Commons:Deletion requests/2024/11/26

This file was initially tagged by Hako9 as Copyvio (copyvio) and the most recent rationale was: Same reason as File:Scott Bessent.jpg .....Senators are not "employees of Congress" and publishing the photo on twitter is not necessarily "part of official duty". Challenging for Born Isopod after going through the cabinet page for the reasons that there are multiple images published by members of Congress in social media that are on Commons, eg. File:Adam Schiff at George Floyd Protest.jpg, File:Mary Peltola celebrating reelection.jpg, File:Dan Sullivan, Lisa Murkowski and Don Young.jpg, etc. If it is deleted, then there might need people to take a look on all those images. @Yann: pinging you as you deleted the other image mentioned in the note. reppop^talk 05:28, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I undeleted the crop. It doesn't meet the speedy deletion criteria anyway. Yann (talk) 06:55, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relevant law is A “work of the United States Government” is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties. 17 U.S.C. § 101 - hako9 07:43, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How is Adam Schiff at BLM protest "part of that person’s official duties" - hako9 07:46, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think people have interpreted it that way because its an official account by a government official, who is using said account to carry out their official duties by communicating with constituents. I'm not sure if there's any precedence to that on Commons, but on this website, it says "Government officials who use social media accounts to carry out their official duties are engaged in “state action” and are therefore bound by the First Amendment", while this website says that "A social media post does not constitute state action simply because a public official made the post; instead, it must be within the public official’s duties and powers to post about such topics to constitute state action", which I guess comes from the fact its a U.S. Government account. reppop^talk 20:42, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This file was initially tagged by Sam Sailor as no permission (No permission since) Krd 06:22, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

•   Keep, Public domain in Lebanon, taken over 50 years ago. Dmartin969 (talk) 00:19, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This file was initially tagged by 23.237.216.54 as no permission (No permission since) Krd 06:22, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

•   Speedy keep per COM:NOP Kazakhstan. Kazakh law specifically states flags as not eligibile for copyright. Dmartin969 (talk) 00:21, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Identified subject of the photo requests the image is removed AusHumanRights (talk) 06:22, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• If Denise Bowden has requested the photo be removed from the Wikimedia Commons, that is fine with me. Perhaps you have another photo it would be okay to use? Tom Worthington (talk) 07:08, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• In the meantime, though, it can't be removed while it's COM:INUSE. If another photo is provided and substituted on the three Wikipedia articles, that would be a different situation. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:11, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

•   Keep per Commons:Country_specific_consent_requirements#Australia. Subject should submit the request themself or through VRTS. Dmartin969 (talk) 00:26, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This file was initially tagged by 23.237.216.54 as no permission (No permission since) Krd 06:22, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This file was initially tagged by Hako9 as Copyvio (copyvio) and the most recent rationale was: Senators are not "employees of Congress" and publishing the photo on twitter is not necessarily "part of official duty" Yann (talk) 06:54, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright violation. This map is presented as "own work", but is clearly copyrighted to the Encyclopeadia Britannica Landroving Linguist (talk) 06:54, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Non-free copyrighted image. Vengeance • Talk 07:30, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No FoP in Bangladesh since 2023. Syrus257 (talk) 08:18, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• File:Huntsville1974.jpg
• File:Harvest450.jpg

These images were sourced from a webpage of the US National Weather Service but are the work of a third-party photographer or photograhers. They are attributed to the Madison county emergency management agency (EMA).

For many years, hosting such images on the Commons was done in good faith under the rationale that:

• public submissions to the NWS all entered the public domain and/or
• all files hosted on NWS websites were in the public domain unless they carried a formal copyright notice

An extensive review of this rationale in 2024 revealed that neither of these beliefs held up to scrutiny. These findings were confirmed in an RfC conducted from August to October 2024.

Per COM:ONUS it is the responsibility of the person uploading an image to the Commons or anyone arguing for its retention here to provide evidence of permission from the copyright holder. Nevertheless, I contacted the EMA on September 12 to ask whether they still own the copyrights. They stopped short of actually confirming this, but their response implied that they do, requesting further information about the intended use. When I asked about the possibility of publishing these images under a free license, they stopped responding. I forwarded this conversation to the VRT. Ticket:2024091210003501

I noted that the File:Huntsville1974.jpg appeared to have been scanned from a printed and bound publication. Playing a hunch, I investigated what had been published about this tornado, and playing a hunch, tracked down and purchased a copy of April 3, 1974: The Alabama Tornadoes published by C.F.Boone soon after the event. Cost of the book, plus postage from Alabama to Australia came to about $60. However, it did allow me to confirm that:

• this photo was published in this book, on page 19
• the book was published with a valid copyright notice, both on the inside front cover, and the reverse title page
• images in the 100-page book are not individually credited, so unfortunately, the identity of the specific photographer remains unknown.

There are no known earlier publications of File:Harvest450.jpg before it was published on the NWS website circa 2014.

As far as we can tell, both these images are still protected by copyright. Since they are presumably unfree, we must delete them as a precaution under COM:PRP.

Rlandmann (talk) 08:44, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Keep: No evidence of third-party attribution here. Sir MemeGod ._. (talk - contribs) 16:59, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That particular image is, as I said, published with a copyright notice in April 3, 1974: The Alabama Tornadoes published by C.F.Boone, 1974, page 19. The notice reads "Copyright © C. F. Boone, 1974".

