[Commons-l] 100 years old images

[Andrew Gray]

2008/5/21 contact at robinschwab.ch <contact at robinschwab.ch>:
>
>
> Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> hat am 21. Mai 2008 um 14:37 geschrieben:
>
>> 2008/5/21 contact at robinschwab.ch <contact at robinschwab.ch>:
>>
>> > Of course you'll find just breadcrumbs on the online version. If you're
>> > really
>> > interested you'd have to look at the original version where you'll find the
>> > Tomb
>> > Raider promotional image published as Public Domain.
>>
>> I'm a little confused here - so this other website Gets Copyright
>> Wrong and is apparently quite confused over what "public domain"
>> means. This is not at all rare on the Internet - why does it impact
>> what Commons should or shouldn't be doing?
>
> You misunderstood. It's not a website. It's the oldest (228y) newspaper in
> Switzerland and the one with the best reputation. They have their own legal
> service with copyright specialists.

All the better! That suggests to me that:

a) those copyright specialists are a bit sloppy; or

b) 'public domain' in their parlance fundamentally isn't what we think it is; or

c) we're wildly misinterpreting what they claim as the rights of the
image, and no-one's actually claiming it to be public domain.

A seems pretty unlikely. B is possible - I know enwp regularly has
faff when people see sentences like. "This information is in the
public domain. Copyright ---" and assume it means no copyright rather
than, say, a non-copyright meaning of 'public domain', such as 'not
secret'. However, it seems unlikely for a *newspaper* to emphasise
that.

C seems the most likely to me - because we deal fundamentally and
primarily in individual image licenses we tend to see everything in
those contexts, and tend to interpret metadata that way. But the rest
of the world doesn't tag every image used with its license, doesn't
attribute everything upfront, even when they obey the letter of the
law - they just do things differently.

[Likewise 'publishing' and 'distributing' these images  - they may not
even consider it exists as a seperable unit from the text article!]

-- 
- Andrew Gray
 andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk