Commons talk:Licensing

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to Commons:Licensing.

For discussions of specific copyright questions, please go to Commons:Village pump/Copyright. Discussions that do not relate to changes to the page Commons:Licensing may be moved, with participants notified with the template {{subst:moved to VPC|Commons talk:Licensing}}.

For old discussions, see the Archives. Recent sections with no replies for 60 days may be archived.

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Seven 2006/2007 discussions organized as subpages, ignoringincl. comments added in 2014:

Outdated[edit]

"You want a picture of Mickey Mouse, but of course you can't just scan it in. [...] The reason why you can't upload photographs of such figures is that they are considered as derivative works." I think we can understand why this is now slightly out-of-date. I don't know how to rephrase it to clarify that post-1928 versions of Mickey are unallowed, though, without sounding too technical. ObserveOwl (talk) 09:33, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Update to Bart Simpson? - Jmabel ! talk 19:37, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Jmabel@ObserveOwl how about Bugs Bunny or Tom and Jerry? For sure these famous characters are still under deceased cartoonists' copyrights, even their original appearances. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 06:59, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It was changed about a month ago to "Bart Simpson", which I think is well enough known, though I'd have no problem with Bugs Bunny. I'm not sure Tom and Jerry are as widely known. - Jmabel ! talk 17:09, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Both Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry have only about a decade to go in the US; Bart Simpson has a lot more life. Also Tom and Jerry (Van Beuren) is in the public domain, and even if only animation geeks who know the cat and mouse duo have heard of them, it's a little bit ambiguous anyway.--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:18, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sort-of late reply, but I think the current example is future-proof enough to be listed (Bart was created in 1987, was given his modern appearance by 1990, and his original creator is still alive), and therefore won't be public domain until likely the 22nd century. Xeroctic (talk) 18:49, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Request for comment: Assume “really old, scratchy black and white photos” are public domain[edit]

This section contains material that is kept because it is considered humorous.
Such material is not meant to be taken seriously.
The following discussion is archived. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
This is a bad idea. However, User:Gabldotink is very cool and handsome.


Eons ago, in 2005, an Uncyclopedia editor uploaded a file and changed the copyright-scape forever.

The photo of a man on a pogo stick was unassuming, but its file description page (uncyclopedia:File:Bigenochpowellonapogostick.jpg) was revolutionary:

It's a really old, scratchy black and white photo, so it MUST be in the Public Domain.

When I first saw this, like, three weeks ago, I thought it was ridiculous and almost certainly satirical; however, I later realized that this sentence, verbatim, is actually included on the back of Magna Carta in invisible ink. And sure, that’s probably not binding or anything, but… like… it should be, come on.

My point is, we should definitely be taking this rationale into account at Wikimedia Commons. Think about it; if we had used this logic from the start, the famous Steamboat Willie would have been public domain years ago! — gabldotink [ talk | contribs | global account ] 00:00, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Does it count if you scratched them yourself? Or do you have to get someone else to make them look old? - Jmabel ! talk 07:13, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it depends how old. We already assume 120 years old files to be in the public domain, unless proved otherwise. I think we should have a lower level of requirement for documents between 80 to 120 years, compared to recent files. It doesn't mean we should accept anything without some minimum research. Yann (talk) 08:48, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Any GIF, JPG or PNG file that was uploaded more than 80 years ago should definitely be considered public domain. --RL0919 (talk) 09:25, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Nothing was uploaded more than 80 years ago. Wkimedia Commons and the Internet didn't exist at that time. ;o) Yann (talk) 10:46, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I can't speak for Commons, but surely Albert Gore Sr had invented the internet by then. --RL0919 (talk) 12:45, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Nothing was uploaded more than 80 years ago: this will change in 2084. We have to be proactive :-D MGeog2022 (talk) 18:57, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment, I recently made a mistake of assuming that an "old photograph" was old, the photograph appeared to have been taken in the 1910's and all the officials wore typical Nguyễn Dynasty mandarin dress from that period and it passed off as an "old Photograph" in basically every way other than the fact that several of the Confucian scholars in the picture were "bald chins" (men without beards), another contributor noticed this and warned me about this so I could quickly nominate it for deletion. It's not uncommon for people to make black-and-white photographs in 2024, and even many "old" black-and-white photographs from certain countries like Viet-Nam and the Philippines can be recent creations as people preferred to use the cheaper production process over colour photography. As much as I'd love to expand what we could accept here I think that we should take a lot of caution with this format and we should be able to reasonably assume that a photograph is from a certain period before accepting it.
A lot of hints can show us when a work was produced, architecture, fashion, Etc. but we must always remain cautious with this. Unfortunately, the best course of action in this case would be to lobby governments and intergovernmental bodies to shorten copyright ©️ duration, I don't think that such a proposal could realistically be implemented for the very simple reason that a lot of "old" photographs might be more recent than they first assume to be. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 11:30, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If there’s unsurety, then it’s probably old and scratchy enough. — gabldotink [ talk | contribs | global account ] 14:11, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Riight, and we are now introducing our B&W scratching & flickrwashing service. :)   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 12:07, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment, photo's physical status obviously doesn't mean anything, especially if you have not treated it with due care :-). But age, or presumed age based on some evidence, is something to be taken into account. Perhaps not for 80-120 year old documents, where there's still some doubt, but, if any document more than 120 years old is automatically considered Public Domain in Commons (unless there's a very specific reason for the opposite), I think Upload Wizard could be more user friendly on that. For works published in the United States, it's very easy: there's a deadline of about 95 years, when any work is public domain. For works from other countries, if you don't know authors and their death dates, it can be difficult to know if the work will be accepted in Commons, and more so to specify the file's Public Domain rationale on upload. It would be fine to have a 120 year global deadline, similar to the US 95 year one. MGeog2022 (talk) 18:47, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just to note: there are a few inaccuracies in the above even when people were talking seriously, but a joke thread doesn't seem to be the place to try to drill into detail. - Jmabel ! talk 13:21, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.


Newspaper cover from few decades ago[edit]

Can add magazine cover to article? In the jungle of regulations and discussions, cannot find how to classify (or find) status of rights to old cover of newspaper presented by editorial office in the archive. It's even hard to find precedent – there is no example on newspaper's wiki page, which is sure indication that can't... (What if I take photo of cover myself?) plz hlp

(> The Sun, 1980) Konky7777 (talk) 09:12, 5 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Konky7777: Multiple newspapers are called "Sun". Copyrights on newspaper covers as part of the newspapers generally ran more than a couple of decades, but may not have been renewed. That is less common now in countries that are members of the Berne Convention. You can ask on the particular newspaper's Wikipedia article's talk page, and you can see the default copyright status for the country where the newspaper is published under COM:CRT; for example, Poland has standard copyright 70pma and joined 28 January 1920 per COM:Poland.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 13:35, 5 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It is extremely unlikely that any 1980 newspaper is out of copyright. - Jmabel ! talk 15:54, 5 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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