[Wikimedia-l] [Commons-l] FOP in Europe: does this include WWII monuments with art?

[Jane Darnell]

Thanks for sharing! If I browse the categories here:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Monuments_and_memorials_of_World_War_II_by_country

It seems there are plenty of photos with what appears to be
sculptures. I guess the risk of being slapped with a copyright
violation in these cases is pretty low. After all, if you created the
artwork or were an heir of someone who did, it would be pretty
tasteless to object, I guess.

I think the problem we are facing is that we cannot now sponsor such
uploads, as WMNL. So, it's fine if people do this on their own with no
encouragement from us, but until this whole issue is resolved we
cannot actively solicit such photographs from the volunteer community,
knowing there's a chance they can be deleted. I think in the case of a
photo contest, any copyvio deletion is one too many.

Jane


2013/3/2, Fae <faewik+commons at gmail.com>:
> On 2 March 2013 19:28, Andrew Gray <andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk> wrote:
>> On 2 March 2013 12:04, Fae <faewik+commons at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> 2. Text on a memorial may be under its own copyright even though it is
>>> on permanent public display, so the text itself must be demonstrably
>>> out of copyright. This is a separate issue from the general FOP
>>> provisions. If the text is incidental to the photograph, i.e. not a
>>> close up and the text is effectively de minimus, then FOP is likely to
>>> be valid.
>>
>> One other thing to remember: most of this text is fairly uncreative -
>> in many cases, standard phrases or dates, and lists of names. We could
>> make a reasonably good case that they are unlikely to be copyrightable
>> texts regardless of age.
>
> That's true, and I have uploaded plenty of my own photos of war
> memorials with close up details of names, rank and so forth. However I
> have run into problems with memorial statements that contain poetry,
> simple drawings and original dedications and some of these have been
> deleted despite me being reasonably cautious. I still think this is
> solvable with some simple guidelines/principles for those taking part
> in an event to take care to avoid any later problems with uploads.
>
> Cheers,
> Fae
>
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