Commons:Village pump/Copyright

Help promote VPC

Please help make sure that this venue for discussing copyright issues is appropriately linked from other Wikimedia wikis. Examples include en:Wikipedia:Media copyright questions and its equivalents. However in linking here please make it clear that the primary venue for copyright discussions should be that wiki. Users should come here only for discussing copyright issues relevant to Commons - most commonly files which could potentially be moved to Commons where questions arising cannot be answered locally.

photograph of 2D mosaic - 2nd century A.D. has copyright?

[1] in this article there are two images of Roman mosaics (2nd century AD). The phographs are public domain, since they are representing 2D art? If they are public domain what license I have to use to upload them in commons? Ggia (talk) 11:35, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Probably use {{PD-Art-100}}. cmadler (talk) 13:39, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Even though the underlying art may be two-dimensional, the photographs have been taken in a way that does not bring that out properly. They have been taken at an angle and there are three-dimensional artefacts in the photographs (like the stone block in the lower photograph). Thus, I'm of the view that the photographs are sufficiently creative to attract their own copyright, and can't be used without the photographer's permission. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 14:44, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

I guess I can see that for the second image, but the first image looks to me to be pretty much straight-on, and has most of the the 3D artifacts cropped away. If necessary, I suppose additional cropping or masking could be done in the two upper corners to fully eliminate the surrounding 3D aspects. cmadler (talk) 14:50, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, perhaps the top right-hand corner of the first image can be removed. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 15:21, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

I uploaded 4 images and I tried to crop elements that give 3-D dimention in the photograph:

• 
• 
• 
• 

If there is any problem with the copyright or license issue let me know. Thanks for the help. Ggia (talk) 17:44, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

i am confused.... about the possibility of commercial use

please help me: as far as i understand, i am allowed to commercially use content that i found through wikimedia. my plan is to develop a screensaver with images of famous people (sounds simple, but is in fact pretty artistic and randomized) and sell it. am i right or do i have to be careful?! single pictures include pretty complicated text about usage rights etc. (sorry, english is not my native language). thanks so much for your help! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fujfuji (talk • contribs) 23:35, 21 November 2012‎ (UTC)

Well, you are basically right but you have to be careful as well. Images on Commons are meant to be available for re-use including commercial use indeed, but the requirements of the various free licenses differ. You are probably on the safe side, license-wise, if you use only images marked as public domain or {{Cc-zero}}, these allow re-use without any conditions. If you use images requiring attribution, such as CC-BY or CC-BY-SA (the most popular license here), you have to attribute the images (e.g. in some form of credits in your screensaver); also, I think, if a "SA" license is involved (such as CC-BY-SA), you can sell your screensaver, but it must be distributed under a CC-BY-SA license ("you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one") which would allow anyone to re-distribute it free of charge, probably not your intention... Also, with images of people, there may be issues of personality rights involved. A living famous person might object to inclusion in your screensaver, I think.... So I think: If you want to be completely on the safe side and don't agree to distributing your screensaver under a free license, use only public domain images of long-dead people. Someone correct me if I'm wrong ;-) Gestumblindi (talk) 02:19, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

--> thank you so much for your time and effort! cheers from hamburg/germany -- 13:49, 22 November 2012 User:Fujifuji

Fujfuji -- even if there are no copyright problems, if you imply in any way that the people endorse or voluntarily participated in your project, then that could cause big problems in some legal jurisdictions (see California Celebrities Rights Act etc.). AnonMoos (talk) 14:22, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

@AnonMoos: thanks for the hint... does that mean, that in your opinion, i shouldn´t take the risk of using pictures of dead celebrities? here is an exmaple: http://www.flickr.com/photos/usmcarchives/6780263280/ ...as far as i understand, i have the right to edit this picture (for example crop the face and edit contrast etc) and use it in a commercial project as long i name the "author" (in this case: Robert H. McKinley Collection (COLL/4802) at the Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections). i really wanna be on the safe side but i don´t like to contact people, ask for the rights to use single pictures etc ...as i´ll use hundreds of pictures... -- 19:23, 22 November 2012‎ Fujfuji

Indeed, her estate may object to it. In general, using pictures of famous people from a site which only tracks copyright status and not personality rights status (like Wikimedia Commons) is a bad idea. Why don't you try some of our nature pictures? I'm sure there are great ones in there to use for a screensaver. (Note that if you use CC-BY-SA licensed photos, then you must license your derivative work under the same license.) -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 20:06, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Fujfuji -- What I think is that if your product is like a big book illustrated here and there with suitable PD or CC-licensed photographs, then there should be little problem -- but if your product is like a pin-up calendar, so that the photographs basically are the product, and you don't have model releases from the people in the photographs, then you need to talk to an actual lawyer with real experience in this legal area... AnonMoos (talk) 08:16, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Category:Wojciech Kossak

