[Commons-l] 100 years old images

[Yann Forget]

Hello,

Recently a photo of Alain-Fournier from 1904 was deleted because "no 
proof of PD" [1]. I don't understand the rationale being this decision.
AFAIK, we have accepted such images upto now, why do we refuse them now?

I think we need to get this clear once and for all.
Seeing what was the life expectancy 100 years ago (about 50-55 years in 
USA / Europe [2] [3]), a limit of 100 years seems reasonable to me. The 
figures I found are actually lower than I expected (60 years).
While we accept a lot of content which is much less safe than this, it 
seems unreasonable to me to refuse this kind of images. It is in the 
public domain in USA anyway.

Rocket000 said [4] "I think it's very safe to assume it's PD or can be 
treated like it is, but that's different than allowing it on Commons."
That's exactly the point: if it is very safe to assume it's PD, why 
should we refuse them? Why setting different standards? This goes 
against our mission.

Regards,

Yann

[1] 
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Image:Alain_fournier.jpg
[2] http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html
[3] http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/55/6/1196S.pdf
[4] 
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#100_years_old_images

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