:14, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Rocks are polished by humans, but that's not enough input for the work to be copyrighted. Kinetic sculptures are made by humans, but aren't copyrighted, because they aren't fixed.

It feels like you didn't bother reading what you're responding to in your haste to respond. Turnings hours and hours of film into one work is a creative action. As I said above, making two cuts in the film, one when the action starts and one when it ends, is not copyrightable.--Prosfilaes (talk) 07:21, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not to nitpick but recent court decisions would seem to contradict your analysis of “fixed”. January decision by the 9th Circuit found that sculptures or 3d works with moving or manipulatable parts can be eligible for copyright; they compared movable sculptures (in this case children’s toys) to dynamic works like songs or dance and concluded that the movement does not violate the “fixed” clause. Tangle, Inc. v. Aritzia, Inc., et al, 9th Circuit, January 14 2025. 19h00s (talk) 11:10, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's no legal precedent in the US that says that CCTV camera footage is not "created by a human author". A human set up the CCTV camera, choosing camera location, framing, zoom, and potentially other things such as exposure, contrast, frame rate or even lighting. How far are you willing to take this argument? Is a photograph taken with a digital camera created without a "human author" since it was the camera's processor that actually captured the image? What if it was a point-and-shoot camera with all settings handled automatically? What if a tripod was used so a human wasn't actively pointing the camera? What if a delay timer was used (perhaps to eliminate camera shake on a long exposure) so the human wasn't touching the camera when the image was captured? Where do we draw the line? Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:55, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We can ask the same question of you, about where the line is drawn. If someone builds a trail up a mountain, is that copyrightable? What if someone traverses a trail enough times to make a trail? What if a person leaves a footprint on a trail? If that footprint causes the rainwater to erode the mountain in a slightly different way than it would have, does that make the whole mountain their copyright?

If we want to discuss this, let's talk about what's being discussed, instead of making strawmen. I would argue that it's clear that works made without intent, like those footprints, aren't copyrightable. The question is about automated CCTV footage, whether endless footage taken for those ten seconds a thief comes by is made with the appropriate creative intent to make a copyrightable work.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:28, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Copyright Office has ruled time and time again that works without a human author (the notorious monkey case or AI, in more recent years) cannot be copyrighted. Who would be the human author of a CCTV camera? The owner of the camera? No, because they did not have any input on its creation. The brand that made the camera? Also had no input on any creative work. It can't be the person who "set it up", because the monkey copyright suit had a person setting up the image that the monkey took, and yet it was ultimately ruled uncopyrightable due to lack of human authorship, because what made the decision about when to snap the camera and how was the monkey (a non human). Similarly, an AI, even if prompted with creative input, cannot produce a copyrightable work. There is simply no human author in which to vest the copyright here. With Empire, Warhol chose to start filming, and chose when it ended, and chose the location with lights for artistic reasons. With 2001 it was a video at a specific time for an artistic reason with specific artistic choices. They chose to film, they chose where to frame the camera for creative reasons. There was human input in both cases, in both the original production and in its representation (the time lapse and slow motion elements and such). If CCTV footage is significantly altered in a creative manner after the fact, or edited in a specific way, or there is some especially creative placement of the cameras for an artistic work that could be copyrighted, but that is almost none of these cases, which are almost uniformly security cameras. PARAKANYAA (talk) 02:34, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The owner of the camera? No, because they did not have any input on its creation. Of course they did. They or an authorized agent of theirs set it up, chose where to point it, and incurred the costs for buying, maintaining, and preserving that footage. We're not talking about "monkey" photos or AI here—stay on topic—we're discussing CCTV footage. With Empire, Warhol chose to start filming, and chose when it ended, and chose the location with lights for artistic reasons. The very same thing that someone with still-camera footage chooses when setting up, publishing, or releasing their images. With 2001 it was a video at a specific time for an artistic reason with specific artistic choices. As I said above to someone else's comment, that's a distinction without a difference. "An artistic reason" is not a pre-requisite for copyright. If I install a doorbell security camera and, inadvertently, end up capturing footage of something unexpected (natural phenomena or some human act), would you demand to know if I had "an artistic reason" for setting up the camera before granting me a copyright? That's risible. -- Veggies (talk) 18:47, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If your home painters spilled paint on the floor, and you posted a photo to Facebook, and they claimed you violated the copyright on their floor painting, would you think that not risible? Taken to court, would your lawyer's first argument not be that accidentally spilling paint on a floor is not a copyrightable act? In a country with stronger moral rights, you might be enjoined from destroying their artwork they made on your floor. Artistic intent makes a big difference.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:03, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Taken to court, would your lawyer's first argument not be that accidentally spilling paint on a floor is not a copyrightable act? No, because spilling paint is very much copyrightable. My lawyer would simply state, first, that the painters failed to state a claim because they hadn't demonstrated how a photo uploaded to Facebook violated their copyright in any meaningful way. Second, he would argue that the painters were agents hired by myself to do specific work on my property, which did not include painting the floor, so I was entirely within my rights to have them clean the mess up or clean it up myself, effectively destroying their creation, as being outside the bounds of what they were contracted to do. So, no, your analogy falls flat on all counts. You didn't even attempt to answer my hypothetical doorbell scenario because there is no "artistic reason" prerequisite for having a copyrightable work. -- Veggies (talk) 04:30, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Veggies: I was just thinking about a scenario where someone is taking a photograph on their phone, drops it, and the camera goes off after rolling down a hill. Obiviously there's no human input or "creative process" involved in that case. But is anyone seriously going to argue the person doesn't own the copyright to the photograph? Otherwise, what exactly would be the standard there? How many times the phone rolled before taking the picture? --Adamant1 (talk) 05:18, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say that De jure, there's no copyright for having an image snapped due to a technical mishap or fluke, your example is similar to the monkey grabbing a DSLR and pressing the shutter. But in practice, that would be often hard to prove. By the way, there's a photographic technique involving setting your camera to triggering the shutter with a short timer (1 to 3 seconds) and then to cast it in the air. After you caught it when coming down, you have sometimes pictures with funny novel perspectives. I would say that this is undeniably a creative process, even if you're using a lot of randomness. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 05:53, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a difference, legally, between the copyright of a picture taken by dropping your phone accidentally versus dropping your phone intentionally? I don't see one. It's still a human act. -- Veggies (talk) 06:06, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Copyright Office says "An original work of authorship is a work that is independently created by a human author and possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity." Accidents aren't creative.--Prosfilaes (talk) 07:21, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The laws actually make more or less huge differences between accidents and intentions. See Act of god, manslaughter vs. murder vs. negligent homicide and battery for examples, admittedly not related to copyrights but mostly with human acts. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 07:26, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you take a picture of a painting, then that photo is a derivative of that painting and distributing it without a fair use justification is copyright infringing. You can argue that you can destroy this copyrighted painting, but if you accept that it's a work of copyright, I'd wait until the court tells you it's A-OK in any country with strong moral rights. If you install a doorbell cam for someone, are you claiming copyright over any of the footage that results? If someone comes out from Lowe's to install the doorbell, does Lowe's have the copyright to all the cameras its workers installed?-Prosfilaes (talk) 07:21, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Spilling paint" is not copyrightable. Spilling paint is a technique which can be used in the creation of a copyrightable work. There is a difference. Within the context of the creation of a work, a person can spill paint in a way that reflects their originality and control over the creation of a process. But it is only the intentional application of intellectual creativity, rather than the spilling of paint (or whatever other physical act) that produces a copyrightable work. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 22:17, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

But it is only the intentional application of intellectual creativity, rather than the spilling of paint (or whatever other physical act) that produces a copyrightable work There is absolutely nothing in copyright law that necessitates (ahem) "the intentional application of intellectual creativity". If I accidently spill paint on my floor and I think it spilled in a neat pattern, I can cut the floor out and copyright the whole spillage, sell derivate works from it, and zealously protect it as my intellectual property from people who want to duplicate it without authorization. -- Veggies (talk) 17:20, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The law is very clear about protecting only creative acts. If you accidentally spill paint on your floor, and you're honest about that, then the US Copyright Office won't register your claim of copyright.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:28, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Because they did not have any input on its creation. Lots of security cameras are remote controlled. There's no way to know on our end which camera footage was or not either. With body cams specifically, obviously whomever is wearing the camera controls what is being recorded by moving or looking in a certain direction. The question would be if something like that is intentional enough to be considered creative. It certainly seems to be in instances like someone wearing a GoPro camera to record themselves doing an extreme sport. Otherwise we'd have a bunch of files of Red Bull videos on here. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:50, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You could clearly tell from the way the footage moves, and if you can't tell, you run into the same situation as the monkey copyright thing, where what little influence the human may have is not enough to make them the author - after all, he orchestrated the monkey shoot and set it up and moved into its position, still not enough. On the body camera question: yes, I agree, and so I didn't mention body cameras, because there is creative input in how one moves and operates the camera, whether it is attached to one's person or not. Those are not really "automated", their movement and capture is wholly dependent on a human. PARAKANYAA (talk) 02:57, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I don't think the monkey footage is copyrightable. Probably CCTV footage that clearly looks automated isn't either. --Adamant1 (talk) 03:04, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If I place a camera somewhere to film for an hour and I am not touching the camera during this hour no one would say that I do not have a copyright on the video. But if I do the same but leave the camera for two years the copyright vanishes? Is there then a point on which the recoding before is copyrighted and the recoding after. Will the copyright of the first hour be revoked because the camera was standing for two years. This does not make sense to me. There are similar questions on some FOP cases where we decided to delete them all per PCP. GPSLeo (talk) 05:33, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