This artist died in 1942, so his works will be in PD since January 1, 2013. But now we have a lot of his works in category.--Anatoliy (talk) 12:11, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

His works will PD in life+70 nations on January 1, 2013. Fortunately, it seems he did his work prior to 1923, so no US issues arise. Historically, when a DR has come up on something like this, we've left it open for a few months and closed it in January as clearly PD. On one hand, technically we should delete them now and tag them undelete in 2013. On the other, this is not a copyright issue, since they are out of copyright in the jurisdiction the WMF has to worry about it; it's just a Commons policy issue. We really should get on about people doing this, but I don't think anyone is going to mess with something that we'll just undelete in 37 days.--Prosfilaes (talk) 13:00, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Agreement to add pictures from http://photoarchive.spb.ru/start.do?language=2 & copyright?

Not really sure if this fits here so I apologize in advance in case it does not (and would be grateful in someone could point me to the right place where I can ask). I was wondering if Wikipedia has some sort of agreement similar to the one struck with other institutions (Bundesarchiv, etc) to transfer some pre-revolutionary (1917) images from the Central State Archive at http://photoarchive.spb.ru which, if my understanding is correct, are in the public domain in both US and Russia (per PD-US and PD-RusEmpire). I think articles on that period (I am thinking Russian revolution but many others could also profit) could greatly improve from such addition of images. Does anyone know:

1. If the images are indeed in PD?
2. If there is an agreement in place of plans to sign one in the near future?

Thank you!--Rowanwindwhistler (talk) 10:14, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

The copyright status of these images depends on death dates of their authors. Ruslik (talk) 11:38, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm, shouldn't they be in the public domain no matter when the authors died as per PD-RusEmpire if the pictures were taken before November 7th 1917 (the October Revolution)?--Rowanwindwhistler (talk) 12:03, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

The special thing about the agreement with the Bundesarchiv was that the Bundesarchiv was able to release a large number of photographs that are not in the public domain under a free license (CC-BY-SA) because they own the rights, and so Commons received a generous amount of very valuable photos we (in many cases) otherwise still couldn't use for decades. If images are in the public domain, no special agreement is needed to use/upload them IMHO. Gestumblindi (talk) 15:25, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

I am no expert whatsoever but agree with the analysis. The only problem with the pictures, if they are indeed in PD as I assume they are if I am understanding PD-US and PD-RusEmpire correctly, is that they are shown with a rather inconvenient watermark that makes them hard to use in our articles. Hence I thought that maybe a similar agreement to the Bundesarchiv's could help us get some very relevant images without the marks (and probably transfer them in an easier way than uploading them one by one). And I thought maybe that agreement may already be in place and I was not aware of it...--Rowanwindwhistler (talk) 21:31, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Freelance photographer working for US State Department - public domain?

Freelance photographer Scott Chernis was enlisted by the US Department of State as their official photographer for the 2011 APEC Leaders' Week [2]. Are the images he took {{PD-USGov}}? They are on the US State Department's Flickr channel with a US Government Work licence but have © 2011 Scott Chernis Photography in the EXIF. January (talk) 19:35, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Depends on whether there's a legal "work-for-hire" situation or equivalent... AnonMoos (talk) 00:26, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like the EXIF data is the photographer's standard and he forgot to change it... but a definitive answer can only be had from the State Dept. Rd232 (talk) 00:56, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Chinese photo

May I upload this photo of Dagu Glacier in China showing a CC BY 3.0 licence? I am definitely not on expert on copyright matters and would rather ask before creating problems. --AHert (talk) 15:50, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, a CC BY 3.0 license is fine for Commons. -- Asclepias (talk) 16:01, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. --AHert (talk) 16:18, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Maurice Ravel

There's a copyright-related question that has been suspending for many months an upload request at Commons:Batch uploading/Works of Maurice Ravel. It could probably use more opinions to help users there decide what to do one way or the other. Maybe a notification here can help advance the discussion there, as upload request pages may not be watched by the same people who usually watch copyright-related pages. -- Asclepias (talk) 15:55, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Misha B and Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The photographer has givem permission to use this photograph

http://www.flickr.com/photos/reds42/8170543433/in/photostream

...................................................................

Date: 25th November, 2012

Hi Zoe,

Done - just for that image. Cheers, Nick.

