Commons talk:Copyright rules by territory/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Suggestions for additional information to be added to pages

How about we use a threshold for years that we can assume to be in the public domain if known, "Commons:Undeletion requests/Archive/2021-03#File:Ngô Đình Khả 2.jpg" the argument was given that files created in 1905 if the publication date remains unknown are still copyrighted, so I would assume that 130 or 140 year old works would be in the public domain, even if (previously) unpublished. At this discussion it was found that using the URAA date published Vietnamese works without a known author (anonymous) or collective created until 1948 are in the public domain. So this would be somewhat handy information to have at the Vietnam-specific page but these things aren't listed in a simple way explaining them, rather the page updates with the ever extending copyright © laws all nations suffer from, without necessarily also having a chart for when anonymous works can be considered to have entered the public domain.

Another thing is that "Commons:Currency" is broken, it only talks about current currency as if people only want to upload currently circulating currency to Wikimedia Commons, but knowing when a currency series enters the public domain is probably vital information rather than writing  Not OK without explaining what currencies aren't covered by current restrictions. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 17:03, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

We have {{PD-old-assumed}}, which is 120 years from creation where the author information can't be found. Countries typically don't have any rules about assuming public domain status in their laws, so not sure it would be too helpful on a country-by-country basis. That's more global site policy. I don't agree with a practice of deleting anything with a theoretical possibility of still being copyrighted -- there should be a significant doubt, not just theoretical doubt, and most times works were published. If there are indications that a work was kept private for a long time, that could raise such doubts to the significant level though. A section on the URAA interaction with a country's law could make some sense, though it could also be dealt with in the text of the history of the copyright law itself. Non-U.S. copyrights has some info, though it's usually not as complete. There are often subtle distinctions on types of work which can be hard to impossible to show in chart form, though. As for currency, if there are rules about older currency being OK, that can be specified in a separate line with an "OK" tag. Some of the currency laws are about counterfeiting, and exist to restrict reproductions even if the copyright has expired. Carl Lindberg (talk) 03:37, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Counterfeiting laws are more like "moral rights" or "an indefinite / perpetual creative commons" of some sort, as if you would take an old currency and write "FAKE" on it, it would be allowed, kind of how sharing CC-BY-SA-4 photograph still requires you to attribute the original creator and it would be a copyright © violation if not done so, but the license is still sufficiently free to allow for basically anything else as long as the conditions are met, "don't scam people" ain't that bad of a law. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 06:17, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Controversy in the second phrase of the rule

Images uploaded to Commons, unless uploaded from the United States, involve the interaction of two or more copyright jurisdictions.

I suppose this phrase was intended to mean that the files created in the United States must comply with US copyright laws as distinct from the files originated from other countries that must comply with both US and local copyright laws. However, this sentence can be easily misunderstood; imagine that you have created the picture of copyrightable content elsewhere and then travel to the United States and uploaded that picture from there, - it does not make you free from the obligation to respect the copyright law of the country your image had been created in. Should not we rewrite the quoted phrase to make it clearer? Andrei Romanenko (talk) 14:55, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

There is no inherent obligation to respect the copyright law of the country the image was created in; country of creation is not generally a factor in the Berne Convention or in local copyright laws. There is some German law about Swiss FoP that's the exception, but I'm not touching FoP in this comment. If you go to Spain and take a photograph of a painting first published in Iran, and then go home, you will have to worry about your local copyright law if publishing, and the copyright law of the US Commons servers, if uploading to Commons, and possibly depending on your local copyright law and US copyright law, the law of Iran. Spanish copyright law wouldn't come into it at all.--Prosfilaes (talk) 11:05, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

But FoP obviously is the most important part of the problem. It is highly unlikely that a painting copyrighted in the country of its origin and/or location would be free under the US law. However, according to the US law the pictures of buildings are free; does it mean that in order to upload to Commons the pictures of non-free buildings from Italy or France I have to bring them to the US and upload them from there? Probably not. Andrei Romanenko (talk) 17:51, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

w:en:Pablo Picasso shows off many Picassos that are out of copyright in the US but not in Europe, and there are a vast array of paintings that were published before 1926 (PD in the US) by authors who died after 1950 (not PD in Europe). It is not highly unlikely that paintings are copyrighted in one place and not the other; there's a lot of them.