To show this to be in the public domain, you, or someone else who wants to keep this image, needs to provide evidence that copyright was already voided before it appeared in this book. Do you have any such evidence? --Rlandmann (talk) 20:58, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Clear Copyright Violation. IDB.S (talk) 10:28, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Way beyond COM:TOO, so only OK if it's in the public domain. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:13, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Questionable use of the {{PD-Switzerland-photo-non-individual-50-years}} licence. I would not say that this photograph of a person (presented with no context) was a reproduction of Selassie as an "object" where the photographer expresses "no individual character". Belbury (talk) 13:34, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

copyrighted food menus in Taiwan. Solomon203 (talk) 14:02, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Possibly de minimis, but then Category:Food menus in Taipei should be removed from the photo, in favor of categories describing the food. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:18, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Keep de minimis Herbert Ortner (talk) 14:25, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

While it's true that the Youtube video as a whole is marked as CC, the still image is from a clip borrowed – presumably under fair use – from Realitatea TV. There is no proof Realitatea has agreed to this clip being released as CC outside a fair use frame. Gikü (talk) 14:03, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just noticed the following files that have the same issue:

• File:Călin Georgescu 2022-02-09 1719.png
• File:Călin Georgescu 2022-02-09.png

Gikü (talk) 14:06, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Then we should change the license. Gdaniel111 (talk) 14:08, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe you are right, but we kinda lack pictures and he is the presidential candidate. Gdaniel111 (talk) 14:10, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You can delete them all. Gdaniel111 (talk) 15:17, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Comment Yuri Samoylov, active from april 2024, on 19 nov. 2024 placed a speedy deletion request to delete this category, with the rationale that "Category:People of Georgia by occupation should be moved here". Speedy deletion didn't occur in 7 days, and to me that's very correct, because there should be a discussion about any possible consensus about this rationale. Therefore I contested the speedy deletion and placed the request of user:Yuri Samoylov as a request for regular deletion. ThomasPusch (talk) 13:54, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Approve - To help site users and avoid mistakes, it should be changed. Overall, it was already approximately 40% Georgia (country) vs 60% Georgia, so I certainly was not the first to add (country) to categories.

<NEW TOPIC> My reason is, that Georgia is a souvereign country, a souvereign member state of UN, and the alternative unit Georgia in the US is just an administrative unit of the souvereign country United States - so any international user should know by instant, that "Category:People of Georgia" is about the country Georgia, not about the administrative subdivision of the US.

... Well, unfortunately this isn't what we are seeing and is inaccurate. I found multiple instances of the U.S. State of Georgia categorized under the country of Georgia and fixed them. Not everyone goes to the category when uploading photos or understands categorization. We can't assume this. There is a reason Georgia (state) vs. Georgia (country) is categorized like this on Wikipedia. It is confusing and needs to be clarified. It should have originally been categorized as Georgia (country) on Wikimedia Commons, but for some reason it wasn't, and it needs to be corrected even if it's a ton of work.

<NEW TOPIC> The SD of the present category only results from the fact that Spatms apparently was unaware of this whole situation and created duplicates of several categories. The neat way now would be to move the edit history of the older categories to the new titles; however, it really isn't worth any of this hustle

...This isn't true. As stated, I was aware that there were categories marked Georgia (country) vs Georgia. It is inaccurate to say I created duplicate categories, since all items in each category were moved to the better-defined category. Someone besides me, should have changed this a long time ago, but didn't. As mentioned, the categories under Georgia need to be fixed to help eliminate mistakes and add clarity to users.

<NEW TOPIC> Good news is that I've made the changes to the nation of Georgia for the categories that I cover. Please keep in mind, the non-standardized categories under the nation of Georgia were all done before I had any involvement with the country. Lastly, however you want to change the categories under the nation of Georgia is okay by me. Adding (country) helps users and is needed to avoid mistakes, but I won't oppose whatever standardization is adopted and I am completely fine with any final decision that involves standardizing the categories of the nation of Georgia.

<NEW TOPIC> This reply is not posted with any malice or ill will and I'm just responding to what was mentioned about me. I've said what I felt needed to be said and will no longer have an opinion about Georgia. Furthermore, I appreciate being on Wikimedia Commons to avoid the tyrannical approach that is used on the Wikipedia site. I find Wikimedia Commons to be a pleasant place that I enjoy adding content and organizing. Please take care everyone and I wish you well. Spatms (talk) 05:26, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Oppose I oppose his rationale: "Category:People of Georgia by occupation" should NOT be moved here, but should remain the main category for people of Georgia, as it is in use until now. My reason is, that Georgia is a souvereign country, a souvereign member state of UN, and the alternative unit Georgia in the US is just an administrative unit of the souvereign country United States - so any international user should know by instant, that "Category:People of Georgia" is about the country Georgia, not about the administrative subdivision of the US. I know, that one could discuss the umbrella categories "Category:Georgia" and "Category:Georgia (country)", but I'm just concerned at this moment about the existing category "Category:People of Georgia by occupation", which consists out of 94 smaller categories "... from/of Georgia", none of which being called "... from/of Georgia (country)" or "... from/of Georgia (member state of UN)", and the more there are categories People in Georgia by activity, People of Georgia by association, People of Georgia by occupation, People of Georgia by province, People of Georgia by religion and People of Georgia by status, and many more. I'm deeply sure this situation is the right one, and don't want hundreds of categories being deleted and being renamed to "... from/of Georgia (country)" or "... from/of Georgia (member state of UN)". OF COURSE, it would be a very sensible idea to empty the new category "People of Georgia (country) by occupation" and leave only the existing category "People of Georgia by occupation", but not due to the motivation and rationale of Yuri! ThomasPusch (talk) 13:54, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pff... Please see Commons:Categories for discussion/2017/03/Category:Georgia and also the notice at the top of Category:Georgia (country). The general policy of the category naming is already settled (without any active input from me; I was ambivalent on the issue), and the subsub...categories of Category:Georgia (country) are slowly being moved to the new titles. Slowly, because the contents should not be just mass-migrated to the new title, but should first be checked for files (and even subcats) that are erroneously placed in "... of Georgia" and should now be moved to "... of Georgia (U.S. state)" instead of "... of Georgia (country)". Most unfortunately, the original starters of this epopee haven't come around to doing this, and there's nobody bold enough to sort the things out...

The SD of the present category only results from the fact that Spatms apparently was unaware of this whole situation and created duplicates of several categories. The neat way now would be to move the edit history of the older categories to the new titles; however, it really isn't worth any of this hustle, and I will sleep well even if the older categories are just replaced by dab pages with {{Georgia Disambig}}.

And ThomasPusch, please never, never judge the validity of other users' actions by their apparent edit count and/or registration date. You are likely to oversee a lot, and it's definitely counterproductive to use it as a reasoning in deletion discussions. If you're interested, I've been editing commons since 2007, but that is totally unrelated to the present discussion.