All is about the intent. The objective of a security camera is not to produce any work. It is only to provide security. If you set a camera with the intent to create a work, you get a copyright. Yann (talk) 07:39, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I do not know about the US law but in EU law intent is definitely irrelevant for the copyright of a work. The only think that matters is if there was a creative process. If placing a camera is a creative process keeping there for a longer time does not remove the creativity from the process of placing the camera. GPSLeo (talk) 10:38, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ain't that simply two ways of saying the same thing? Yann: "If you set a camera with the intent to create a work, you get a copyright." GPSLeo: "The only think that matters is if there was a creative process." I understand it as such: Intent to create = Creative process, if you have the intent to create, then you've taken the first step of a creative process. I do not see how creation without intent could be possible. Grand-Duc (talk) 10:50, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would say placing a camera at a certain place is always a creative process. GPSLeo (talk) 11:41, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No. Fixed cameras are usually installed by technicians, not by videographers. And for determining the intent, search for who pays for the camera. For security cameras, a private or public organization pays for it with the intention of providing security. Yann (talk) 12:24, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't realize that you had to be a professional videographer to hold copyright. Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:00, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"If I place a camera somewhere to film for an hour and I am not touching the camera during this hour no one would say that I do not have a copyright on the video." Not necessarily. If I place a digital thermometer outside and it records the temperatures though-out the day, I don't have any right to stop others from copying the same exact data and publishing it themselves.

Copyright is limited-time government granted monopoly it can choose to bestow or withhold as it sees fit. It chooses not to bestow that monopoly in cases where recovered information lacks human originality. Feoffer (talk) 10:52, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is just an extension of Burrow-Giles v. Sarony. The question has nothing to do with the mechanical process, but whether or not the photograph (or video) represents the "original intellectual conceptions" of the author. In the case of a planned or manually shot video, there is consistent control over the output. If you are watching the camera, you have a choice at any moment whether to move it or not, to adjust it, etc. — putting aside, of course, any control you may exercise over the events that take place in front of it. If you leave a camera unattended, however, then the frames captured will have less and less to do with your intellectual conception, to the point where you may not exercise any significant authorship.

To ask you another question: let's say you start shooting a video, and, after an hour, you hand your camera off to me (without turning it off) and I shoot video for an hour. During those times, we both have control over the camera and the various aspects of the photographic process. Once you stop exercising authorship, however, whatever the camera captures is not your work (but, in this case, mine). Look at Burrow-Giles. The photograph is found to be copyrightable because is a "useful, new, harmonious, characteristic, and graceful picture, and that plaintiff made the same … entirely from his own original mental conception, to which he gave visible form by posing the said Oscar Wilde in front of the camera, selecting and arranging the costume, draperies, and other various accessories in said photograph, arranging and disposing the light and shade, suggesting and evoking the desired expression, and from such disposition, arrangement, or representation, made entirely by plaintiff, he produced the picture in suit." In a CCTV case, very few of these criteria, if any, are fulfilled. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 22:26, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Despite what many on Wikipedia/Commons claim, the US copyright office never ruled on the monkey selfie. Yes, they issues a pamphlet that said that in a hypothetical situation in which a monkey took a photograph that it wouldn't be eligible for copyright, but there was no ruling on the situation in which a human set up a camera, adjusted all the settings, composed and framed the image, and did everything other than actually hit the shutter button as to whether the image could be considered to have been created by a human. Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:59, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

From the Compendium of US Copyright Office Practices: The crucial question is “whether the ‘work’ is basically one of human authorship, with the computer [or other device] merely being an assisting instrument, or whether the traditional elements of authorship in the work (literary, artistic, or musical expression or elements of selection, arrangement, etc.) were actually conceived and executed not by man but by a machine.” - If the CCTV is a static CCTV feed, it's ineligible. If someone's controlling the camera, it likely is eligible. I don't think it makes sense to apply it to body cameras, though. — Rhododendrites ^talk | 03:08, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That interpretation has zero legal precedent or foundation behind it. It's, essentially, a highly disputable reading of the Copyright Office principles. In fact, none of the examples given after that passage even remotely come close to what you're suggesting. -- Veggies (talk) 18:30, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I largely agree, and have encouraged people not to use {{Pd-automated}} for US CCTV. It would be useful to get WMF Legal to weigh in on the copyrightability of prepositioned cameras via m:Wikilegal -- I was going to request it a while ago, but never got around to sending the email. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 03:20, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Who do you think the copyright would vest in? Hypothetically they were copyrightable, who would get it? PARAKANYAA (talk) 03:21, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In the UK, the copyright is assigned to the property owner, if my memory serves me. Though in the UK, something as simple as a signature can be copyrighted.

Perhaps someone could email the Copyright Office and ask them to weigh in? JayCubby (talk) 18:03, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Anybody saying that these are easily in the public domain - well I hope they're right, but given the very low TOO in many countries, and the fact that this principle has been completely untested in the US, means we don't know until something goes to court. As a rule, I'd say CCTV is hopefully fine, while dashcams and bodycams are more dubious because there is far more likely to be human placement/decision in filming angle, what they're filming, when, ect. It's different from the monkey case, because the monkey produced a still and the choice of when to take the still is likely what bumps the copyright to the monkey rather than the human. But we don't know. GreenLipstickLesbian (talk) 04:48, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

US law is clear: Copyright applies to art, not data. When there's no artist, there's no art, and thus no government-granted monopoly to restrict copying. It's not a legal fiction, it's a well-established legal reality. Feoffer (talk) 10:40, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

How do you distinguish 'art' from 'data' in an image? -- Veggies (talk) 18:14, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well... The law is actually really unclear on this point. "Art" is never explicitly defined in the relevant statutes in the same way you're defining it here. You can call anything "art", that doesn't make it copyrightable. You can also call anything "data", that doesn't make it copyright-ineligible. Indeed, the shades of grey are the most important aspects of this situation - it comes down to how courts and the CO have interpreted and analyzed similar "works" under the relevant statutes, it does not hinge on whether we personally think it's "art" or "data". As OP correctly pointed out, there are multiple examples of copyrighted films that comprise nothing more than a single, continuous, static shot - Warhol's Empire for sure could be a case of the Copyright Office granting registration prior to a court decision that would nullify the effect of the registration, but we just don't know if that's the case, it hasn't been tested in court. I'll stop there as I don't want to get knee-deep in this discussion, but the idea that "art" vs "data" is a simply explained binary within the language of US copyright law is just incorrect. 19h00s (talk) 18:45, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There are some reasonable arguments that some installations may be PD-ineligible, which is more a question if there is no identifiable human authorship. For a photograph, the usual aspects are framing and angle -- while those may be limited and more obvious for security cameras (merger doctrine arguments), it still may be enough for copyright. A camera could be positioned by an installation company, or tweaked by an employee, and maybe that is enough. It may also be very difficult for us to determine. I did find one registration, PA0002103805, which is I think for this video. Which means it's certainly possible for some fairly basic security cameras to get a copyright registration in the U.S. It's a pretty untested area of law, where we are guessing. If there is any remote control of the camera, I would assume it's copyrightable, for sure. The CCTV aspect is irrelevant in and of itself. I'm not sure the Copyright Office or any court has given us any decent guidance over what aspects to look for. It's arguable, but I can also certainly see arguments that it's gray enough that there is significant doubt on such works. Carl Lindberg (talk) 00:39, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I broadly agree. I think COM:PCP probably wins the day with me so far. Someone chose to put the camera there with the intention of capturing things in that area at that angle. It may be for utilitarian reasons and not "art", but AFAIK, there is no utilitarian exemption for video. GMG ^talk 22:43, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am leery of {{PD-automated}}. I do not think there is caselaw that supports a blanket ruling that such footage is PD-ineligible. The copyright office has ruled that technical images such as x-rays are PD-ineligible. An x-ray technician does not have much freedom in making the image. I'm sympathetic to PD-ineligible in some circumstances. If somebody screws a Ring doorbell camera onto the wall, there is also little choice available from framing the shot. The same can be said of dash cams and Tesla cams. I'm less sympathetic to PD-ineligible when the installer has a lot of freedom about where to install the camera and where the camera points. A few months ago, I saw a discussion about a camera mounted on top of a building to monitor the parking lot below. Yes, a functional image, but the image was also pleasing as it had good composition. I can easily see a human exercising judgment to make a pleasing image. There are clear cases of copyright. If someone sets up a camera to catch the surf pounding the shore or some wild animals feeding, that someone should not be denied a copyright merely because they left the camera unattended for hours on end. The photographer intended to catch some interesting footage. That a security camera captures an unexpected event such as a plane crash makes the issue of copyright less clear. The photographer was not trying to frame the unexpected crash, so everything else might be incidental. If, however, the photographer wanted to capture images of ships passing underneath a bridge and happened to capture a ship striking the bridge and collapsing it, then the framing is not accidental, and I see no reason for PD-ineligible. In summary, the law is not settled, so Commons should be cautious about claiming {{PD-automated}}. Glrx (talk) 02:54, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You mean to say it has no basis in law, not that it is a "legal fiction." There is such a thing as a legal fiction, and this isn't an example of that. The question is whether or not the video has within it a modicum of originality which constitutes human authorship of the video/image.