...................................................................

under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

is it ok for me/or someone else to upload it for use on Misha B's wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misha_B

I must admit I am not confident about how to upload.Zoeblackmore (talk) 17:45, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

No, not to Commons. See Commons:Licensing... AnonMoos (talk) 17:55, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Or in short: Commons doesn't accept "NonCommercial" and "NoDerivs". If you can persuade the photographer to license the image e.g. as CC-BY-SA or CC-BY, it would be usable for Commons. Commons only accepts images that allow commercial reuse and derivatives. Gestumblindi (talk) 18:41, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your speedy replies 85.211.121.166 22:08, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Photographs of sculptures in the US

en:File:Izquierdodreamer.jpg is tagged to be moved to commons.

Commons:Public art and copyrights in the US has me scratching my head. Installation is publication, and a photo of a sculpture is a derivative work.

Here is the artwork's record at SIRIS.

There is no copyright registration of this work. If it can be reasonably assumed there is no copyright notice on the work itself, then is {{PD-US-1978-89}} a good licence? Is it a safe assumption to make? --Moogsi (talk) 22:18, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

It depends what you mean by "safe", and what level of risk you want to take. Your statement "installation is publication" seems much bolder than what is said in section "After 1978" of the Commons page to which you linked and in the information circular by the U.S. Copyright Office.[3] By the way, the City of Portland say they installed this sculpture in 1979.[4] Don't know where SIRIS took their 1981 date, although that doesn't make a difference for the copyright status. -- Asclepias (talk) 23:34, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

{{PD-US-1978-89}} only applies if you can show that multiple 3D copies of the statue has been distributed to the general public without a copyright notice. In most cases, there is only one 3D copy of the work (the original work in its original location), and for what it is worth, "distribution to the general public" might require that you can transport your own copy to any location of your choice, as opposed to keeping it at the place where it is permanently located. The sculpture seems to be unpublished. --Stefan4 (talk) 23:41, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. You are quite right.. by trying to simplify this I've got it completely wrong! Help:FOP#United_States makes it a bit clearer to me. --Moogsi (talk) 01:40, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

As a simplification, you should check the date of installation. If the work was installed before 1978, then it is almost always published. If, on the other hand, it was installed after 1977, then it is almost always unpublished. The copyright notice requirement only applies to published works but not to unpublished works. --Stefan4 (talk) 02:14, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

File:Mdsa046558m.jpg

I am concerned about the licence claim for File:Mdsa046558m.jpg. This is a movie poster which the uploader claims to be their own work, and has licensed under the "Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license". The Metadata shows it to be from Photoshop.

This bears no resemblance whatsoever to the poster previously used on the Mugamoodi article i.e. this which is on en-wiki with a fair-use rationale. This user has uploded 4 files to commons, all four with a claim that it is their own work. Arjayay (talk) 17:48, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

It's either a copyvio or if self-created, out of scope as a non-notable fanart. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:21, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Agreed - so, how do I get someone to delete these 4 files? - Arjayay (talk) 08:45, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Using Wikipedia itself and it's images to help create a music video.

Hello Wiki people,

I'm in the process of making a music video (for free) for a musical group and had the idea of using the contents of wikipedia and wikicommons as the place that it would take place. Action would travel from one page to the next and show content and images that I need.

Cool, or not? (and by cool, I mean is this okay).

Thanks for your time. Much appreciated. I just donated, and will again if I go through with this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bentobjects (talk • contribs) 02:50, 27 November 2012‎ (UTC)

Most images here are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 (CC-BY-SA 3.0) license, meaning that they can be used for any purpose as long as you give credit to the author(s), mention the name of the license, and release any derivative work under the same license. The first and second requirements are easy to fulfill. It's the third requirement that you might run into trouble with. Since for anything you produce using images under this license, you must agree to license your work under the same license, everything you use to make it must either be your own work or released under this license. For a music video, that means that the musical group must agree to release whatever song is in the music video under the CC-BY-SA-3.0. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:20, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your speedy response. I think this is still a good idea, but I will have to save it for another time, using my own audio elements.

Won't there be an issue concerning the Wikipedia and Wikimedia logos? I'm not sure of the copyright position concerning them. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 14:36, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

They are (mostly) non-free. There should be links to the terms on the description pages. --LPfi (talk) 23:56, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

{{Personality rights}} and countries where personality rights protection is a part of the copyright law?