-- Yuri Samoylov (talk) 15:35, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

P. S. There are also these cases:

• Category:Businesspeople from Georgia (country)
  • The corresponding Category:Businesspeople from Georgia incidentally contains an example of a subcategory that should be moved to " (U.S. state)": Category:Ted Turner
• Category:Entertainment in Georgia (country)
• Category:Recreation in Georgia (country)

-- Yuri Samoylov (talk) 15:40, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry about having written "active from april 2024"! I was just stressed how quickly the speedy deletion would take place, and thought that there should be a discussion spot on the topic. Therefore I just "pulled the brake" of the speedy deletion, and wasn't lucky to do so - so I was stressed. My aim was not to offend anyone (by the way, being called "a wikipedian who has edited for 8 months" is not an offence to me, more like a honour)... But I really didn't think twice about my typing, just quickly hitted the "save" button. So, sorry for having typed those 4 unnecessary words. But on the whole, I'm still not happy with the addition of "(country)" in hundreds of categories. ThomasPusch (talk) 16:01, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But apparently I didn't see the loooong discussion in Commons:Categories for discussion/2017/03/Category:Georgia beforehand. Thanks for the link. Still I'm not happy with the idea to change hundreds of categories, but as said that's a problem of using English as the language of nearly all categories in commons. In many of the languages I use more often than English the problem is really non-existing (Gruzija, Kartvelio, Georgien, Sakartvelo, Gruzeja, Georgië, Грузія, Gruzio, Sakartvelas...), but that doesn't help, as in English Georgia isn't Sakartvelo. ThomasPusch (talk) 16:29, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Comment And now the situation became even more complicated after Allforrous' actions. I don't know what were his intentions, but now the contents of Category:Entertainment in Georgia (country) and Category:Outside in Georgia (country) are mostly under the outdated titles, while the original edit history is totally hidden from view. (Also pinging Pi.1415926535 as the admin who performed the deletions following Allforrous's SDs.) If anybody is going to close this discussion, here's the whole list of problematic categories that I know of; ideally, in each case the oldest edit history should be moved to the title with "Georgia (country)", while the title without "(country)" should be left with {{Georgia Disambig}} (after the contents are carefully sorted out):

• Category:People of Georgia (country) by occupation vs. Category:People of Georgia by occupation
• Category:Businesspeople from Georgia (country) vs. Category:Businesspeople from Georgia
• Category:Entertainment in Georgia (country) vs. Category:Entertainment in Georgia
• Category:Recreation in Georgia (country) vs. Category:Recreation in Georgia
• Category:Outside in Georgia (country) vs. Category:Outside in Georgia
• Category:Culture of Georgia (country) vs. Category:Culture of Georgia
• Category:Sports in Georgia (country) vs. Category:Sports in Georgia

-- Yuri Samoylov (talk) 08:41, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Although the immediate source, the Fergana Agency, publishes under a CC license, this photo is credited to Turkmenportal which, to my knowledge, does not publish under a CC license. Adeletron 3030 (talk) 14:41, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

possible copyvio © Simon Schoepf - we would need a COM:VRT permission to keep this M2k~dewiki (talk) 15:19, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

yes sure, I'm the photographer and it is free to use. Do I need to take action / change the permission myself (and if yes, how?) Simontour (talk) 10:20, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Simontour: Preferrably you should send a permission by e-Mail to VRT. For details see COM:VRT/de. --Rosenzweig τ 09:49, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Scaled-down and slightly cropped version of File:Gloria Diaz 01.jpg, redundant. P 1 9 9  ✉ 16:41, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

•   Delete per nom. Iwaqarhashmi (talk) 17:40, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The horizon line is tilted to the right in the original, this was corrected in the derivation. Greetings from Fritzober (talk) 17:41, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

•   Delete: I would have !voted to keep it, but the derivative image is a scaled-down version. Ratekreel (talk) 19:56, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Unused file of flag with no evidence of use (probably fictitious); out of project scope. HapHaxion _{(talk / contribs)} 18:44, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong license, this is a book cover, not a photo. PD-Ar-Photo doesn't apply. Creation date is unknown. Banfield - Amenazas aquí 20:34, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bu dosya hatalı yüklendi. Ferit BAYCUMAN (talk) 20:48, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

به درخواست وراث Leila.borjali (talk) 21:28, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

From 1949, copy right unclear Nicola (talk) 21:37, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This file was initially tagged by Putitonamap98 as Copyvio (Copyvio). Pre-1978 US photo, should be discussed. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:49, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Some of these works appear to be public domain, but the artwork on top right and photograph on bottom right from 1961 would need VRT. Abzeronow (talk) 22:10, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Lee Tae Hyun, The picture of "Life" was composed and edited by me after receiving the picture directly from Lee Tae Hyun. The picture with parents and brothers was taken in the 1950s, and it was selected and composed of a picture with a teacher and precious memories that had an important influence on growing into an artist. I decided that by showing the family and teacher of an artist who lives as an artist throughout his life, it could be helpful to understand the artist's work more deeply and to approach the artist in three dimensions by showing the background of the times through pictures. Thank you. Dckewon5131 (talk) 15:41, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but you cannot grant a CC license to Lee Tae Hyun's work, only he can do that. Your intentions are noble, but we would need the artist's permission to host his works. Abzeronow (talk) 17:42, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Although I'll correct myself in that all of the photographs appear to be public domain per COM:South Korea, it's just the artwork that presents a copyright issue. Abzeronow (talk) 02:09, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• File:Égypte -soudan (9) (cropped).jpg

Unlikely own work, the uncropped image is available in Alamy, see https://www.alamyimages.fr/yaounde-cameroun-19th-janvier-2022-mohamed-salah-d-egypte-l-participe-au-match-du-groupe-d-entre-l-egypte-et-le-soudan-a-la-coupe-d-afrique-des-nations-a-yaounde-au-cameroun-le-19-janvier-2022-credit-keppeu-xinhua-alay-live-news-image457570699.html. Günther Frager (talk) 22:47, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Commons:Derivative works from posters.