Copyright exists only in works containing such originality, not in the mechanical process used to create them. If you run a camera for an hour with the lens cap on, you will produce an hour-long video, but it will not be copyrightable, because the output (a black screen) will not contain the modicum of originality necessary for something to be a copyrighted work. The best argument that CCTV is copyrightable in general is that the camera has been placed by a human and thus that there is human authorship in the framing of the image which is output. This may not always be the case — in some cases, the person who set up the camera may have little to no control over its positioning. There is no aspect of static CCTV which can possibly include human authorship, except for this initial framing of the image. And, even then, the contents of what is in front of the camera can be left uncontrolled to the point where the initial (minimally) creative image is no longer reflected in the output of the camera.

D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 22:13, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

is there "legal precedent" for cctv footage being copyrightable? ltbdl (talk) 06:08, 17 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In the United States, not. In the UK there is legal precedent for it being under copyright (Hyde Park Residence Ltd v. Yelland), in Russia there is legal precedent for it not being under copyright. Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:08, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

CCTV footage in the United States is clearly ineligible for copyright as there is no human authorship. As the U.S. Copyright office states: Copyright "applies to the protection of intellectual property and authorship rights over original, creative works produced by a human." Sweat of the brow is not a valid legal doctrine in the United States. I also don't understand how Andy Warhol's Empire is at all relevant to the issue. CCTV footage and documentaries (even long monotonous ones) are different things. Nosferattus (talk) 16:40, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Because at the end of the day, that film is essentially identical to most CCTV footage placed at a static location. Warhol physically set up a camera and let it film continuously from a specific angle, before taking the footage and publishing it as a continuous shot. When a CCTV camera is set up, a human being physically puts it up and angles it to get a specific shot, and another human operator may even be changing the angle or deciding when it records or not. Those are almost identical actions creating almost identical works, Warhol's simply has the imprimatur of "art" while the other is generally not viewed as such. Just because a maintenance worker without "artistic intent" carried out the acts to set up and ultimately film a CCTV video does not mean that "work" is less copyrightable than a nearly identical work created with "artistic intent". Nowhere in the relevant statutes does it say a human has to have intended to create a work for it to be eligible for copyright, the work just has to have been created by a human (along with all the other requirements/rules). Indeed, the USCO's compendium explicitly states: "When examining a work for original authorship, the U.S. Copyright Office will not consider the author’s inspiration for the work, creative intent, or intended meaning. Instead, the Office will focus solely on the appearance or sound of the work that has been submitted for registration to determine whether it is original and creative within the meaning of the statute and the relevant case law." 19h00s (talk) 17:11, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you don't see any difference between Empire and CCTV footage, nothing I say is going to convince you. We seem to have entirely different ideas of what "creativity" and "authorship" mean, so I don't think this discussion is going to be fruitful. Nosferattus (talk) 04:31, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There is a clear artistic difference between the two - but the copyright office doesn't care about artistic difference, they care about the visual attributes of the "work". I'm talking about the basic visual/physical attributes: a static, continuous video, set up by a human, recording an unmediated scene. 19h00s (talk) 11:21, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If a camera was carefully positioned by a human, it would be copyrightable, just like any photograph. Even pretty casual snapshot photographs get a copyright, as they were still positioned by a human. Security cameras are often positioned in obvious places, but it's a difficult question to figure out when such an act becomes uncopyrightable. Taking a straight-on photo of a painting is not, but we have little other clear precedents. Do you think this video has a copyright? If so, what makes that copyrightable but others not? Carl Lindberg (talk) 12:49, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That video may not be copyrightable, but the license is a guarantee that the video can be used without any fear of litigation. Plenty of stock photography sites sell public domain images, I'd lump this in with that. JayCubby (talk) 13:00, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Except the U.S. Copyright Office looked at it, and granted a copyright registration (PA0002103805). So, that is supposed to be prima facie evidence that it's copyrightable, which you have to disprove in court if accused of infringing it. Are we saying the Copyright Office is wrong? Carl Lindberg (talk) 13:06, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I seem to have missed that. I found some other registrations with a query (this for one). This one is edited, which would seem a more credible claim of copyrightability.

Though @Clindberg--the example you gave was part of a compilation of clips, which might be worth noting. JayCubby (talk) 13:39, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@JayCubby: That compilation link does not work for me -- many cocatalog.loc.gov URLs only work temporarily. That particular registration has a "PA" number (performing arts) and is listed as a motion picture. The author assigned copyright to that company which is now selling the clip, and that is the only work that author is listed for. They may have registered several works at once, but not sure that is part of a series really, and works inside a compilation have their own independent copyright anyways (though you can have a copyrightable compilation of public domain works too). But yes, it would seem that the Copyright Office is issuing registrations for security camera footage in many cases, and I have not seen a case where they rejected one. That would argue against us allowing them. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:10, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Clindberg, I fear that may be the case. I was initially biased against its copyrightability, and still am. I see still the possibility that the USCO hasn't formally considered the copyrightability (as it's in the courts that such rulings are more often made, no?). I, of course, am neither a lawyer nor an armchair lawyer. JayCubby (talk) 17:41, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

CCTV footage in the United States is clearly ineligible for copyright as there is no human authorship. Really? So... god put the camera there? Or did CCTV cameras coalesce out of the aether? -- Veggies (talk) 18:02, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I spoke to a (former) copyright lawyer on the matter. He believed that CCTV was copyrightable, as it's a work in a fixed medium. However, it's a "thin copyright," so it's apparently unlikely that someone will even pursue a case. JayCubby (talk) 11:06, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That is not how I interpret "thin copyright". If I use the original footage, then he can sue me successfully. If I make my own footage that looks similar to his, then his lawsuit will fail. For example, X can take a picture of the Statue of Liberty. X has a thin copyright to that image. X's thin copyright does not prevent me from taking a nearly identical picture of the Statute of Liberty from the same place, with the same framing, and similar lighting conditions. CCTV footage of a plane crash on the Hudson River may have a thin copyright, but I'd be hard pressed to set up a similar plane crash with my own CCTV equipment a week later. A stronger copyright is where Y sets up the scene and controls the action. If I try to recreate a scene from a recent movie, then I'm probably violating a copyright. Glrx (talk) 17:18, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's the other part of what he said, and it appears I merged his two points: that the recreation of depicted things is permitted (thin copyright) and that it's highly unlikely people will find it worthwhile to pursue litigation of CCTV that Commons hosts (it's not known if it will hold up in court, and damages are going to be tricky). JayCubby (talk) 17:26, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Intention and copyright

I want to address the point about "the Office will focus solely on the appearance or sound of the work" that 19h00s brought up above. (New section so as not to derail the main conversation.) Yes, I know that is the theory, but I'd say it is clearly not the practice. For example, copyright has been granted to Richard Serra works that are visually indistinguishable from ordinary walls. Yes, he made very deliberate decisions about where to place them, but that's exactly what this doctrine theoretically ignores. - Jmabel ! talk 19:14, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So, funnily enough... I actually reached out to the CO about this specific issue in re: Serra's Tilted Arc. You were the first to spur me to realize that there's a good possibility that registration wouldn't be granted today (don't have the link as that conversation happened long ago now), and eventually it bothered me so much that I just asked the Office. Specifically asked if they had any guidance on the application of the threshold of originality on minimalist, monumental sculptures in the wake of rulings like Feist and Star Athletica, and if there was any correspondence related to Serra's registration that might elucidate why it was allowed. They gave the basic expected canned answer - "Can't speak to specifics or offer any communications, can only point to the Compendium" - but the public info officer hammered two points specifically and multiple times: a) the Serra registration stands and cannot be reexamined in any way other than through litigation and b) the USCO works on a case-by-case system, meaning the registration of one work does not guarantee the registration of a like work. I have to assume that if someone managed to get to court over Tilted Arc, it would be ruled ineligible, but the USCO ruled it eligible at the time. The most important precedent showing it would be ineligible today is, in my mind, Cady Noland's Log Cabin, a work that was denied registration specifically in spite of the artist's intent and conceptual merit (Noland's case has been discussed extensively in copyright & art history academic literature). Anyway this is all tangential so apologies for going long. 19h00s (talk) 19:27, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Seeking advice how to find usable images

Hi, I'm curious if anyone has any advice on how to tailor one's search for images/photographs to specifically find images which are eligible to be uploaded to Wikimedia.

Any help appreciated. Thank you very much. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 21:21, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You can use the filter option on Google image search. (It only shows up in the desktop version of the Google image search page.) There, you can select to only search for images that have a Creative Commons license. Other image search engines, and image hosting sites, too, likely have a similar filter option. Nakonana (talk) 15:06, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

When you use that filter on google it will show results with all CC licenses including NC, ND which are not allowed on Wikimedia Commons

999

REAL 💬 ⬆ 15:17, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ah good to know. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 15:40, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's definitely good to know. Nakonana (talk) 16:05, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Openverse Zanahary (talk) 06:26, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Brilliant! Thank you. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 06:53, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@IOHANNVSVERVS: What country, time period, and/or subject are you looking for images of? --Adamant1 (talk) 07:12, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm asking in general, but what specifically prompted this question was looking for photos showing the conditions of La Esperanza (prison).