The copyright law of the US says that a photograph of a building is not a derivative work of the building. That's true in the US for any photograph published anywhere, taken anywhere. As for the WMF, that's arguably all they have to worry about. Besides that, the US doesn't generally have FOP. The WMF has deleted works that had FOP in their home nation (but not in the US) that the artist issued DMCA notices against, and Commons' FoP rules don't seem to have basis in law in many cases, though, to be fair, I wouldn't have expected that German ruling and questions of crossnational FoP law seem untested in court in most cases.--Prosfilaes (talk) 20:18, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

That's very interesting (and partially beyond my understanding) but still I cannot realize if the aforementioned sentence from the rule can be read and used literally: may an uploader located in the US upload the photographs of French, Italian and Ukrainian buildings (because these photographs are not derivative works for the USA law) without taking into consideration that there is no FoP in France, Italy and Ukraine? Because, see, now these photographs are being deleted from time to time with the rationale "No FoP in Italy", and it does not seem that in the course of discussing and deleting anybody tries to find out if the uploader is located here or there. Andrei Romanenko (talk) 22:11, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

That's Commons' policy, not necessarily copyright law.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:03, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

And then there is the safety of the uploader and reuser. The latter is one reason why Commons policy respects French and Italian copyright on buildings. If you are in the country of somebody who wants to sue you, it doesn't help what you did was legal in a couple of other countries, if the court thinks it has competence on the case, which it probably has in the country of the copyright owner, regardless of where the photos were taken or uploaded. –LPfi (talk) 19:10, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

So, should there also have subpages for outer space planets?

I'd love to see if there are relevant IP rules for works from the Moon, the Mercury, the Tiangong II, the ISS... Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 14:54, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

For outer planets, no, until people live there. What matter is the place of publication, not where the images are taken. While technically, things could be published in the ISS, it didn't happen yet. Regards, Yann (talk) 16:34, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

For the ISS, the owners of the Space Station (the United States, Russia, the European Partner, Japan, and Canada) are legally responsible for the respective elements they provide. The European Partner is the member states of the European Space Agency, which are treated as a single homogenous entity, and any of these European states can apply extend their respective national laws and regulations to the European elements, equipment and personnel. With regards to copyright, this is specifically covered by the section "Article 21: Intellectual Property" of the International Space Station Intergovernmental Agreement which states that "...for purposes of intellectual property law, an activity occurring in or on a Space Station flight element shall be deemed to have occurred only in the territory of the the Partner State of that element's registry, except that for ESA-registered elements any European Partner State may deem the activity to have occurred within its territory." —RP88 (talk) 21:27, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Image for uploading

I have an image I'd like to upload which originally I found at Find a Grave, but it is copyrighted. I contacted the owner/photographer and he has given me permission via email to use the image, and has attached the original image to it. The image at Find a Grave is very low-res at 590 x 545. The original image he sent me is 2238 x 2252 and is not the same image. When I upload the hi-res image to Commons is there anything else that must be done other than to list the photographer's name in the file summary? Also, the creator requests that he be given credit for the image. While I intend to list his name in the image file summary, is it appropriate to list his name in the caption for that image? -- Gwillhickers (talk) 21:05, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

@Gwillhickers: This isn't really the right place to ask (you want Commons:Help desk), but the answer is fairly simple. Commons stopped allowing files where the author had privately granted permission to the uploader in 2006. You should follow the instructions on Commons:Volunteer Response Team, specifically under "I have received permission from the original author (not me) to upload the file to Commons.". I don't think it would be appropriate to include the author's name in the caption unless the authorship is in some way notable (e.g. a famous photographer). The "author" field in the {{Information}} template and the attribution fields of the various licence templates are the places to attribute the author. --bjh21 (talk) 21:14, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Should I create CRT subpages for DPR and LPR?

• DPR: Donetsk People's Republic, LPR: Luhansk People's Republic

I know that there's no consensus on adding both to {{Countries of Europe}}, but I think CRT pages would be another topic. We have a lot of non-country subpages, as well as many pages for limited countries, especially some are even not available on Countries of... templates. As of now, are Serbian users considering COM:Kosovo as inappropriate? Or are Somalians concerning COM:Somaliland? ... If not, then I hope that having subpages for DPR+LPR shouldn't also be a matter for Ukrainian Commons users. But I still need to ask here to make sure I'm not opening Pandora boxes. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 07:43, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Military occupation or annexation

I propose to add a section to this page in relation to military occupation and annexations of territories. Below I copied text from the village pump which is relevant:

If we look at en:Military occupation#Occupation and the laws of war, we see that under the Hague Convention of 1907, an occupying force is required to respect, wherever possible, the existing laws in the country that they are occupying. Thus copyright laws that were in existance prior to hostilities would normally continue to be in force. Martinvl (talk) 21:30, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

Would it be acceptable to add a short paragraph with this text:

In case of military occupation it is assumed that the existing copyright laws in the country wich has been occupied continue to be in force during the occupation, independent from the fact whether the occupying country has ratified relevant international laws.

