[Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: Copyright problems of images from India

Tue May 10 11:18:23 UTC 2011

All paintings of Hindu deities are not copyright free. There are clauses for
it. As per Indian copyright act, only paintings that were published 60 years
before are in public domain. Now the question here is how to prove the age
of the painting. Lets take a different example, may be Lord Ram or Lord
Shiva. How can we prove the age of the painting? In one discussion, a
commons admin asked me to find a book that was published 60 years back in
which this image is included. I need not explain the difficulty in getting
such a proof.

Similar case with photographs of images before 1943. Colorization does not
add new copyright, unless they add changes to it which makes it
significantly different from the original. Now, how do you prove the images
of such photographs? These photographs were taken during their lifetime and
probably belongs to their family when it was taken. As per current rules in
Commons, the family will have to send OTRS saying that the image belongs to
them. Even then, someone could say that the photographer is not from their
family and so the OTRS cannot be accepted. See this example ->
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Requests_for_undeletion#File:Varghese_Palakkappillil.jpg

There are a lot of copyright violation photos uploaded to Commons. In
between those deletions, a lot of genuine photographs get deleted for lack
of proof. The concern here is on how to save them.

- Sreejith K.

On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 4:37 PM, Bala Jeyaraman <sodabottle at gmail.com>wrote:

> 1) >>Ayyappan, a popular god of Kerala, has his image circulated
> everywhere on the plant with no proof of copyrights. It makes sense to
> believe that this image is not eligible for copyright because
> Hindu deities are all common property,
>
> i have to disagree with this. All images of Hindu deities are not public
> property. Most of the popular images were done by painters some time in the
> immediate past - Ravi varma's paintings form the base for many deity images.
> Similarly there are many unknown temple artists, who have gone uncredite
> because of our practice of gross insensitivity to others' copyright.
> Claiming that deity images are not eligible for copyright is wrong. They do
> have copyright and unless there is iron clad proof of publication, dont
> decalre them to be in public domain. The fairuse clause is there for cases
> like this.
>
>
> 2) While i understand what sreejith is saying, repeated copyright
> violations in commons by Indian uploaders is mainly to blame for this
> backlash. In Ta wiki and in commons, i have to repeat many times to people
> that "everything that comes out of google image search is not free". In my
> experience, about half the people react defensively to such advice and
> reflexively claim the image is "own work" and they "took it". They do not
> like being pointed out they are wrong and thus damage the reputation of
> Indian uploaders further. Many of the regular commons users thus become
> immediately suspicious when a new indian user claims that an image is "own
> work". Even in the outreach programs i participated, people listen to me
> drone about how taking images of google image search is not ok and do the
> same the immediately after. This issue is not restricted to Indian users,
> but is a major problem for us. The only way to deal with this is a
> relentless copyright awareness campaign for Indian users.
>
> 3) Images of people who died prior to 1951. Here too the case is not clear.
> Many photos of such people are reconstructive work done post-1951.
> Colourisation of black and white pictures is a major concern. I am still not
> clear, if colourisation passes the originality threshold and becomes a
> original work on its own. If so, then such a work cannot be claimed as PD.
>
> Personally i add a ton of descriptive information and long arguments to
> prove PD in india and in case of my own images, i always upload with full
> resolution and metadata. It is a sad bad situation, but the root cause is
> relative ignorance of Indians (including me) about copyright.
>
> regards
> Bala
>
> On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 4:07 PM, Shiju Alex <shijualexonline at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Dear All,
>>
>> I am forwarding the below mail on behalf of a Malayalam wikipedian who is
>> very active in Wikimedia Commons.
>>
>> Of late it is becoming very difficult for many Wikimedians from India to
>> contribute to Wikimedia Commons especially if they are uploading historical
>> images which are in PD.  We are facing lot of issues (and many a times
>> unnecessary controversies also) with the historic images in PD, images of
>> wall paintings and statues, and so on. Please see the below mail in which
>> Sreejith citing various examples.
>>
>> It is almost impossible for the uploaders from India to show proof of the
>> century old images of  Hindu Gods and Goddesses. The current policies of
>> Commons are not permitting many of the PD images from India citing all sorts
>> of policies which might be relevant only in the western world. With these
>> type of policies we are going to have serious issues when we try to go for
>> GLAM type events.
>>
>> But I also do not know the solution for this issue. Requesting
>> constructive discussion.
>>
>>
>> Shiju Alex
>>
>>
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Sreejith K. <sreejithk2000 at gmail.com>
>> Date: Thu, May 5, 2011 at 12:03 PM
>> Subject: Copyright problems of images from India
>> To: Shiju Alex <shijualexonline at gmail.com>
>>
>>
>> Shiju,
>>
>> As you might be aware already, we are having trouble keeping historical
>> images about India in Wikimedia commons. This pertains mostly to images