But more commonly I'm interested in photos of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Thanks, IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 07:59, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@IOHANNVSVERVS -- Fars News used to copyleft their website 'till 13 February 2024, see Template:Fars. The IDF tends to release copylefted content, but there's some geoblocking going on, I'll need to see how to get around that. Try and look for CCTV and GoPro footage on the internet, as that is possibly PD. JayCubby (talk) 14:55, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Faithful reproductions of Catholic (and possibly, other Christian) coats of arms

In light of Commons:Deletion requests/File:Coat of arms of the Diocese of Dumaguete.svg, this is something that Wikimedia Commons should notice. It appears we don't have a policy (at least under Commons:Copyright rules by subject matter) regarding recent or newer coats of arms of Catholic dioceses and prelates, as well as similar symbols from other Christian denominations.

Ping the two involved participants from the said deletion requests, @GiovanniYosh12 and Abzeronow: . I'll also ping two Pinoy users who were involved in copyright-related discussions in the past: @Pandakekok9 and Howdy.carabao: . JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 01:54, 17 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand. Why should there be a special copyright policy for images related to Christian denominations? -- Asclepias (talk) 11:58, 17 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Possible COM:Derivative work issue, yet we host hundreds of images of such coats of arms. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 13:05, 17 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The (visual) representation of a coat of arms, in this case of a bishop or diocese, is based on the blazon (textual description), so technically derivatives of religious coats of arms like the ones myself and @SajoR: create are safe for upload as per COM:Coats of arms. GiovanniYosh12 (talk) 07:23, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@GiovanniYosh12 the PD may be true for coats of arms from governments (state symbols).

Still, I think it's best to ping a veteran in copyright matters here. Ping @Clindberg: . JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 11:27, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Per Commons:Coats of arms, the copyright is usually in the particular drawing, not the design. In heraldry, there is usually a written blazon describing the design, and any drawing of it is a separate expression (i.e. separate copyright) of the same idea. If you are very closely following another drawing however, then you can be derivative of that other drawing. So, usually the age of the design is irrelevant, unless there is one particular drawing that all are derived from. But a drawing can't be derivative of a written description. I'm not entirely sure what the nature of this one is, but if it seems to be an independent drawing of the arms, I'd say it's fine. Carl Lindberg (talk) 12:45, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Los escudos de armas que realizamos en commons no violan los derechos de autor, son obras que cumplen con la descripción heráldica, son totalmente validas y son estéticamente diferentes a la versión oficial. Cada artista es libre de crear su propia versión siempre que cumpla con la descripción heráldica, por ejemplo si la descripción dice que el escudo debe tener una embarcación de oro y debe tener una sola vela de plata y no indica mas características, cada artista puede interpretar eso de varias formas, aunque en entrelineas se puede deducir que se trata de una embarcación pequeña pues son las que tienen en general una sola vela, pero si el artista quiere poner un galeón o un velero con una sola vela esta en todo su derecho, pues esta cumpliendo con la descripción, ademas la vela puede ser cuadrada o triangular. Recuerdo el caso de un prelado italiano que fue nombrado obispo en Albania, cuando se publicó su emblema, realicé mi propia versión, días después una persona que decía ser cercano al obispo se quejó en la Wikipedia italiana alegando que mi versión era falsa, que tenia errores y que debíamos usar la versión oficial, al final solo hice unos leves cambios estéticos para apaciguar esa persona cuyos argumentos eran ridículos, uno era que la cinta que contiene el lema debe ser de color crema y no blanco. Curiosamente ese prelado fue recientemente elevado a arzobispo y adivinen que versión estética adopto, pues la versión de Wikipedia, la que supuestamente estaba mal. Ademas, algunos de nuestros escudos igualan o superan en calidad gráfica a la versión oficial, o simplemente son mas fáciles de leer, y algunas las diócesis terminan adoptando oficialmente la versión estética de Wikipedia. Hace unos meses hice el escudo de un obispo (no recuerdo la nacionalidad), días después alguien de la Wiki me dejó un mensaje, donde informaban que el obispo les escribió para indicar que el lema de mi versión estética esta mal escrito, que por favor lo corrigiera, lo cual hice, el obispo en ningún momento se quejó de violaciones a los derechos de autor, simplemente reporto un error y eso fue todo. Además, soy amigo de dos heraldistas profesionales italianos quienes por medio de facebook se contactaron con migo, no para indicar violaciones a los derechos de autor, lo que ellos querían era que indicara en la tabla de información del archivo que ellos son quienes idearon y dibujaron la versión oficial, eso era todo. También existen heraldistas profesionales (como este quien diseñó el escudo del papa Francisco) que buena parte de su trabajo se basa en el material de commons, y si no estoy mal, ¿eso indicaría que su obra también está bajo una licencia libre?. --Alejandro Rojas (SajoR) (talk) 20:26, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Online translation: The coats of arms we create at Commons do not violate copyright. They are works that comply with the heraldic description, are fully valid, and are aesthetically different from the official version. Each artist is free to create their own version as long as they comply with the heraldic description. For example, if the description says the coat of arms must have a golden vessel and a single silver sail, and does not indicate any other characteristics, each artist can interpret this in various ways. Although, between the lines, it can be deduced that it is a small vessel, since they generally have a single sail. However, if the artist wants to depict a galleon or a sailboat with a single sail, they are within their rights, as they are complying with the description. Furthermore, the sail can be square or triangular. I remember the case of an Italian prelate who was appointed bishop in Albania. When his emblem was published, I made my own version. Days later, a person claiming to be close to the bishop complained on the Italian Wikipedia, claiming that my version was false, that it contained errors, and that we should use the official version. In the end, I only made a few minor aesthetic changes to appease this person, whose arguments were ridiculous. One was that the ribbon containing the motto should be cream-colored, not white. Curiously, that prelate was recently elevated to archbishop, and guess which aesthetic version he adopted? Well, the Wikipedia version, the one that was supposedly wrong. Furthermore, some of our coats of arms equal or surpass the official version in graphic quality, or are simply easier to read, and some dioceses end up officially adopting Wikipedia's aesthetic version. A few months ago I made the coat of arms of a bishop (I don't remember his nationality). Days later, someone from Wikia left me a message informing me that the bishop had written to them to indicate that the motto of my aesthetic version was misspelled and that I should please correct it. I did so. The bishop never complained about copyright violations; he simply reported an error, and that was that. Furthermore, I'm friends with two professional Italian heraldists who contacted me via Facebook, not to point out copyright violations; they wanted me to indicate in the file's information table that they were the ones who conceived and designed the official version, that was all. There are also professional heraldists (like this one who designed Pope Francis' coat of arms) whose work is largely based on Commons material. If I'm not mistaken, would that indicate that their work is also under a free license?. --Alejandro Rojas (SajoR) (talk) 20:26, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't agree fully with the final statement. If a person uses material from Commons he does not have to pay for it. If he incorporates such material into a new product, then they own the copyright of the new product provided that they acknowledge Commons as the source of part of their product. To put this into perspective, if I wrte a book about the Mona Lisa, I have the copyright of the book even if I illustrate it with pictures of the Mona Lisa (which are out of copyright). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Martinvl (talk • contribs) 21:50, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Part of the license says: share alike – If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same or compatible license as the original. --Alejandro Rojas (SajoR) (talk) 00:13, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That is a (very slight) misunderstanding of the meaning of a CC-BY-SA license; the difference is subtle. Let's call the issuer of the original license Party A and the reuser Party B.

Correct understanding: Party B may conform to the terms of the CC-BY-SA license. If they do so, their use is legal, and part of conforming to the license is that any changes Party B makes in their derivative work must be licensed under the same CC-BY-SA license.

Misunderstanding: If Party B creates a derivative work, but ignores the terms of the license (typically by failing to mention the license in their reuse), then that derivative work is automatically released under the same CC-BY-SA license.

Correct understanding of that latter situation: If Party B creates a derivative work, but does not properly invoke the license, then (1) Party A may pursue the usual remedies for a copyright violation by Party B and (2) the initial license offered by Party A has no effect at all on the changes introduced by Party B, if the latter are copyrightable.

If you think it through, that makes sense. CC licenses are not part of copyright law. The fact that a particular license is offered for a work (for which any number of licenses might be offered) does not in any way bring that license into play unless that license is invoked by the re-user. - Jmabel ! talk 00:39, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Out of curiosity, can a license like "Anyone is free to do anything with this work. No credit is required. By using this work in any way in another work, you agree to release the entire work under the same license and you do not need to state the license." legally work

999

REAL 💬 ⬆ 01:13, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@999real: in what country?