• File:Godspell bus advertising in Mexico City.jpg
• File:Singin' in the Rain at Teatro Nuevo Apolo in Madrid.jpg
• File:My Fair Lady at the London Coliseum.jpg
• File:The Addams Family en el Teatro Calderón de Madrid.jpg
• File:Anastasia at Teatro Coliseum in Madrid.jpg
• File:Flashdance at Teatro Nuevo Apolo in Madrid.jpg
• File:La Cage aux Folles at Teatro Rialto in Madrid.jpg
• File:Young Frankenstein at Teatro Gran Vía in Madrid.jpg
• File:Dirty Dancing at Teatro Gran Vía in Madrid.jpg
• File:The Bodyguard at Teatro Coliseum in Madrid.jpg
• File:Chicago at Ambassador Theatre in Broadway.jpg
• File:Next to Normal at Teatro La Latina in Madrid.jpg
• File:Les Misérables at Queen's Theatre in London.jpg

The famous Cosette poster is a drawing of Émile Bayard (1837–1891) [1] All the other stuff should count as de minimis. -- Herbert Ortner (talk) 14:33, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• File:Sunset Boulevard at the London Coliseum.jpg
• File:The Addams Family at Teatro Calderón in Madrid.jpg
• File:Evita en el Marquis Theatre de Broadway.jpg

EugeneZelenko (talk) 22:59, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Hello. What makes you think that "The Addams Family at Teatro Calderón in Madrid.jpg" is a derivative work from poster? I see no evidence of this in the file. Tatvam (talk) 15:08, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Non-trivial background with hand and raven at the right bottom corner. EugeneZelenko (talk) 16:47, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your reply, but you are confusing two files with almost the same name: "The Addams Family en el Teatro Calderón de Madrid.jpg" and "The Addams Family at Teatro Calderón in Madrid.jpg". I was talking about the last one with the giant spider on the front of the theater, not the one with the raven. I don't see anything wrong with the "spider" one. In fact, the altitude at which the photo was taken (622m, see the metadata) is the altitude of Madrid, which tends to prove that the photograph was actually taken there.Tatvam (talk) 09:16, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This image has been uploaded from a National Weather Service web page, where it is attributed to a third party.

For many years, hosting such images on the Commons was done in good faith under the rationale that:

• public submissions to the NWS all entered the public domain and/or
• all files hosted on NWS websites were in the public domain unless they carried a formal copyright notice

An extensive review of this rationale in 2024 revealed that neither of these beliefs held up to scrutiny. These findings were confirmed in an RfC conducted from August to October 2024.

This is a rare instance where we have some insight into how the image made its way into the hands of the NWS, because they not only posted the photo, but the cover letter that accompanied it.

Pre-1989, copyright on creative works in the US would be voided if they were "published" without a copyright notice. "Publication" extended beyond just the common meaning of the word (books, magazines, newspapers, posters, postcards) to potentially include any distribution of a work beyond its creator's control: even offering a copy to "the public" or distributing a single copy of an image could be held to be publication.

To offset the harshness of this, and of creators unintentionally voiding their copyrights, US courts developed a doctrine of "limited publication" to distinguish circulation of a work from general publication. "Limited publication" without a copyright notice would not void a creator's copyright.

Although case law is somewhat inconsistent, and can vary from circuit to circuit, generally, limited publication has to satisfy three elements. The distribution of the work had to be:

• to a limited (select) group of people
• for a limited, specific purpose
• with a limitation on further distribution

The case law around all three of these elements is murky, and murkiest of all around this third element. In key cases around "limited publication", the limitation on further distribution was held to be present even when not specifically stipulated by the creator (Academy of Motion Picture v. Creative House, Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. v. CBS, Inc.) . Rather, courts considered how such works were generally treated by the parties to whom they were distributed, and also what actually had happened to such works after distribution, not just what the recipient was specifically disallowed to do with the work.

Turning to this image:

1. In 1974, Frank Altenau, a resident of Cincinatti, Ohio, took two Polaroid photos of a tornado
2. He showed his photos to one of his co-workers, Martha Metsch, who happened to be a volunteer weather observer for the NWS and who took the readings at the Cheviot Weather Station. Such weather stations are not offices, but simple collections of instruments distributed across thousands of sites across the US to enable volunteers to take readings to submit back to the NWS. We have photos of a few here. There is no indication that Mr Altenau was also an NWS volunteer, and we have no idea of who his and Ms Metsch's joint employer was. (That is, we have no reason to think that Mr Altenau was a federal employee performing his duties when he took these photos).
3. Ms Metsch mailed photocopies of Mr Altenau's Polaroid photos to the NWS regional office at Cincinnati, with the cover letter linked above. Ms Metsch's letter contains no statement about limiting further circulation of the images, and the copy published on the web includes a hand annotation that suggests that her letter was posted somewhere (a notice board?) for staff of the regional office to see.
4. [amendment begins] In her letter, Ms Metsch also states that Mr Altenau is attempting to have copies made of his Polaroids, which she hopes to be able to send to the NWS.
5. Many years later, a scan of the letter and photocopies was published on the NWS website: [2] together with a higher-resolution copy of one of the images that is presumably scanned from one of the copies that Ms Metsch hoped to supply,[3] which eventually made its way here to the Commons. [amendment ends]

I think that the first two elements of limited publication are easily satisfied:

• distribution was not to the public but to a limited, select audience -- the NWS forecasting office in Cincinatti
• distribution was for a specific purpose -- a weather observer reporting a weather phenomenon that might be important or interesting

I also believe that further distribution was limited, not by an explicit statement, but by common practice, and demonstrated by how, in fact, the NWS handled the image that had been submitted:

• although in the Internet age, the NWS frequently publishes weather photos submitted by the public, this was not the case in 1974. NWS publications at the time do not contain images like this. Indeed, the journal in which photos like this would now be published (alongside the NWS website), Storm Data contained no photos of any kind. (April 1974 edition downloadable here and the tornado is described in text only on page 14. Storm Data is published at the end of the month, so the NWS was in possession of this photo by that time.
• nor is there any evidence whatsoever of any other kind of further reproduction or distribution. Even the exhibition of the photocopy on a noticeboard only exhibits the copy to the same limited audience.
• the [amendment begins]original[amendment ends] image received by the NWS was a photocopy of a Polaroid, whose quality itself limited its suitability for further reproduction and distribution
• [amendment begins] the circumstances and conditions (if any) under which the higher-resolution version was supplied to the NWS is unknown. [amendment ends]
• the NWS did not, in fact, undertake any further distribution of [amendment begins] either image until the Internet era. the image until the Internet era when the value of such images, particularly of historic events not otherwise photographed, increased, and the barriers to reproduction and dissemination decreased. [amendment ends]

That is, based on common practice of the day, neither Mr Altenau or Ms Metsch had any reason to think that the NWS would be further circulating the image; and nor did the NWS do so at the time. This is evidence of an implicit limitation on distribution, as in the cases I referred to earlier.

