[Foundation-l] Commons copyright violotion and OTRS

Thu Jul 21 20:10:02 UTC 2005

Hi,

Le Wednesday 20 July 2005 21:06, Gerard Meijssen a écrit :
> Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> > Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> >> Hoi,
> >> On OTRS I received a complaint that some photo's were taken from a
> >> website. As the photo's were located on Commons, I informed the
> >> gentleman to go to the Commons administrators. In this case they were
> >> world war II photo's of machine guns. I told the gentleman that even
> >> if the photos were taken from his website, it would not matter when
> >> the photos are already in the pubic domain.
> >>
> >> The question, as it is not possible for a Dutch admin to remove
> >> photos from Commons and as it has no impact to remove the pictures
> >> from an article, is it correct to refer this gentleman to the Commons
> >> admins or is there / should there be a procedure for these issues.
> >
> > On Commons, if you think there is a copyright tag you can throw on
> > images you think are in dispute, which is the {{Copyvio}} tag, and any
> > user can add that onto the image.  You don't need to be an admin.
> > Please make sure you put in a reason on the image page when you think
> > there is a problem, or try and contact the user who uploaded the
> > content (to be kind to a potential new user who thought uploading
> > random stuff from web pages was appropriate).  The tag will get
> > flagged to a category which the admins on Commons check very
> > regularly, and will delete if it is against Commons policy.
>
> Hoi,
> In this case Commons states that it is public domain. There is this user
> who has just another WW II website and is the opinion that we copied his
> website. I am not completely aware of how these things are done on
> Commons and, I do not agree with some of the procedures that I do know.
> The thing is with OTRS, I am not just some user. By notifying me of this
> issue the gentleman may think he is talking to the WMF itself while in
> fact it has nothing to do with the nl.wikipedia. So the issue is also a
> bit bigger than just this and that is why I ask for some guidance.

I think the solution is quite easy.
Ask this person who is the photgrapher of this picture and when this 
photographer died if he knows it. If he doesn't know who is the photographer, 
I would think that he doesn't own the copyright of the picture. It doesn't 
mean that the picture is in the public domain, but at least he can't give you 
any trouble.

That's what I did with a German organisation who claims copyright of Gandhi's 
photos I uploaded in Commons. I doubt very much this organisation owns any 
copyright on these pictures and I am still waiting for its answer, two months 
after my mail.

> Thanks,
>     GerardM

Regards,
Yann
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