I suspect that there are countries (e.g. France) where it is literally impossible to alienate the droit d'auteur, but you'd also have a heck of a time gaining any cash damages from someone for having taken you at your word about being uninterested in enforcing your rights. - Jmabel ! talk 21:55, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know anything about cash damages like that. I mean about trying to find a way to make all derivative works automatically free

999

REAL 💬 ⬆ 22:12, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I really don't see how someone can't be recreating an early work that is copyrighted if the coat of arms is an accurate reproduction of the text. Either it's a completely accurate drawing based on the original description in the text, and therefore a recreation of a prior coat of arms that would be copyrighted, or it isn't and the image should be deleted as OOS. Otherwise you'd have to argue that no one ever made a drawing of the particular coat of arms before. Which is far fetched to the say the least. To give an example, if I were to compare this image with this one of the Coat of arms of the Diocese of Legazpi, the only original part for the image on Commons is the crown on the top. So the file hosted on Commons should be deleted. As it's is a recreation of someone else's drawing (that I assume is copyrighted). Or it should be deleted as OOS due to having extra elements that aren't in the original description. Really, why is Commons hosting fan made reproductions of coats of arms when exiting original drawings of them exist anyway? It just seems like a weird loophole to get around copyright issues. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:13, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Adamant1 With all due respect, one must first be familiar with the rules and traditions of heraldry in order to understand the work we heraldry artists do in Commons. Heraldry, which far predates current established copyright laws, allows various artistic renditions of a single coat of arms as long as it is in line with the textual description that is written in a specialized language called a "blazon" (see COM:Coats of arms and the replies above given by Carl Lindberg and SajoR). In other words, the blazon serves as the blueprint for heraldic artists who will draw a particular coat of arms. The purpose of the SVG coats of arms we design and upload is to standardize, improve and freely make available the said coat of arms in Commons instead of uploading the "original drawings" officially used which are in various artstyles and might be under copyright by their artist. Our work is under COM:LAB and the WikiProject Heraldry and Vexillology; the WikiProjects on the same topic in other languages go into greater detail and even encourage the creation of SVG coats of arms (Français, Español, Deutsch).

In the example images presented, the first image is the official rendition of the coat of arms of the Diocese of Legazpi which, although is assumed to be copyrighted under the name of the diocese, is actually an image taken directly from the Facebook page of the diocese converted to SVG and bears an incorrect license and author. The coat of arms file should not have been hosted on Commons due to it being "found on the internet" and is a direct copy of a possibly copyrighted image. The second image is one of the many SVG coats of arms that my fellow heraldic artists and I rendered and uploaded. In this instance, the coat of arms of the Diocese of Legazpi is based on the descriptions given by Mariano Madriaga who originally designed the said coat of arms [7]. Diocesan coats of arms in the Philippines (and in the United States) traditionally depict the miter (not a crown) as an external ornament above the shield to indicate that the coat of arms belongs to a Catholic diocese. However, some dioceses opt to have no external ornaments in their official rendering of their coats of arms, e.g., the Diocese of Legazpi. As heraldic artists trained on its rules and traditions, we know that it's acceptable to include the miter in our rendering of the coats of arms of Philippine dioceses for the sake of uniformity; it's not an "extra element" or a "fan made reproduction", and it's also not for the purpose to "get around copyright issues". GiovanniYosh12 (talk) 13:15, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@GiovanniYosh12: I actually already knew about all that. Thanks for the needless history lesson though. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like we at least agree on and have established two things here:

1. Heraldry rules are different from copyright and while heraldry rules might allow for various artistic renditions of a single coat of arms, copyright wouldn't in cases where the coat of arms are similar to each other. In other words, if I create a coat of arms that's exactly like your version that was made sooner, you could potentially sue for me copyright infringement regardless of if the "heraldry rules" allows for it.

2. Some "renditions" of the coat of arms don't follow the descriptions in the original text. I. E. You and other artists who upload their images of the coats of arms to Commons sometimes take liberates to include things that aren't in the original descriptions.

Would you say both of those points are accurate? --Adamant1 (talk) 13:30, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Adamant1: The design represents an idea. The textual description and a drawing are different expressions of that idea -- they are not related, copyright-wise. The copyright in a literal work (textual description) is in the particular words chosen -- not the ideas it describes. You can describe the same idea in a different way and not be derivative at all. It is nearly impossible for a graphical work to be derivative of a literary one (and if the wording is so precise as to not allow variation, then it could well get into the merger doctrine, where if there are limited ways to express an idea then there is no copyright at all). See Idea–expression distinction. We can't copy someone else's drawings, but someone can create an original drawing of the described design. Carl Lindberg (talk) 13:25, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Clindberg: Sure, but I don't think the versions of the coat of arms are actually that different. Like if two people create a coat of arms based on the same description but one of them adds smoke to the volcano then it's not really that different from the other person's version. Anymore then it would be if say I drew a smiley face on the cover of a Batman comic. Or are you saying that if I did then I could upload the cover to Commons without it being copyright infringement? I ask because the whole idea that these coat of arms are being drawing purely based on original descriptions is laughable at best. Most likely they are using previous images and adding superficial elements to them in Photoshop or whatever. Know one who uploads coats of arms to Commons is hand drawing them based purely on the original the text though. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:36, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Adamant1: Yes, it is different. If both artists add smoke to a volcano they are still independent, unless one was tracing the particular lines used by the first artist. The expression (and thus the copyright) is in the precise details of the drawing, not the idea of what they are drawing. The design may say to use a ship, or even a sailing ship, but there are myriads of ways to actually draw a ship and those are all independent copyrights. You may more be thinking of trademark, where a generally similar design could infringe. That is different than copyright, however. Carl Lindberg (talk) 14:20, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Clindberg: Actually I was thinking about the threshold of originality or whatever it's called when you make a durative of something. If you want a real world example to give your opinion on, this image and this one are apparently based on each other and are supposedly the "own work" of two Commons contributors. Although the original design seems to come from this coat of arms from the Archdiocese of Capiz. Although with minor differences.

There's a couple of other versions of essentially the same coat of arms online. All of them obviously didn't turn out essentially the same based on descriptions from a text. So the question would be, who created the original and are the other, newer versions different enough to not be copyrighted. I don't think adding slightly different hair to the kids or changing the color of the cross really makes that much of a difference when the coats of arms are clearly based on the same underlying image. --Adamant1 (talk) 14:55, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A derivative work is adding new, copyrightable expression to an existing work. Adding smoke to a volcano is probably one example -- that particular rendition of the smoke may well be copyrightable. Of the ones you mention, the two SVGs on Commons are obviously the same drawing. Rearranging the division on the shield is likely not a copyrightable change (below the threshold of originality), so the copyright belongs to whoever drew the original (even if it was slightly incorrect according to the blazon). Just *maybe* there is an additional copyright on the particular vectorization and choice of vector points on the second one. But, the original author should be credited. There is no copyright relation to the image you found on Facebook -- they are different drawings of the same idea, so they are both "originals". Each drawing has a copyright of its own. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:03, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Clindberg: What about this image and the one from the Diocese of Malaybalay? I assume the one on Commons should be deleted as COPYVIO since everything in the shield is exactly the same. --Adamant1 (talk) 14:38, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

...except that it appears the Commons file existed before the Facebook file, so the copying probably went the other way. In general though yes, coats of arms copied from external sites are usually a problem. SVG files are more often authored by Commons contributors, though it's possible to extract vectors from PDF files out there. If a bitmap file has precisely the same layout as a vector .svg from here, it's quite probable that the bitmap was generated from the .svg (or an ancestor vector source). Additionally, Commons SVG authors often copy components from other Commons .svg files (often ones they had done themselves), so it's possible there are still earlier versions. Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:43, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Allow me to ask about this matter, if the coat of arms that you are mentioning has an original one, and the artist here uploaded an aesthetic version not faithful to the original coat of arms that was adopted later on by the same diocese? will there be any problem with that? CommanderPhoenix (talk) 06:44, 22 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Clindberg could probably give a better answer to this but at least IMO there would have to be documentation from the diocese showing that's how it happened. Otherwise anyone who uploads a coat of arms could use it to claim the diocese adopted it after they uploaded their image to Commons. I don't personally have an issue with giving the coat of arms from my example a pass because there's evidence that the version on Commons existed first, but that evidence needs to exist and be publicly available. Although really, we don't know if the image from the diocese was just uploaded to Facebook at that point but was actually created before then. So I don't think we should be determining things based purely on when a coat of arms was uploaded to any particular social media account. --Adamant1 (talk) 06:58, 22 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

let us say these one are the original one [8], [9], [10],

This is just for further clarifications, I am here to cooperate and share thoughts on how we can work on to help one another. CommanderPhoenix (talk) 07:18, 22 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Coats of arms are not like logos -- any drawing which matches the blazon (written description) is valid. So, there can be many valid representations of a coat of arms. From a copyright perspective, "original" is any drawing where the particular lines are not taken from another, but drawn anew. The diocese is certainly free to take elements or drawings from Commons, so long as they follow the license. They may have used many different drawings as their "official" one over the years. You actually can't register coats of arms for trademark protection (though you can register them to prevent others from using them in other trademarks). Carl Lindberg (talk) 12:02, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Can I upload these insignias/emblems?

So there are two things that I need a bit of advice on. Currently, all of these images exist as "external media" templates on wikipedia.