I think this constitutes only limited publication, and therefore, Mr Altenau's common-law copyright was not divested by the photocopy made in April 1974. In the absence of evidence of any other publication event, or transfer of copyright, this common-law copyright continued to exist until March 1, 1989 when it was replaced by a statutory copyright under the new Act and still in force today.

Per COM:ONUS it is the responsibility of the person uploading an image to the Commons or anyone arguing for its retention here to provide evidence of permission from the copyright holder or that copyright was lost or transferred. Without such evidence, this is a presumably unfree file and we must delete it as a precaution under COM:PRP.

I have previously sought input about this image in a VP/C discussion, where opinion was divided as to whether this constitutes general publication (that voids common-law copyright) or limited publication (which preserves it). PInging participants in that conversation who might want to share thoughts here too: @Clindberg: @D. Benjamin Miller: @Glrx:

Rlandmann (talk) 23:56, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment – NWS offices are, to a degree, accessible to the public. For example, NWS offices typically always offer tours or do open houses, with a few examples here: NWS Pueblo, NWS Fort Worth, NWS Norman/National Weather Center, NWS Portland, and most importantly for this discussion, NWS Wilmington, Ohio (the NWS office covering Cincinatti and the area this tornado occurred). All of that to say the statement, "distribution was not to the public but to a limited, select audience -- the NWS forecasting office in Cincinatti" may not be true, given NWS offices typically show off a lot to the public, via pictures on the walls, photos given to them, ect... So, distribution may have not just to the NWS forecasters, but rather to the NWS office itself, which could do with it as they saw fit, including showing it to the public on tours. Just wanting to make that comment, since not just NWS employees may have/would have seen the photograph, since the public can tour offices all the time. WeatherWriter (talk) 02:06, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Interesting idea! I do not think that a visit by a tour group (even assuming that these were happening in 1974; the practice 50 years later is of dubious relevance) constitutes a "public exhibition" of a work in what is otherwise not a public space. If we follow that line of reasoning, then the common-law copyright of any painting, photograph, or piece of text visible to the eye in the US between 1909 and 1978 in any space accessible by a person visiting a family member at work, by a delivery person, or by a plumber, electrician, or other contractor would be void. I do not think the case law supports this.

  On the other hand, if someone wishing to keep this file can establish that this noticeboard was in an area that was accessed by the general public (like a foyer), you might have a point here. I remember another image that you once pointed out is exhibited in the foyer of an NWS office. Although that was a post-1989 example, I would agree that this is "public exhibition" (not that it's relevant to the copyright status of that later work). But the actual annotation on the cover letter of the image in question says "post for staff", which does not suggest a public area. --Rlandmann (talk) 03:55, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

•   Keep. This was general publication. For distribution to be limited publication, it must be to a "definitely selected group and for a limited purpose, and without the right of diffusion, reproduction, distribution or sale." Distribution to a single person is still general publication unless there is a restriction placed on the circulation of the copy. Or, to put it another way, in order to be a limited publication, the distribution must involve some sort of confidentiality — the image must be communicated in a way that indicates it is only for the eyes of the "definitely selected group." Just because Metsch and Altenau would not have necessarily assumed that the photographs would have been included in Storm Data does not imply an understanding of any such confidentiality. The images could have reasonably been expected to be passed on to anyone interested, and there is certainly no express restriction on this. The tone of the letter, if anything, implies the opposite (although I do not base my judgment on that).

Additionally, for whatever it's worth, the NWS obviously later did receive a better copy of the photo (which is the one they put on their website), so your claim about low quality is inaccurate. Furthermore, while I don't have any evidence that the image was distributed or circulated to anyone, I don't know how you can say "the NWS did not, in fact, undertake any further distribution"; that seems, too, to be a mere assumption on your part. (Even if they didn't actually circulate it then, though, the question we must ask is whether they would have been prohibited from circulating it; I think the answer is no, and the fact that the NWS has no qualms about circulating the picture now is, if anything, evidence that the institution never had the expectation that the images were received with any sort of expectation that they be kept confidential.) D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 11:29, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Thank you D.Benjamin; I appreciate your input on this.

To qualify as limited publication, the distribution does not need to involve confidentiality or indicate that it is for the eyes only of the definitely selected group. This is not the case in either Academy of Motion Picture v. Creative House or Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. v. CBS, Inc. Considering the former, it's safe to say that very many people already knew what an Oscar statuette looked like by 1941, the year in which AMPAS registered copyright on it for the first time! As just one example, a quick search turned up a large photo of the statuette in the Niagara Falls Review, February 23, 1940, page 8. The statuette was demonstrably not confidential or restricted to the eyes of only its recipient.

The restriction on publication can be merely implied by what usually happens with such works. The former case quotes a historian to say that "In the early years [of the Academy Awards], a winner could hock his Oscar, melt it down, or shoot craps for it if he wanted." but also a statement from the same historian to acknowledge that nobody, in fact, ever had done any of those things. Based on what recipients actually did with their statuettes, no expectation was placed on AMPAS to forbid them from distributing them or copying them.

Similarly, although in later years, the NWS would publish weather images submitted by the public on their website or in Storm Data, they did not treat public submissions this way in 1974. Nor is there any evidence that the images were ever copied or circulated beyond the limited audience of the Cincinatti office. You are absolutely correct in pointing out that this is an assumption on my part, and I remain completely open to any evidence that anyone can provide to the contrary. In the meantime, I will see absence of evidence as prima facie evidence of absence. So, as far as the evidence takes us, the NWS of the pre-internet era behaved as if they did not expect to be able to distribute the images further, so there can be no expectation for Mr Altenau or Ms Metsch to have expressly forbidden further circulation

I am not convinced by your assertion that the copy of the image eventually published on the NWS website is from a source other than the photocopy that accompanied the original letter. Since becoming aware of its existence, I have believed that it is a different scan from ultimately the same original. I will contact the Cincinatti office to see if they can clarify. However, if you are correct about this, then the provenance of the higher-quality version is unknown: we are not privy to when it was supplied to the NWS or what conditions (if any) were attached to its supply. In this sense, we can be even less certain that this is a free image than the one first supplied, if indeed they are different.

