User:KDS4444/Authorship

In most cases, a work that has been uploaded to Commons was created by someone who can be identified as its author. The identity of this person or persons should be indicated in the author= field of the {{information}} template. Sometimes, however, the correct way to complete this field may be unclear. Leaving it blank or removing the existing author information from a file will generate an error that states "This file is lacking author information" and will flag the file as having no author. Also, if an editor comes upon a file with no author information or patently false author information, he or she may complete the field with the {{author missing}} template, which also flags the file as missing an author. Neither of these things, however, marks the file for deletion, and not having a completed author field is not by itself considered grounds for removing any file from Commons. But authorship is important in large part because many files have licensing requirements that include the author's name, and without complete and correct attribution a file may be in violation of our policies (in which case it certainly could be nominated for deletion).

Commons has a multilingual template to help complete this field which may be placed in the author= parameter. The template's name is {{author}}, and the next few paragraphs give instructions on how to use it correctly. Use of this template is preferred because it is has been internationalized, and this allows users from many languages to understand what your intentions are.

Note that throughout the remainder of this guideline, the term "work" will be used to refer to any file uploaded to Commons, whether an image, audio recording, video clip, photograph, drawing, etc.-- where necessary, the term "media" will refer to the content of that work, that is, the object photographed, drawn, or video taped, the words recorded in the audio file, the bird and its song recorded in the clip, and the like; any of these except the bird can each have their own separate authorships in the same work.

Sometimes authorship can be confusing. The following is meant to help our users understand how to complete this parameter.

Understanding what a "derivative work" is

Understanding how to complete the author= field often requires understanding what it means to generate a derivative work. A derivative work is not just one work "derived from" or "based on" another work, it is a new and creatively original transformation of that other work and as a result it is entitled to its own copyright and claims of authorship. Uploading a work which you have only modified in technical ways is not producing a derivative work, it is uploading a copy of an original work, and unless that original work was in the public domain, claiming authorship to it, even authorship of it as a derivative work, is against Commons policies.

However, if you do produce a derivative work, the appropriate way to complete the author= field is by mentioning the author of the original work along with your own name using the {{author}} template like this: author= {{author|original|Matthew}} {{author|derivative|Mark}}

This will produce the following text in the reader's native language in the {{information}} template:

Author: Original: Matthew Derivative work: Mark

Difference between "author" and "source"

The "source" of the file indicates where the work came from; the "author" indicates who created the work. Very often those are two different things. Sometimes the source and the author are one and the same: this happens when the person uploading the file also happens to be the sole author of the work and of any media depicted therein. In this case, the source= field should be completed with the template {{own}} and the author= field with the uploader's name or Commons username. But if the work is a photograph taken, say, by a woman named Rosie Rosebud of a sculpture made by her husband Ronald Rosebud and located on her personal website and being uploaded to Commons by a guy named Frank Fiddle, then the source= field gets completed with the URL of Rosie's website and the author= field gets completed with the words "Rosie Rosebud and Ronald Rosebud" (Rosie has rights as author of the work, the photograph, and Ronald has rights as the author of the media depicted in the work, the sculpture— Frank does not acquire any authorship rights simply by uploading the file and should not be mentioned as such). Also, both Rosie and Ronald would have had to have given their permission for the photo to be used-- that process is covered under the Commons licensing requirements, not here.

Public domain work with no known author

In the case of a public domain work with no known author, so long as you have made a good faith effort to identify the author and are certain (for some reason) that the work is in the public domain both in its country of origin and in the United States (which should be verifiable either by looking at it or from the source= field), you may write the template {{unknown}} for the author field. This is also true if the file is one which is too simple to acquire copyright protection such as some text logos or if it includes only a few geometric shapes lacking creative content (you will also then need to use the tag {{PD-ineligible}} for the license= field). Know that while utilitarian objects themselves are usually considered public domain works, a photograph of such an object may very well have a copyright and an author! In this case, the utilitarian object is the "media" and the photograph is the "work"— if appropriate, you should include the name of the author of the work (but not the media).

Changing an existing work on Commons and re-uploading it under a different title

If you download a Commons work, modify it somehow, and then re-upload it to Commons under a different name, you may be allowed to claim authorship of the new file: if the changes you have made to the original work include significant, creative additions or alterations that are representative of your own personality and that could be considered transformative, then you have created a derivative work and are entitled to claim copyright ownership if it, provided that you also adhere to the copyright requirements of the original work, if any. However, if your changes are only technical and cannot be construed as creative or if your creative changes are minor, then the uploaded file is considered to be only a copy of the original and the author remains that of the original work. In order to claim any kind of authorship by altering an existing work, you must add new, creative input to it somehow-- beyond rotating it, adjusting the color balance, enhancing the tones, sharpening the foreground, increasing the sound volume, reducing background static, etc. Those are considered technical changes, not creative ones because they are meant only to enhance the existing work, they are not meant to change it into a different work.