Defunct people's armed police/MPS Active Service Forces(PAP units under the command of the ministry of public security) agency emblems. This xinhua article has all of the badges of PAP branches/agencies that became defunct in 2018. Currently the China fire service's patch already exists on commons, however I am hesitant to upload the other emblems since I want to make sure I am allowed to upload them.
Chinese navy ship emblems. This article on the Anhui provincial national defense education office website has many chinese navy ship emblems, along with this article on the Guangxi regional veterans affairs department that has the Chinese LHD Guangxi's emblem. I have asked about this before on the wikiproject military history discussion page along with the help desk, where I was advised to just use external media templates instead. However, I would still like to hear advice on whether navy ship emblems fall under Article 5 of the PRC copyright law(which states "This law shall not apply to laws and regulations, resolutions, decisions and orders of State organs, other documents of a legislative, administrative or judicial nature and the official translations thereof;") or whether Template:Insignia also applies to navy ship emblems, and therefore whether navy ship insignia can be uploaded onto wikimedia commons
I have started a topic on Wikiproject military history regarding which version of the PLAGF aviation badge should be uploaded; see full context there

Thehistorianisaac (talk) 04:08, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oops wrong place. Will post this on the help desk instead Thehistorianisaac (talk) 14:46, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No, this is the right place, as far as I can tell, at least for your first two questions. But they seem completely unrelated to each other and to the third question, which makes it unlikely this is going to lead to a productive discussion. - Jmabel ! talk 18:30, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

File:Ferrarotti, Silori.jpg

Given all of the watermarks on File:Ferrarotti, Silori.jpg, this photo seems to almost certainly be not the uploader's own work as claimed. Is there a way per COM:ITALY, though, for this to be PD. If it was taken in 1966 (as claimed in its description), it seems too recent to be PD just for its age given Italy's 70 year p.m.a, and URAA date of January 1, 1996. Could there be another reason for which this might be relicensed or does it need to be treated as a copyvio?

FWIW, some of the same uploader's other files seem to have questionable claims of own work as well and they too may need to be given a closer look. -- Marchjuly (talk) 05:43, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Non-creative" photographs are only copyrighted for 20 years in Italy. It's up to you to determine if this is a "non-creative" photograph but it seems like the bar is pretty low. There's certainly photographs on here I think are creative that other users don't. --Adamant1 (talk) 08:33, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly non-creative. But Duccio55 should not have made the false statement of "own work", and someone might want to look into their other uploads. - Jmabel ! talk 18:40, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed license, etc., for this photo. Jmabel ! talk 18:45, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:54, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

File:Attachai Fairtex.jpg

Given the EXIF data for File:Attachai Fairtex.jpg, I wondering whether this file's licensing should at least be VRT verified．The uploader's only edit on Commons seems to have been to upload this file back in 2017; so, I'm not sure whether they even respond if queried to provide verification. FWIW, the same image can be found here on Facebook, but I can't tell whether that use precedes the file being uploaded to Commons. -- Marchjuly (talk) 06:14, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There is an email address of the creator in the exif, if someone wants to reach out and inquire about the copyright status/permissions. PascalHD (talk) 16:13, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It would have to be the same (or higher) resolution on Facebook, and uploaded there prior to the upload here, to require VRT. That may be difficult to determine at this point. Carl Lindberg (talk) 12:16, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Fotografías de San José Sanchez del Rio

En que año estara al Dominio público las fotografías de San José Sanchez del Rio (falleció en 1928)? AbchyZa22 (talk) 21:51, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ya son en el dominio público en los países que usan la regla de "70 p.m.a". En los EEUU es más complicado, porque la ley es basado en el año de publicación, no de creación. Si se hubieran publicado antes de 1930, ya serían en el dominio público en los EEUU. Cada año esto avanza un año. - Jmabel ! talk 07:12, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging @Bedivere:Buenas por favor remueva esto (File:Martirio de San José Sánchez del Río.jpg) esa fotografía fue creado por el pintor René Martínez Valadez ese pintor sigue vivo según tiene su página en Facebook,ese nombre René Martínez Valadez (texto) aparece la fotografía en Twitter (https://x.com/sachinettiyil/status/1756353970241765855?s=61) aparece el texto abajo de la tumba, el texto es de color blanco dice “René Martínez V.". AbchyZa22 (talk) 10:11, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Jmabel apparently they were asking when photographs picturing José Sánchez will be public domain. That depends on several factors. The picture you've linked is evidently still copyrighted and have deleted it as requested. Copyright does not expire when the pictured person's rights expire (necessarily). Bedivere (talk) 21:08, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Bedivere: Ah, de confused me here. I didn't consider that a reasonably experienced user would think the human subject of a photo would determine when the work would come out of copyright. - Jmabel ! talk 21:33, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, at first read I understood the same as you but then I remembered a couple of days Abchy requested me to delete an image picturing Joan d'Arc because they originally believed it was in the public domain as she was long deceased. (It was not a work of Joan d'Arc) Bedivere (talk) 02:08, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

CRT/Tanzania

Hello. I've modified parts of the copyright rules page of Tanzania, based on my closer reading of both the 1999 Tanzanian law and the 2003 Zanzibari law.

Added unprotected works section. Both Tanzania (the former Tanganyika) and Zanzibar default the public documents (laws and decisions etc.) and "ideas, methods, procedures etc." to public domain, but only Tanzania/Tanganyika grants not protected status to news of the day (Zanzibar doesn't).

FoP section: Tanzania/Tanganyika only grants audio-visual FoP, not OK for us (except for audio-visual file types). Zanzibar, no FoP language at all. Most important of all, we have been wrong all the time with regards to works of folklore in their public spaces. Closer reading of the relevant clauses in both the Tanzanian and Zanzibari laws reveals that free uses of such works in photos and audio-visual works in both areas is only for "incidental utilization" (equivalent to "de minimis"), so works of folklore in public should be accessory/incidental/trivial in the files that we host, whether photos (still images) or audio-visual file types. _ JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 00:18, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Mentioning all participants of Commons:Deletion requests/File:Monument to slaves in Zanzibar.jpg: @AFBorchert and Liuxinyu970226: . No usable FoP even in Zanzibar; use of publicly installed objects with expression of folklore is only allowed if the objects are incidental in the photos and even films and broadcasts. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 12:28, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@JWilz12345: Thanks for the updates and this notification. The previous text provided a definition of “audio-visual”. This is now gone. Did this happen accidently? --AFBorchert (talk) 19:19, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@AFBorchert I removed it, because it should be self explanatory. It only adds more text to the FoP-Tanzania section. Any way, I replaced it with a more understandable text "{{FoP-Tanzania}} can only be used for audio-visual files, not for photographic files." Plus, the template itself bears a warning that FoP-Tanzania is only valid for audio-visual file types (e.g. OGG and WEBM), not for photographic file types (like JPEG or PNG). JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 00:06, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@JWilz12345: I found this explanation helpful as the term “audio-visual” is uncommon and therefore needs explanation. Please restore it. --AFBorchert (talk) 05:31, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@AFBorchert restored now.

Done. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 06:00, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! --AFBorchert (talk) 06:05, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Stan Brakhage title images

I wanted another opinion on how applicable {{PD-text}} is to a set of images. American filmmaker Stan Brakhage made works where the title sequence was scratched or painted directly onto frames of a film strip. I feel like inscribing text this way would still be beneath the U.S. threshold of originality, but maybe it's more complex than "basic handwriting". Examples of what these titles look like: "by Brakhage", Anticipation of the Night, Cat's Cradle, Window Water Baby Moving, Mothlight (hand-painted, not scratched), or 12. hinnk (talk) 10:26, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

PD-Text is pretty extreme. Lettering is not copyrightable in the US, unless there's something clearly separable from the letters. If you draw ivy growing up the letter, or draw a giraffe in a G, it's probably copyrightable, but if it's just letters, it's not. None of those would be copyrightable independent of the rest of the work.--Prosfilaes (talk) 17:16, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See, for example, File:Cyberpunk 2077 logo.svg, which the US Copyright Office refused to register for copyright.--Prosfilaes (talk) 17:20, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Awesome, thanks for your help! hinnk (talk) 06:01, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi,

This image is of Hayrullah Efendi, who died in 1866. The uploader marked it as "all rights reserved", but it is an old photo that should be in the public domain. I can't directly upload from Flickr since it detects the license that isn't suitable for Commons, which is essentially inaccurate. Should I upload this image anyways? Aintabli (talk) 21:05, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For sure, if the PD status is clear, go ahead. Bedivere (talk) 21:06, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

CC attribution w/o such

Is there a template or process to use when a file is licensed {{cc-by-4.0}}, but the uploader fills the |author= with {{unknown|author}}? I added {{license review}} to File:Kristin Goodwin.jpg, but category:license review needed is already 77.2 thousand files deep, not counting its subcategories. Fourthords | =Λ= | 23:27, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I happened upon this posting. As I am a license reviewer, I took charge of the review (and archived the page on archive.is, so that the licensing statement is preserved). Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 00:19, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Still, the claim at the source is bizarre: "Released under Common Attribution 4.0 | The image on this page is a photo of Kristin Goodwin and has been released to the public domain." So which is it? CC-BY 4.0 (with an unclear attribution) or "released to the public domain"? I think it's pretty safe to have it here (undoubtedly they have a decent understanding with the photographer, and the photographer is fine with the situation), but if it were my upload, I would certainly contact the site via https://kristingoodwin.net/contact/ and try to get this clarified (including, I would hope, clarified on their site).