Finally, the NWS is known to have published a third-party image of a weather event taken from a photographer's X account without their knowledge or consent. In another instance, they recently unpublished photos because when I asked them about their provenance, they said they couldn't be sure if they had ever been allowed to publish them in the first place. In another instance, they had published photos supplied by a county historical society even though the society itself said they could not verify that they were out of copyright. I have seen them publish a recent Getty image without any attribution at all, and publish a recent AP image (complete with watermark!) on a page that stated that the images on the page were in the public domain. I have personally contacted dozens of copyright holders who have all claimed that they never surrendered their copyrights even though when the NWS used them by permission, they did not attach a copyright notice to the images the way that the general site disclaimer implies that they will for works not in the public domain. In short, the NWS' treatment of third-party copyrights on their website is a complete shambles, and nothing about the copyright status of an image can be inferred by the fact that the NWS of the 21st century put it online. --Rlandmann (talk) 13:30, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

When I used the word "confidentiality," perhaps I was not using the best word. It's not exactly about keeping something a secret, necessarily — but there certainly has to be some sort of expectation of no further distribution, even if such expectation is not entirely spelled out.

I could say a number of things about 9th Circuit judgments on publication, but even the 9th Circuit says in Academy: "Similarly here, neither the Academy nor any living Oscar recipient has ever offered to transfer an Oscar to the general public. Each Oscar trophy is personalized with the name of the individual winner, reflecting the Academy's expectation that the trophy will belong to the recipient alone. Although the Academy has given Oscar recipients permission to advertise their awards, it has never given them permission to sell or distribute their Oscars. Finally, the Academy has done nothing to suggest that recipients are free to make copies of the Oscars and distribute them." It's not only that no recipient had ever happened to sell the trophy; there were indications that the recipients were expected not to. In Estate of Marin Luther King, Jr., the situation is also quite different; I don't think that media outlets receiving an advance transcription before the speech's delivery would have been expected to publish it without permission — i.e., the copies would actually be distributed with an understanding of confidentiality. I don't think that any restriction on circulation is implied in the Metsch letter. Metsch's tone, and the actions taken by her and Altenau in copying the photo again, seem to imply an eagerness to share the image with whomever, in order to disseminate the information as much as may be desired.

My comment on the source of the scan being different has nothing to do with copyright law. I happen to do archival scanning as part of my job, and, to my eyes, the quality issues you see in Metsch.pdf are not issues with the digital scan of the document (look at how the letter is represented in smooth grayscale); they clearly reflect the quality of the physical letter which was put into the digital scanner — and those low-quality images are reflective of typical 1970s photocopying technology of the kind to which Metsch refers. So I'm fairly certain that the NWS website images are copies made from the higher-quality duplicates which Metsch says Altenau is getting made. However, in contrast to your view that this makes it "even less certain" that the images are free, I think the duplication both strongly implies Altenau's desire to have Metsch act on his behalf and distribute the photo without restriction (i.e., Metsch was not a rogue agent) and to distribute the images in a form suitable for further circulation (because, if not, then I think there would be considerably less reason to care about quality). I also think that it's highly implausible that the images were not sent before 1989; I strongly suspect they were sent within weeks of this letter. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 22:02, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Thank you. I am satisfied by your and Glrx (talk · contribs)'s analysis that we are seeing two separate copies of the image, and I concur that it is most likely that the higher-resolution version is a copy that Ms Metsch says in her letter that Mr Altenau hoped to make. I have made amendments to the factual section of this DR to reflect this consensus. I hope this is OK.

Also not under dispute here is Ms Metsch's willingness (and I agree with you, even eagerness!) to circulate copies of Mr Altenau's images. However, I don't see that this eagerness extended to "whomever" -- just to the NWS, as a volunteer observer taking her duties very seriously, and actually maybe no further than the regional office she reported into. We have no evidence, for example, that this image was offered to the press (and I have searched archives for it unsuccessfully; if it were ever so offered, no evidence has yet emerged that any paper took it up).

And of course, this DR hinges not on circulation, but on whether this circulation amounted to "general publication".

I agree with your point that Academy also took into account an expectation of what recipients would do with their statuettes. In the case of Mr Altenau's photos, what might he and Ms Metsch have reasonably expected a regional forecasting office of the NWS to have done with the photos? I think they could have reasonably expected the meteorologists employed there to study the photos, and for them to be circulated within the office for both scientific and general curiosity, and maybe even filed away somewhere. I do not see any evidence that copying or further circulation was expected. Put another way: where and how might Mr Altenau have reasonably expected NWS Cincinatti publish his images, so that he would have had to specifically disallow this use?

My own experience of corresponding with multiple (dozens by now?) NWS regional offices (technically, WFOs -- weather forecasting offices) over the last few months is that the NWS is very highly decentralized, with WFOs managing their own archives and publications and quite disconnected from their regional headquarters let alone the national organization. (I also have correspondence from someone at the national level expressing frustration at the same!) I very much doubt the physical prints supplied by Ms Metsch ever left NWS Cincinatti and are likely archived there to this day. I have emailed the office to see what more they can tell me about the images. I mention this both for its relevance both to how NWS Cincinatti actually handled images supplied to it, and also what Ms Metsch's reasonable expectation might have been when she submitted somebody else's photos to them.

As to the advance copies of Dr King's speech, again, this is an example of implicit expectations about how the people who received advance copies would treat them, and I have raised it as an example of how "limited publication" does not require an explicit statement by the copyright holder. (There's another parallel with regard to circulation of the speech by a third party closely associated with Dr King, but let's stick with the question of implicit vs explicit limitation for now).

Other, less celebrated cases cited in Academy also demonstrate the murkiness of the "limitation on further copying" element:

• Brewer v. Hustler Magazine, Inc. -- distribution of an image on a business card estimated to have been handed out 200 times without a copyright notice.
• Burke v. National Broadcasting Co. -- supplying a video without a copyright notice to be broadcast on TV (and which was actually broadcast)
• Hirshon v. United Artists Corporation -- promotional distribution of a song to 2,000 radio stations without a copyright notice; especially interesting because it appears to reverse the expectation that the copyright holder should express a limitation, and instead notes "Nothing was said or done, beyond the described distribution, to give any recipient of a copy the impression that he could make any use of it without first obtaining the proprietor's license."