Looking forward to comments on this proposal. Ellywa (talk) 10:53, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

I see several issues with your proposal:

1. The "independent from the fact whether the occupying country has ratified relevant international laws" phrase is unclear and nothing like that phrase was discussed at VPC. I suspect you're trying to refer to the Hague Convention, but the "relevant international laws" presumably could also be copyright treaties which makes the entire sentence quite difficult to parse.
2. Is your proposal supposed to apply to current military occupations, or both current and past occupations? If it applies to past occupations, are you suggesting that Commons should ignore the decisions of the no longer occupied country with regards to the period of occupation? For example, East Timor has chosen, in the interest of continuity, to apply Indonesian copyright law to the period it was occupied by Indonesia. Commons should respect this decision.
3. When Commons was established the WMF instructed Commons that it could only host media that met the Definition of Free Cultural Works (that there be no significant legal restrictions on using/distributing/modifying the media). In consequence, one of the primary reasons that Commons originally adopted the requirement that uploaded media be freely licensed in the source country was that while it was considered impractical to insist that works be freely licensed in every country it was considered very important that Commons not host media that the residents of the source country could not use. So, in instances where an occupying country has clarified that they are enforcing their own copyright laws on the residents of an occupied territory Commons should think long and hard before hosting media that the residents of the occupied territory can not use.

However, it does seem reasonable for Commons to have a "rule of thumb" that for formerly occupied countries the prior copyright laws of the country which has been occupied should apply in instances where the occupied country has not clarified which law should apply during the occupation. Similarly, it probably also makes sense that for currently occupied countries the prior copyright laws of the country which has been occupied should apply unless the current occupier has clarified that they are enforcing their own copyright laws on the occupied territory. —RP88 (talk) 13:33, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Hi RP88, thank you for your comments.

Ad 1. The "ratification" part can be omitted indeed. I added it in order to avoid additional doubt.

Ad 2. I was considering past occupations only. We have many examples of media from occupied territories, and I had difficulties to decide - in this case - between Dutch/Indonesian and Japanese copyright laws, which are/were different. Although it is highly important to be able to show free media of current events, it would be complicated to make a rule of thumb for situations which are changing on a daily basis, and where even the definition of "occupation" can be disputed.

Ad 3. Thanks for clarification for the background for free use in the source country. I think in practice, an occupying country will not immediately enforce their own copyright laws, it obviously will not be the first issue the military will think about.

Your formulation for a rule of thumb seems okay to me. Although it will be difficult to find out what an occupying country has stated during the occupation. I never saw it mentioned on the "Rules per territory" pages yet. But if nothing is found, it should be clear the default situation will be valid.

By the way, I was still searching for sources and how to proceed. Difficult to find, because every website uses the word "copyright". I found these Japanese propaganda films, made in occupied Dutch Indies, 1942-1945. The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision seems to state the copyright of these films was (Japanese) (indeed between brackets). Otherwise, they might not be in PD yet, because they were made in the studio of Jan Cornelis Mol (1891-1954), who was forced to cooperate with the Japanese. It can be, they have permission of the heirs of mr. Mol to publish these films. Ellywa (talk)

The military won't think much about copyright, but if somebody is still publishing something in the area and civil courts are operational, then what laws to use is a real issue. This issue will be highly political: will the occupant allow the occupied to sue for ignoring the occupied country's laws (and win)? Will courts of the occupied territory accept respecting laws by the occupying entity? I think some rule-of-thumb wording could work, but this is a can of worms. –LPfi (talk) 06:46, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

@LPfi Not always true, the armed groups may also define their own copyright rules that are diverged from laws of countries that have sovereignty by de jure, to the places they are de facto controlling. Or why don't you reply to the above L2 question? Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 14:06, 11 September 2022 (UTC)