@Fourthords: the initial uploader Soistafir looks like probably enough of a beginner that I would not expect them to be able to work through the subtleties here yet, so I'd say if you care you are as likely as anyone to be able to make that contact to sort it out better. - Jmabel ! talk 00:22, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Jmabel, I understood the "public domain" statement as hint meaning that the image is meant for publicity work, usable by the public (unter Creative Commons terms), not as copyright-related statement (that may be corroborated by the blanket "All rights reserved" on the page footer). The opposite in that setting would be an image that is "private", e.g. something in a private album on Facebook. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 00:31, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Grand-Duc: In any case, we are faced with the fact that the "C-Level executive and retired Brigadier General" with expertise in "the complexities of" (inter alia) AI and cybersecurity has not done a great job of vetting her own site for clarity about copyright. - Jmabel ! talk 00:42, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That was also an oddity, I thought. I'm worried that this might actually be a copyrighted photo to a studio photographer, but the Goodwin site is washing it into a confusing mix of CC/PD so it's 'acceptable for Wikipedia'; it feels like the sort of advice someone receives when they're paying for someone to work on their Wikipedia article. Fourthords | =Λ= | 01:15, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My concern was more about the attribution being required (CC-BY), but no photographer actually being credited. Does |author={{unknown|author}} meet the requirements of CC attribution? Fourthords | =Λ= | 01:15, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Crediting it to "Kristin Goodwin" should be good enough for licensing purposes. This is a work originating from the US, so there IMHO aren't moral rights belonging to some author/photographer to be observed, if a natural or judicial person declares themselves as copyright owner, as it is the case here. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 04:08, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

File:Taal lake.JPG

Can we grandfather this file? There's explicit permission in the form of a credit line and verbal agreement between the English Wikipedia uploader and his friend, yet it was uploaded at enwiki on November 20, 2007, almost a year after the cutoff date of January 1, 2007 as per Commons:Grandfathered old files. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 01:33, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Probably not, it seems. VRT was already available in 2006 and the policy is pretty clear grandfathering is not permitted after the cutoff date. Takipoint123 (💬) 10:18, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Done nominating: Commons:Deletion requests/File:Taal lake.JPG. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 11:02, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is this below COM:TOO Canada?

Just wanted to gain a consensus before I upload this file or not. This image was posted by the Hudson's Bay Company on their Instagram; https://www.instagram.com/p/DI3tUG7RUZ4/#. It could be of value to the Commons as they are going out of business. It does look quite simplistic to me, but I am unsure. Is it below COM:TOO in your opinion? PascalHD (talk) 02:17, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's just lines of different colours and the maple leaf which is already PD. Below TOO. Takipoint123 (💬) 10:11, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Forestry Images

Hi! User:Leoboudv raised a question on my talk page about images from forestryimages.org. Earlier many of the files were licensed CC-BY-3.0 but now they have changed to CC-BY-NC-3.0. Some files on Commons were uploaded with the template {{Forestryimages}} and some without. Some were reviewed and some were not. If the files still had the original license we could have a bot mark all the files for review (or even review them) if they were not allready reviewd and we could have a bot add {{Forestryimages}}. But now the license have been changed it will just mean that the files will be impossible to review. We have users that request license review for files uploaded many years ago even if its impossible to review the files so I'm sure at some point we will see the files end in the license review category.

Per Commons:Village_pump/Proposals#Add_an_outcome_of_LicenseReview it is agreed that we need to do something about files that can't be reviewed (I tried to fix the template but per Template_talk:LicenseReview#Outcome I did not manage to get it to work).

I would like to hear if anyone can think of a way to review the files. And if not perhaps we could make a template like {{Flickr-change-of-license}} (or change the existing) saying that the license was changed or that the file was licensed freely according to the uploader but we can't verify it because now all licenses are non-free.

As a minimum we could add a template saying that users should NOT ask for a license review. If for some reason they doubt that the file were licensed freely they should check the file themselves and if thats not possible they ahould start a DR themselves. MGA73 (talk) 08:54, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: When I reviewed images from Forestryimages.org before the change of license, almost all their images were freely licensed as CC BY 3.0 US. These images are TODAY ALL CC BY NC ND 3.0 at the source but they were previously reviewed as CC BY 3.0 Generic here: File:B alleghaniensis 01.jpg OR File:Tapesia yallundae at Triticum aestivum (02).jpg uploaded and reviewed in 2020 by another reviewer OR File:Popillia japonica (59).jpg as this 2019 image shows which was reviewed in 2023. From the last image, the license was still cc by 3.0 in March 2023 when the reviewer (me) corrected the license and reviewed this last image in 2023. Images uploaded BEFORE 2023 would have been licensed mostly licensed as CC BY 3.0 Generic at upload. Best, --Leoboudv (talk) 09:34, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
File:Giant African snails (Achatina fulica) climbing tree trunk.jpg this was still under CC BY 3.0 when I uploaded it on 1 January 2025 (See archived version from December 4 2024)

At least some of these files are stored in web.archive.org. You need to copy the URL directly from the source link to check the archive because when open the link the URL will be different as the site design and at least some of the licenses changed sometime in 2025 $999$ REAL 💬 ⬆ 02:31, 27 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the tip. I tried with the new url and that did ofcourse fail. Perhaps someone can make a bot that can check if a file exist on web.archive.org and if it does the put the file to a list or in a category. --MGA73 (talk) 15:04, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

PS: Rasbak understands licenses at forestryimages.org I have marked hundreds of images by him but now he has many in the license review category from 2020 especially...before the change of license. --Leoboudv (talk) 09:36, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: However, if it is an uploader with just 1, 2, 3 or 4 images on Commons--with one or two from forest images--obviously the best solution is delete. We cannot trust this kind of uploader understands image licenses. Best, --Leoboudv (talk) 01:58, 27 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question Leoboudv have found examples where images from forestryimages.org are also on insectimages.com with the same ID. Can anyone perhaps help create a bot that can take the url https://www.forestryimages.org/browse/image/<ID> and extract the ID and then check https://www.insectimages.org/browse/detail.cfm?imgnum=<ID> and if that is a valid url then add the file to a list or category? If the image is on insectimages.org with a free license we can just review the image based on that and it will hopefully make the process easier. --MGA73 (talk) 15:00, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: That is one solution...and a good solution. Another faster solution also is to pass uploads of reliable uploaders from forestry images. Rasbak has uploaded thousands of images to Commons from forestimages like this one: File:Puccinia recondita (123).jpg OR File:Melampsora epitea (40).jpg....if that can be done. He has a few hundred--at least--in the license review category from 2020 and 2021-2023 too. User:Rasbak's images here were reviewed between May and August 2023...and not by me: File:Ustilago avenae (47).jpg, File:Tranzschelia pruni-spinosae (31).jpg and File:Melampsora populnea (05).jpg If MGAbot's can do this, it should reduce the number of forest images needing review by 500 to 750 images, I think. What does the community think? Best, --Leoboudv (talk) 20:52, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Copyvio (logos and graphic creations)

Hello happy contributors,

Since the early 1980s, the graphic design of the Canal+ companies and channels has been the subject of spécific artistic trademarked creation, branding and corporate identity conventions, spécial copyrighted fonts and images created by the renowned Frenchman Étienne Robial. All channels and service logos are protected in France, in accordance with copyright law (since the author is still alive and it would have taken 70 years after his death for these creations to be in the public domain).

In addition to copyright protection, all these logos are registered trademarks. Finally, these are not just simple text use but a genuine artistic creation, notably using a specific font, registered under copyright. While uploading to fr.wikipedia.org is permitted, uploading and publishing them on Wikimedia Commons is absolutely not in compliance with current rules. Unless expressly authorized (OTRS ticket validating the authorization of Étienne Robial himself and head of the Canal+ group companies), it is therefore not possible to preserve the dozens of files of this type in Commons at this time. Especially since an alternative is possible at fr.wikipedia.org. Example among dozens others: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:%C3%89tienne_Robial https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Canal%2B_France_logos

Best regards. Tisourcier (talk) 10:12, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello again... I need help !

Another contributor has revert my speed copyvio deletion requests for theses files without warning me and choosed to add a wrong category for these files :

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Logo_Canal%2B_4K_UHD.png&diff=prev&oldid=1024892146

I'm not very comfortable with mass deletion request (for all logos categories involved of Robial's creations), so if any nice contributor could help me on this purpose, I'd be very grateful. ;) Tisourcier (talk) 00:59, 27 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If it's a contested deletion, then open up a regular deletion request on the files in that category so there is space for giving arguments, and a documented record as to why (or why they were kept). They are clearly not copyrightable in the U.S., and likely many other countries. France in particular may give copyrights to custom fonts though, so this may be a special situation there. They are among the few signatories in the 1970s to the Vienna Agreement for the Protection of Type Faces (which is not in force because not nearly enough countries have agreed), and I do see in this court case they ruled that a font was copyrightable (but not infringed in that case). I'm not sure if a usage of a font can become copyright infringement -- that case was about being infringed by another font, a different situation. The Vienna treaty mentioned above limited the protection to being infringed by other typefaces, not to usages of those typefaces, which I presume Canal licensed in this case. I think UK law is similar in that regard. I think you need to back up your case with that type of argumentation, that it's particular to France but not much wider than that, as most editors are used to looking at logos like that and seeing it qualify PD-textlogo (which it does, for the U.S.). Is there a French case where copying of a logo by someone other than the licensing party was actually deemed a copyright violation of the typeface? If not, then it's not clear that the logo being here is a copyright violation, even though the font itself almost certainly has a copyright in France. Whether French law recognizes a copyright in the rest of the logo, less sure on that, but that is what you may need to argue given other court cases. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:10, 27 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello @Tisourcier, I wasn’t the contributor that reverted some of your speedy tags, but I had converted the rest of them to this regular DR. I just noticed this thread and I didn’t know about the reverts by the other contributor before, so now I have added those logos into the DR I opened anyways, since they are related to the same topic. Tvpuppy (talk) 16:14, 27 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sede de Cervecería Polar (1941)