Note that in all of this, that although I do believe that we're looking at only "limited publication" of Mr Altenau's image, we don't necessarily need to decide this question to know if we can keep it here. Under COM:PRP, if we have "significant doubt" about the freedom of the image, we must delete. I think that the general murkiness and uncertainty around the "limited publication" vs "general publication" question immeditately rises to that level of doubt (and would also reach this level in a court: look at the history of the King v CBS litigation!) --Rlandmann (talk) 23:20, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think you have taken a backwards view of the role of reasonable expectations. There is a difference between a reasonable understanding that a work will not be circulated and a lack of an expectation that it will be circulated.

A group of missionaries handing out pamphlets to people and insisting that they pass it on in a neighborhood where they know everyone is hostile to their religion cannot reasonably expect someone to actually pass something on (so, there is a lack of expectation of further distribution). But they certainly cannot say, if the work ends up circulated, that, in distributing it, they were doing so with the understanding that it not be circulated.

In Academy, certain attributes of the award communicate the Academy's expectation that it will not be circulated or copied. In the King case, a reasonable speech-maker's impression upon handing advance copies to the media is that they will not be distributed. Even in Brewer, which doesn't actually address this element, there is an argument that, when sharing business cards for this particular purpose, that there is an implied limitation on the distribution and reproduction of the card, and, in particular, when the photograph itself is included on the business card in a specifically reduced form, that this might draw a distinction between this case and one involving distributing a photo in an ideal format to be distributed on its own.

In this case, while there might not have been an expectation that the NWS would in fact distribute the image, there certainly seems to me nothing resembling even a hint of an implication that it was expected that the NWS refrain from circulating the image further. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 04:46, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

•   Delete I'm not happy with the fact pattern, so I will invoke COM:PCP. We have no direct communication from Altenau about his intentions. Altenau may have brought the polaroids to work, Metsch saw them, and they used a Xerox machine at work to make copies. Altenau may have thought he was just giving a copy to a friend/coworker who had an interest in the weather event. The NWS letter is only hearsay for Altenau's position. I could read some consent into the phrase "we'll send you" but I am reluctant to read that much into a pronoun, and the letter is still not a statement from Altenau. The Commons image is not the image from the letter: it is slightly better quality, there are no fold marks, and no apparent Xerox-disease at the borders. However, the picture quality is still not great, and maybe Metsch's letter included unfolded first-generation Xerox copies in addition to second-generation copies shown in the letter. Even if Altenau made some subsequent high-quality copies, he could have given them to Metsch without expecting a broad release or even that she would forward the copies to the NWS. It is not like he is giving the photo to the local TV station to be broadcast on the six o'clock news. Glrx (talk) 21:14, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I do concur with your conclusion that the photo on the NWS website is clearly a different, higher-quality copy, and not the low-quality photocopy found in the letter. But I think that this, if anything, strengthens the impression that Altenau was involved (and that Metsch was acting on his behalf, rather than behind his back). Whether or not this means there was divestive publication is another issue, but I don't think there should be any significant doubt that Altenau made the better copies in order to, if anything, facilitate circulation. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 21:33, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • For the record (and the future closing admin), I agree that there are two separate copies here. I don't agree that the motive for the supply of a better copy of the photo was to facilitate circulation -- that seems too big a leap. I think it's more likely that that motive was simply so that meteorologists at NWS Cincinnati could get a better look at the tornado. Another obstacle to that suggestion is the question of to whom, how, and where might Mr Altenau and Ms Metsch be hoping the the image to be circulated?

  I also take Glrx's comment about the fact pattern. Re-framing it: if somebody uploaded an image to us and sent an email to the VRT to say "My co-worker took this and said they were happy for it to be released under CC-BY-SA", we (rightly) would not accept that as evidence of permission. Mr Altenau's image is only on the Commons because it has, in effect, been laundered through the NWS the same way. --Rlandmann (talk) 23:32, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Your re-framing is comparing apples and oranges. Under current copyright regime, all rights are reserved by default and must be licensed intentionally in order to be free. Under the old regime, the common law copyright holder allowing general publication to occur without a notice caused the work to enter the public domain. This didn't need to be intentional, either. Dedication to the public domain often (in fact, almost always) occurred accidentally when someone caused a work to be generally published without a proper copyright notice. So the necessity of intent (and corresponding standard of evidence) are totally different. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 04:17, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Your position here misrepresents the the pre-1989 default in a fundamental and crucial way. During the relevant regime, all rights were also reserved by default under state copyright (usually, though not entirely accurately, referred to as "common-law copyright". From here on, I will use the more familiar term).

  The effect of the 1909 Act was to introduce a federal, statutory copyright that would pre-empt the creator's common-law copyright at the moment of publication for a very wide variety of works (while unfortunately not defining what acts would constitute "publication" for the purpose of this pre-emption). At that moment, common-law copyright would be lost for any work covered by the 1909 Act, and federal copyright would only be secured if a formal notice accompanied the publication. (Note that for works of a type not covered by the 1909 or subsequent Acts, common-law copyright might still exist in the US.)

  You're absolutely correct that under this regime, it was easy for a creator to unintentionally lose their common-law copyright without securing a federal copyright in its place. And the harshness of this is precisely why courts developed the doctrine of limited publication. And whether or not publication was limited or general depends entirely on precisely what a creator allowed (regardless of their intention, as you say).

  Our only evidence for what Mr Altenau specifically allowed is hearsay and circumstantial. And although intention is irrelevant here, the specifics of that allowance are. The question of exactly what a common-law copyright holder allowed other people to do with their work comes up in various pieces of litigation brought by Dr King and his estate over protection of "I Have a Dream". For example, in King v. Mister Maestro, Inc, Dr King claimed that he had not allowed copies of his speech to be added to the press kit available from the press tent at the March on Washington. But he had distributed copies to the press representatives of the organizing committee of the March "and apparently did not forbid its reproduction for the press". Similarly, in Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr. v. CBS, his estate disputed whether Dr King had authorized the newsletter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to publish the text of the speech without a copyright notice before Dr King had registered its copyright. The fact that (very widespread) copying by third parties (very) closely associated with Dr King had occurred was not under dispute by the various parties in these cases, but that he had allowed the copying was.