Consider asking yourself this: what was my intent in modifying this file? Was I intending to improve and enhance it in ways to make it more useful? Or was I trying to create something truly original and different out of it for my own purposes? Only the latter is a derivative work. You cannot claim authorship to the former because you did not create it, and you should place the original author's name in the author= field.

As an example, let us suppose you took the original work and used a photo manipulation program such as photoshop to invert the color palate, drew small dancing women around some of the parts, drew flowers coming out of others, and added a sunset and dolphins to it. Then, perhaps, you have indeed created a derivative work entitled to its own copyright and for which you may claim authorship-- though not sole authorship, as the underlying work also has an author to whom you should give credit. In this case, you should complete the source= field with the template {{own based}} and fill the author= field with the name of the original author of the underlying work and your own name as the author of the derivative work.

Likewise, let's say you encountered a .png file that was tagged with the {{svg}} template encouraging you to reproduce the file as a vector image, and let's say you spent many hours completing the conversion and creating the .svg file. Because none of that work was creative, you have no right to claim authorship to the new .svg file— although it sounds strange, when you upload the file to Commons, you must provide the name of the person who was the author of the .png file as the sole author of the new .svg file that you worked so hard on, and your name should not be included as a co-author of any kind, even if you made some modifications to the appearance of the .png file. You may only claim authorship or co-authorship of the new file if you have actually transformed it into a fundamentally different image— in that case, you should give the author of both the .png file and your own name as authors. You would never provide your own name as sole author if you are using another person's work as the basis for your own derivative work.

Sweat of the brow

US law does not recognize "sweat of the brow" as a premise for copyright acquisition or authorship-- no matter how hard or how long you may have "worked" on a file, it is still the original, creative moment, if the work has one, that counts for copyright purposes, and this forever belongs to its original author. So long as your changes amount only to technical ones such as converting it into an .svg file or enhancing the contrast, the authorship of the file does not change: you should fill the author= parameter with the name (or username) of the original author only, not your own name. Your name should only appear on the file as the uploader; and you are not considered to have any authorship rights to the work at all.

Modifying public domain works

While any work in the public domain is usually considered a free-for-all, including the right to claim authorship by anyone and even the right to claim new copyright protection for your version of the work, the authorship only changes once the work becomes derivative-- that is, once it has become invested with significant creative changes that reflect a new author's own personality. At that point the new author may claim a new copyright as well as set of new licensing terms for the work, with no reference to nor permission sought from the original author/ copyright holder. If the changes you make to such a work remain only technical, however, then you have not created a derivative work and your revision of the original constitutes only a variation or copy of it, a copy which must remain in the public domain and for which the author is the one who created the original public domain work. While there is no legal requirement to acknowledge the existence or contribution of the original author, taking that person's work and calling it your own constitutes a form of plagiarism and is highly discouraged.

It may seem unfair to have invested hours of your own time contributing to the enhancement of an work on Commons only to have to indicate, when you go to upload it, that you are not in fact the author, but that someone else is. Unless you put your name in somewhere, you will receive no credit for all your work. Unfortunately, that is the nature of copyright: it exists to protect creativity, not improvement, and no amount of improvement will allow you to claim authorship to anything on Commons or to set your own licensing terms to anything you upload which is not truly the result of your own novel, creative energies. To be an author, you must create. This is just as true for co-authors. Anything else is simply a variation, and variations do not confer authorship.

Behest of a third party who wishes to remain anonymous

Sometimes a person wishes to donate their work to Commons but does not wish to have their name or any Commons user account associated with it. Such works can be uploaded by anyone, provided that the author of the work is willing to send a permission statement in to the OTRS system in which he or she agrees to license the image under suitable terms (though such terms cannot, for example, include any "attribution" requirements, as it will not be possible for anyone reusing the file to give attribution to an anonymous party— licenses like CC-SA and CC0 are fine, but CC-BY-SA is not). For these files, the author= field should be filled with the word "Confidential" and the source= field with the template {{private correspondence}} (and the file should be marked with the {{OTRS pending}} template somewhere in the {{information}} template). Once OTRS has received the author's permission statement and processed it, the file will be marked as properly licensed and its authorship will be retained on the OTRS ticket but will not be available to the general public.