>> about Hindu gods and people who died before 1947.
>>
>> Please see the below examples:
>>
>>    - File:Narayana Guru.jpg<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Narayana_Guru.jpg> -
>>    This is the image of Sree Narayana Guru<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narayana_Guru>,
>>    a Hindu saint, social reformer and is even considered a god by certain
>>    castes in Kerala. This image has been tagged as an image with No source.
>>    Narayana Guru expired in 1928 and considering the conditions in which India
>>    was in during that period and before, it is very difficult to get an image
>>    source online. Most active Wikipedians does not have access or information
>>    on how old the image is or where a source of it can be found. Any photograph
>>    published before 1941 in India is in public domain as per Indian copyright
>>    act. Common sense says that this image meets this criteria because the
>>    person was long lead before 1941, but we still need proof of the first
>>    publishing date. Deleting this image on grounds that no source could be
>>    found will only reduce the informative values of all the articles which this
>>    image is included in.
>>    - File:Aravana.JPG: This image has already been deleted, but you can
>>    see the amount of discussion that went in before deleting it. See Commons:Deletion
>>    requests/File:Aravana.JPG<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Aravana.JPG>.
>>    (An almost similar image can be found here<http://www.flickr.com/photos/anoopp/5706721852/in/photostream/>.)This
>>    image as put for deletion because it had the image of Swami Ayyappan<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swami_Ayyappan>in it. Ayyappan, a popular god of Kerala, has his image circulated
>>    everywhere on the plant with no proof of copyrights. It makes sense to
>>    believe that this image is not eligible for copyright because
>>    Hindu deities are all common property, but again, Commons need proof that
>>    the image is in public domain. This is the same case with all Hindu
>>    gods/goddesses. The images can only be kept in Commons if the uploader can
>>    provide proof that the images are in public domain.
>>    - File:Kottarathil sankunni.jpg<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kottarathil_sankunni.jpg>:
>>    This is a picture of Kottarathil Sankunni<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kottarathil_Sankunni>,
>>    the author of the famous book Aithiyamaala<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aithihyamala>.
>>    Kottarathil Sankunni died in 1937 and so it makes sense to believe that this
>>    image was created on or before 1937 and thus falls in Public Domain. But
>>    some people in Commons is refusing to believe that and is asking for proof.
>>    Now it becomes the responsibility of the uploader to show proof that this
>>    image was published 60 years before today. The editor who nominated the
>>    image for deletion is on the safer side because it is not his responsibility
>>    to prove that the image is a copyright violation. So long story short,
>>    anyone can nominate any image for copyright violation and it becomes the
>>    uploaders responsibility to prove that its not. The deletion nomination need
>>    not be accompanied with a reason for disbelief.
>>    - File:Anoop Menon.jpg<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anoop_Menon.jpg>:
>>    This is the picture of Anoop Menon<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoop_Menon>,
>>    a popular actor from Kerala. A discussion is going on about the uploaders
>>    credibility whether he is the original photographer of this image. Please
>>    see File talk:Anoop Menon.jpg<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File_talk:Anoop_Menon.jpg>.
>>    The reason for doubting the uploader is simple. This image has professional
>>    quality and so the uploader cannot be the copyright owner because this is
>>    his first upload. Strange? Now, it becomes the responsibility of the
>>    uploader to prove that he took this image and I do not know how and nor does
>>    the person who is arguing for it. He claims that the uploader can upload the
>>    full resolution image with EXIF but whats even funny is that most of images
>>    from the person who is saying this does not meet this criteria. Again, back
>>    to round 1 in my first example. Its the responsibility of the uploader to
>>    prove his image and anyone can doubt him for any stupid reason and commons
>>    hardly cares.
>>
>> As you can see, it is getting quite difficult to maintain images from
>> India in commons. India is a country which has only started to use Internet
>> less than a decade ago and we still do not have many of our countries' books
>> or sources of information online. So any image from India which gets
>> nominated for deletion in Wikimedia Commons get deleted for absence of
>> proof. Commons is ruled by *precautionary principle*, where in they are
>> not willing to take any risks on copyright and will delete any image for
>> which anyone has doubts. This is in contrary to local wikipedia projects in
>> India where it is rules by the *good faith principle* where we will trust
>> the uploader and it becomes the responsibility of the nominator to prove
>> that the image has false copyright claim.
>>
>> This issue is beginning to hurt the contents from India. If we can do
>> something, its time we act immediately. If we are just going to just spent
>> out time discussing about it, the pictures of all Hindu gods and people who
>> died before independence might get deleted by that time.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Sreejith K.
>>
>>
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