  So, while analogies exist because situations are not absolutely identical, far from being "apples and oranges", the key elements to establishing what Mr Altenau allowed have very close parallels:

  • both the hypothetical photographer of today and Mr Altenau own a copyright by default: the former a statutory copyright, the latter a common-law copyright
  • both the hypothetical uploader and Ms Metsch had access to a copy of the respective works, which they say they are permitted to have by the copyright holder
  • both say that the respective copyright holders have allowed them to further distribute the copy in their control to third parties (the Commons or NWS Cincinatti)
  • in neither case do we have any reason to doubt the character, integrity, or bona fides of the supplier of the image, but in general we (rightfully) do not accept hearsay about what copyright holders allow others to do with their works.

  Rlandmann (talk) 23:45, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  We know for a fact that the better copy (referenced by Metsch as being prepared by Altenau for this purpose) was provided. That fact is not hearsay.

  If you really take this principle to the extreme, then you would have to distrust the legal publication of a great deal of works, on the basis that we do not have first-hand evidence from the author that publication was made under the authority of the author.

  There should be no significant doubt that Altenau allowed for the photo to be sent to the NWS by Metsch, and this sending was made without any explicit or implicit reservation of rights. (In fact, copyright could be lost even when the fact that no notice was included was only the fault of the publisher or agent, so, again, another non-parallel.)

  There are two totally separate questions here. One is whether or not the transmission of the pictures to the NWS was done with the assent of Altenau. To not say "yes" is to set an unreasonably high standard. The second question is whether or not this transmission resulted in general publication, to which I gave my answer above. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 02:01, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • I certainly do not propose the extreme position that you are suggesting. And I concur that in practically every image we host here that was not uploaded by its creator, there is some element of trust involved. Nor do I dispute that it is significantly more likely that a pre-1989 US work inadvertently lost its common-law copyright than a more recent work lost its statutory copyright. And then, our opinions diverge :)

  Because of the ease with which common-law copyright could be lost without securing a statutory copyright in its place pre-1989, you say that we do not require the same standard of proof from people who handled and supplied other people's work. But I say that this means we need to hold suppliers to (at least) the same standard of proof because we have a duty to the creator of the work to be especially careful. In the case of the third-party supplier of today, the original creator's copyright is quite robust. There is practically nothing that a supplier can do that could affect somebody else's right to their intellectual property. In the case of a pre-1989 work, mistakes certainly could (but do not necessarily, see King again) have that effect (as you say). To me, that means we need to be very sure about what a creator actually allowed and under what conditions. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume that the second copy supplied to NWS Cincinatti also came to them via Ms Metsch (it's a very reasonable assumption, but of course, we don't even know that!)

  We do know that:

  • Ms Metsch supplied two copies of Mr Altenau's image to NWS Cincinatti. I agree that there is no significant doubt that Mr Altenau allowed this supply.
  • Ms Metsch's supply of the first, photocopied image did not arrive at NWS Cincinatti with any explicit reservation of rights.

  We do not know if:

  • Mr Altenau authorized Ms Metsch's supply of the first copy without any explicit reservation -- this is hearsay.
  • what explicit reservation of rights (if any) accompanied the second image -- we are not privy to this one way or another.

  I'll comment further on the limited publication vs general publication in a separate comment elsewhere in this discussion soon, but this is why I think there are fundamental gaps in the evidence itself, even before we get to drawing conclusions from it. --Rlandmann (talk) 01:44, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I disagree with that there are significant (and relevant) doubts in the evidence.

  1. As you acknowledge, there is no significant doubt that Altenau authorized Metsch to send the photos in the first place. With this understood, there is no need to get into whether or not Altenau directed or authorized Metsch to do so specifically without making an explicit reservation on his behalf, because the fact that the distribution occurred in this way was what released the item into the public domain. To give you a real-world example, Night of the Living Dead was intended to be distributed with a copyright notice. The production company had included a copyright notice on the original prints, but, when the title was altered by the original distributor, this notice was inadvertently removed. Even though the film's original producer (the owner of the common-law copyright) hadn't approved of the fact that distribution would occur without a notice, this didn't prevent the film from entering the public domain. If you grant that Metsch's distribution was allowed by Altenau, then delving into whatever state of mind Altenau might have had about making reservations is irrelevant.
  2. Granting (at least arguendo, and I think it's reasonable) a separate copyright on the better version of the image, I highly doubt there was an explicit reservation of rights. Not only do I imagine that such a reservation would have been out of place given the tone of Metsch's first letter, I think that, if one had been made ("Do not distribute this image"), the NWS would not have posted the image on their website. (I know that you will point out that the modern NWS has at some point posted some unlicensed material on their site. But this is apples and oranges; in the modern social media environment, copyright is automatic, even as there is a culture of copying images that one finds anywhere online for certain purposes. I can easily believe that an NWS person would have copied an image from third-party social media post without getting explicit permission to release it into the public domain. I find it much harder to believe that this image would have been sent with an explicit non-distribution clause and that, if there were one, an NWS employee would have gone against it in publishing the image online.) In any case, while I do not believe there is significant doubt, this fact can probably be cleared up by NWS Cincinnati.

  D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 07:40, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm still at delete under the notion of limited publication. Say it is 1974 and I'm at home. I smell smoke and notice my neighbor's house is on fire. I call 911 to report the fire. Then I get my Polaroid camera and snap some pictures before the fire department gets there. The next day, I go to work and show my photos to coworkers. Display is not publication, so I'm safe there. Turns out, one of my coworkers is a volunteer fireman, he knows about the fire, and he knows that the fire is suspicious. He asks for a copy of the Polaroids to help the investigation. I copy the Polaroids and turn the copies over to the volunteer fireman. I'm not willing to call that general publication. Tornados were/are poorly understood, and providing some photos to some government meteorologists to help them understand tornados better seems to be a reasonable thing to do with a limited purpose. Glrx (talk) 01:19, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]