[WikiEN-l] "Permission required" on copyright expired images...

[Carcharoth]

On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 4:48 AM, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Question for the copyright experts. See this image:
> http://images.slsa.sa.gov.au/mpcimg/01000/B838.htm
>
> It's over 100 years old, and there is no clear copyright statement
> (ie, the photographer isn't listed). Yet they say "Any other use
> requires permission from the State Library of South Australia."
>
> 1) On what basis can they demand that users ask permission?
> 2) In what circumstances can Commons or Wikipedia ignore such a
> demand, and assert that the image is public domain or copyright
> expired?
> 3) What is the status of an image which is probably copyright, but no
> one knows who owns the copyright?
>
> I realise that this case might be a bit borderline, so if you prefer,
> imagine that the image was old enough that we could reasonably assume
> the photographer has been dead more than 70 years.

Taken 1903. Assume photographer was 20 or so. Died aged 80, some 60
years later. You can't assume it has been 70 years since the
photographer died. However, as you don't know the photographer, some
other rule applies. In this case, there probably was a record
somewhere of who the photographer was (probably a news photographer
attending the opening of this railway), or where the photograph first
appeared (probably a newspaper), but it seems this information has
been lost over the years.

The simplest answer is often to contact the people who have published
this image and ask them about the history and provenance of the image.
This requires being friendly, rather than starting out by saying you
intend to demand the right to use the photo (even if you are right,
you still need to be polite if you want people to give you the
information you want).

"What is the status of an image which is probably copyright, but no
one knows who owns the copyright?"

We have categories of photos like that on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_files_with_unknown_copyright_status

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_with_a_rationale_but_unknown_copyright_status

Those are usually uploads of contemporary pictures, but there are also
large numbers of historical pictures where people fail to fill in the
paperwork, or no-one knows the true copyright status, and such
pictures usually get deleted anyway, out of some sense of needing to
keep things tidy, I suppose, and a failure to realise that for
historical photos, the provenance is not always known. It is something
that Wikipedia needs to tackle, I think. Excluding a large swath of
historical photos because they have poor provenance will make
Wikipedia more verifiable, but less informative.

I can't find the category I was thinking of. It had pictures like that
one of a funny-shaped car.

Some of the old NFCC discussions might help as well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Non-free_content/Archive_41#Unknown_copyright_holder.3F

If I find that category I was thinking of, I'll post it here.

Carcharoth