Forgive me if this has already been discussed before on Commons, but I haven't been able to find any such discussions :(

This photo is taken in Austria, where the right to ones portrait (which as far as I can see, is simply defined as a photograph portraying one or more persons) is protected by the Austrian Copyright Act §78. In Germany a similar situation is in fact present. In the English translation of {{Personality rights}} it is stated that Personality rights restrictions apply independently of copyright, but in at least these two countries this does in fact not seem to be the case. Yet there are most likely thousands of photo in Category:People of Germany and with {{Personality rights}}. So:

1. Is the Commons community simply ignoring the fact that in some countries the personality right is a part of the copyright and if so how does that relate to COM:PCP?
2. Is the community considering it a neighbouring right (of sorts) that is simply a part of the same legal document? (which could work in the case of Germany I think)
3. Am I missing out on something very essential here?

I'm not - not at all - rooting for us to start a mass deletion hysteria here, but I do find it curios that it doesn't appear to have been a subject of discussion previously. In kind regards, Henrik/heb [T C E] 10:25, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't matter whether personality rights are actually part of copyright law or not. Legally, we only need to comply with US law, so we can say whatever we want, e.g. that UK reproductions of paintings are PD-Art. Likewise, we can say here that personality rights are not part of copyright law. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 10:40, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

In Germany, yes those rights are separate from the economic rights associated with being able to prevent derivative works etc. They are also not subject to international treaty the way that copyrights are. Similarly, moral rights are typically part of copyright laws (and are dealt with by the Berne Convention), but even those are separate too. There is some level of restricted use, but the concept of "free" is centered around those economic rights in particular; any others are Commons:Non-copyright restrictions. If you think simply hosting an image here is breaking the law, that might be reason for deletion. But there is a guidance page at Commons:Photographs of identifiable people. Carl Lindberg (talk) 11:49, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Poster Image - License Granted

http://osmond.com/boogie-nights-the-70s-musical-osmonds/

This image was uploaded to Wiki Commons and deleted because there was a copyright notice on the page. Now that the copyright notice has been removed by the copyright owners, can the image be uploaded again per the rights granted on the page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by WhatIfWeCould (talk • contribs) 11:22, 28 November 2012‎ (UTC)

Looks OK to me. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 14:05, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Analysis of Austrian copyright law

At de:Wikipedia:Urheberrechtsfragen, an excellent analysis of Austrian copyright law has been posted. On that basis, I created the new templates {{PD-Austria-1932}} and {{PD-Austria-survey}}. For convenience purposes, I am translating the analysis here, somewhat abridged to cover only the important details.

---

The first Austrian copyright law came into effect in 1936. It protected literature, audio recordings, artworks and films (per §1) and also architecture (per §3) for a duration of 50 years pma (per §60). Photographs (there was no distinction between simple photographs and photographic works) were covered by §73 and §74. These were protected for 20 years after publication, or creation if unpublished within 20 years. In 1949 only a minor detail concerning music was changed, which need not bother us here.

1953 was a big change. A distinction between photographic works and simple photographs was introduced. However, works which were already free in 1953 did not regain copyright protection due to being considered as photographic works by virtue of Article II, section 3. Also, works of the government survey organization, the Bundesamt für Eich- und Vermessungswesen, were specifically excluded from being considered as government works per §7, but again, Article II, section 5 specifies that this does not apply to works published before the law came into effect. This is pretty convenient to us, as it allows us to host a whole lot of Austrian works.

Now comes the EU Copyright Directive. As it turns out, the Austrian government was very sloppy when implementing it into Austrian law. The implementation is found in the copyright law of 1996, Article VIII, section 2:

(2) In the case that this federal law prolongs the copyright term, it applies to works, performances, broadcasts and simple photographs created before April 1, 1996, if:

1. the copyright term of the work hadn't expired yet by July 1, 1995, according to the previously valid laws, or
2. the work was protected in any country of the European Economic Area and its term according to the local law hadn't expired yet by July 1, 1995.

The wording says that copyright harmonization is only applied when this federal law (and not the copyright harmonization by itself) prolongs a copyright term. This doesn't however apply to general works, which had been 70 pma since 1972. Therefore, Austria did not implement the EU copyright directive for most works. It did however apply to simple photographs, whose copyright term was prolonged in this federal law, from 30 years to 50 years. (However, this won't affect most works, since threshold of originality is very low in Austria.)