Buenas se puede publicar a Wikimedia la sede de Cervecería Polar como esta imagen en 1941 para agregar {{PD-Venezuela}} (60 años) ósea en Venezuela estará al Dominio Público en 1965 o antes? AbchyZa22 (talk) 09:56, 27 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Pikachu stick figure

I made a stick figure Pikachu drawing that I think should be OK here. It's based only on uncopyrightable biological facts (e.g. "Pikachu has a zigzag tail"), and strictly speaking Pikachu isn't a fictional character, so these don't become protectable character traits just because there are characters that happen to be Pikachu (like Ash's Pikachu, Sparky, OCs, etc.). Honestly, the drawing might be below COM:TOO anyway (which is fine). I'd like to get a second opinion before I upload it here, though. Qzekrom (talk) 20:21, 27 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it meets Common's scope requirements, as it doesn't seem to be educational media (or useful to other Wikimedia projects). Nosferattus (talk) 04:33, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

How on earth can you say that "Pikachu" is not a fictional character? And how could you say that a Pikachu has any kind of "biological facts"?! In the same vein, one could say that an older duck who makes head-first dives into a basin full of coins, or that a spider bites makes someone wear a red jumpsuit are biological facts. Any depiction of a Pikachu is always a derivative of the Pokémon character. On the other hand, your stick figure is abstracted enough to not infringe on Pokémon copyrights, but that's also a reason to not be in our project scope. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 07:04, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Respectfully, I think your argument conflates Pikachu as a species with specific characters in a story. Scrooge McDuck and Spider-Man are indeed characters; the "traits" you described aren't just facts but are essential to the story being told. Likewise, Ash's Pikachu is a distinct character: he stubbornly refuses to get in a Poké Ball, refuses to evolve, refers to Ash as "Pikapi", occasionally shocks Ash, and cried the one time that Ash got turned into stone. Those are protectable character traits for a distinct fictional character that is part of a story.

By contrast, a wild Pikachu that appears in a Pokémon game is an individual Pokémon you can catch, train, and battle with — a "character" in the sense that it has independent existence within the game world — but it has no fixed character traits that contribute to the overarching plot. Its existence is procedural and mechanical, depending entirely on the player’s choices.

Because Pokémon Red and Green (released in Japan in 1996) predate the anime (which first aired in 1997), there were already an unbounded number of Pikachu-individuals existing on game cartridges, well before Ash's Pikachu was introduced as a distinct narrative character. This further limits any claim that "being a Pikachu" is a protected trait specific to Ash's Pikachu's identity.

That said, I'm glad we agree that my drawing does not reproduce any protectable expression from the Pokémon franchise, and therefore is not a derivative work. Only the specific visual design of Pikachu — including the red cheek pouches, the exact shapes of its eyes and tail, and other detailed features — is copyrightable, not the bare facts about its biology and game mechanics. With that in mind, I'd like to bring this discussion back to project scope.

As for educational use: the image could illustrate Stick figure (as an example of recognizable abstraction and of non-human stick figures), or serve as a reusable template in xkcd-style educational diagrams, such as for a Wikibook about Pokémon game mechanics (such as breeding or Electric-type moves). Since a more detailed visual representation of Pikachu would not be permitted on Commons, an abstract representation like this is necessary to enable those uses. Furthermore, this drawing is not "low-quality"; it is intentionally minimalistic, designed specifically to provide an educationally useful template while respecting copyright boundaries.

I would also welcome discussion on a related conceptual question: whether this drawing itself meets the threshold of originality to qualify as an independently copyrightable work, which would determine whether {{PD-ineligible}} or {{Cc-by-4.0}} would be the more appropriate copyright tag. Qzekrom (talk) 19:59, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that I can follow the opinion that only Ash's Pikachu is a distinct character. I think that every single Pokémon, be it a Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Charmander, Zekrom, Mewtwo or whatever you want, is a copyrighted creation, at least by the 2D and 3D artwork in games, anime and manga. We have Commons:Fan art which seems to go a bit more in-depth about this subject. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 01:33, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Confused by Germany copyright tags

I've uploaded the following image - File:George Gordon.jpg - and I'm trying to find the correct country-specific copyright tag. The photograph has no date on it, but would have been taken before 1870, as the person in the photo died in 1869. It was taken by a named photographer, Carl Hedler, in Frankfurt am Main. When I go to look under Commons:Copyright_tags/Country-specific_tags#Germany, I can't seem to find anything that fits. Template:PD-Germany-§134-KUG seems close, but it specifies "if the author is not mentioned on the stamp". Not sure what that means. The photographer/author is known, but not sure what "the stamp" is. I can't find the date of the author's death, but it was almost certainly prior to 1955 if he was an adult running a photography studio before 1870. Do works by German photographers stay out of the public domain permanently if the photographer's name is stated???? Peter G Werner (talk) 21:19, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Commons:Copyright rules by territory/Germany is life + 70 years. There is the generic template for all 70 years countries Template:PD-old-70. I found a page that mentions a Charles W. Hedler who born in Germany in 1834 and worked as a photographer in Frankfurt in 1866. If this is the right person, it can be {{PD-old-70-expired}} because 1834+120+70=2024 or otherwise {{PD-old-assumed-expired}}

999

REAL 💬 ⬆ 21:21, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Good find, and thanks! Peter G Werner (talk) 21:55, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Best forget about {{PD-Germany-§134-KUG}}, that is only for very specific use cases, namely works published by certain public institutions without naming an author. The main use case is stamps (postage stamps, Briefmarken) by the Reichspost or Bundespost (the public institutions). --Rosenzweig τ 22:00, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Board Game Artwork

I am very unsure about how to use Wiki-Commons. I am just about to do some major editing of a Wikipedia article about a board game, e.g., en:Brass (board game) (Wikipedia 'free link'). I screen-shot the artwork of the game's title on the computer game version, available through Steam. The header is the word "Brass" on a brass plaque. The artwork is clearly not my own work, and I am not sure whether it is the game's logo, as it is the game's title. In addition, since it is a graphic of the game, I assume that the person in control of illustrating the computer version, Magdalena Mudlaff, or the illustrator of the original board game, Peter Dennis, have a copyright over such a graphic. How would I go about working out whether I can use the graphic or getting permission? I seem to see other board games with a complete picture of the game's box cover, including the board game logo, but I am just not sure how they managed to do that. Are such illustrations in the public domain, and, if not, how do they become so? Can you advise me? Thanks in advance for the time taken to lend your assistance.SMargan (talk) 22:55, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@SMargan: There are two separate issues here:

Can you upload these materials to Commons? Without seeing the images in question I can't say anything definitive, but it is very unlikely anything related to a game create in recent decades is in the public domain, unless (for example) the logo is too simple to copyright and you want to use that, or the game simply reuses images whose copyright has expired. Otherwise, you'd need the owners of the copyright to release these materials under a free license, and very few owners of commercially valuable materials are likely to do such a thing. If you want a detailed explanation of the issues involved in uploading materials like this to Commons, see Commons:Uploading works by a third party.
Failing that, can you upload these as non-free materials on the English-language Wikipedia without involving Commons? en:Wikipedia:Non-free content allows for allowing certain non-free content (such as logos) directly to en-wiki.

- Jmabel ! talk 04:23, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Luchador masks

Hello, I have a question regarding Luchador masks. In the past, the File:Mascara Blue Demon.svg has been deleted for copyright violation, even though it was in use on the professionnal wrestling project in French. Yesterday, I flagged the File:BlueDemonMask.png for copyvio, as it is a close picture of the unworn mask. I am not sure if I did the right thing or what the rule is regarding the masks of Mexican wrestlers. Does anyone have any advice? CoffeeEngineer (talk) 23:02, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The deletion request is here: Commons:Deletion requests/File:BlueDemonMask.png CoffeeEngineer (talk) 23:03, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There was also Commons:Deletion requests/File:Hormiga luchador.jpg which came out of Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Estrellato. The second DR was kept but it was mainly for procedural reasons because of how many files were included in the request. It's been a minute, but from what the remember the standard for masks is the same as it is for everything else. I don't think the mask in File:BlueDemonMask.png is complicated enough to copyrighted. More complex ones would be though. --Adamant1 (talk) 03:59, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

File:Raúl Montero.jpg

Hi all,
Can anyone (probably Spanish speaking) help find if [11] contains anything about the license the uploader stated. Quick1984 (talk) 06:14, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It looks alright. While I do not speak Spanish, the written language is sufficiently close to others I manage to check the "Condiciones de Uso" (easily understandable for me as "terms of use") linked of the page footer. These words are actually a link to the CC-By 3.0 license on Creativecommons.org. Regards, Grand-Duc (talk) 07:40, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]