---

This basically means a whole lot of historic Austrian works are free to use. And since they were free at the URAA date, they're free in the US as well. -- Liliana-60 (talk) 17:41, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Maybe free to use in Austria, maybe also in the US. But as the analysis at de.wp you quote says not necessarily free to use in e. g. Germany (in which case the German wikipedia couldn't use them) and other European countries. So your templates should have parts warning about that, like Template:PD-US/de uses Template:Urheberrechtlich geschützt. --Rosenzweig τ 21:19, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Of course. But Commons needn't concern that. And actually, the template you linked to is terrible, because it says "ist das Werk in [...] Österreich [...] urheberrechtlich geschützt", which doesn't apply at all here. -- Liliana-60 (talk) 21:26, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

That template is not terrible in any way, it just served as an example for a warning template. I didn't say anywhere you should use that exact template. And Commons does concern itself with warning its users about such discrepancies in national copyright laws. --Rosenzweig τ 21:35, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Not formally. We have a lot of works tagged sufficiently for their home nations and sometimes for the US too, but that don't even try to be tagged for the world. We don't generally object to such warnings, but I certainly wouldn't trust the lack of such a warning to mean anything.--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:53, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

You're right about that; in this case however, with the German language wikipedia and persons from Germany often not able to use such files, a warning seems to be important to me. Commons is more than just wikipedia's image repository, quite true, but wikipedia is still a major reuser of Commons files. In the case of Austrian images, the German wikipedia (and other users from Germany apart from wikipedia) would most likely be the most interested in them, more interested IMO than the English wikipedia (and Austrian as well as US users) that could use those files if they are free in Austria and the US. --Rosenzweig τ 14:48, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Template:PD-NL-gemeentewapen

{{PD-NL-gemeentewapen}} says

Everybody is allowed to make a drawing of the arms (on paper or electronically) in his/her own style based on the Royal Decree and claim it to be the arms of the municipality and uses it within the restrictions shown above. But there is copyright on each individual representation of the arms. This copyright lies with the artist that made that specific drawing based on the Royal Decree, not by the municipality.

This is just standard coat of arms freedom of heraldic representation. How is it the basis for a PD tag?? Rd232 (talk) 13:48, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

{{PD-old}}

This is an extremely unhelpful trap template, that expects you to add another template as well. Can't even the slightest bit of simplification happen here? Adam Cuerden (talk) 16:07, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

What do you want to happen? We can't change a template that's used on thousands of files to say something it doesn't.--Prosfilaes (talk) 17:39, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Many, even most, PD tags don't apply in both the US and the source country, and per Commons:Licensing the files therefore require at least 2 PD tags, one for the US, and one for the source country. "Combined" PD tags are collected in Category:PD US+source license tags; all other PD tags are not combined. Incidentally, it is an extremely unhelpful template which is widely misunderstand and misused, and I did recently try to deprecate it so that it would gradually be replaced by more specific tags. That didn't go anywhere. Rd232 (talk) 17:48, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Files from a South African archive with no known publication history

There are a number of photos uploaded by User:Doortmont (usually, if not always, to English Wikipedia and then transferred here by others) which are taken from an archive the user had access to in South Africa. The standard permission added to the files is Use of this digital copy for academic research and publication was granted by the Provincial Archives of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa, but only with full credentials and if possible notification to mailto:m.r.doortmont@rug.nl. I don't know what that is, but it's not quite a release into the public domain. The images may be public domain for other reasons, but I'm not sure what they are, or if we have enough information to figure it out. Some of the files, like File:JHBrand VA1026.jpg, have been tagged {{PD-South Africa}}, others {{PD-old}}, even though there is no evidence of prior publication and no individual author is named (sometimes a photography studio is given).

• File:PJBlignaut VA0948.jpg
• File:FWReitz VA0947.jpg
• File:WE Bok NP.jpg
• File:WE Bok CHM VA0908.jpg
• File:De Witt unveiling.jpg
• File:GGrey VA0898.jpg
• File:CJ Vels VA0901.jpg
• File:HAL Hamelberg VA0962.jpg
• File:HPN Muller VA0967.jpg
• File:CHWessels VA0963.jpg
• File:CBrand A1025.jpg
• File:PJBlignaut CHM VA1075.jpg
• File:CRdeWet VA0965.jpg
• File:Muller Toorop drawing.jpg

Above are listed some files affected by this which serve as examples (listed here because I've just removed the non-tag {{PD-Netherlands}} from them); the rest can be found by searching. So... how should these files be tagged? Do they need to be sent to DR? Rd232 (talk) 19:28, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Any reservations and credit requests about the use of the digital copies are covered by Commons policies about reproductions of two-dimensional works. If it is thought necessary, the templates PD-Art/PD-scan or their variants can be added, with the appropriate parameters. The reservations and/or credit requests should be mentioned for the accurate information of the reusers, but they are not an objection to hosting the files on Commons, provided the original works are free. General information on the Hendrik Muller collection at the Provincial Archives of the Free State can be found in this document. This impressive work is likely by the same person who is the uploader to en.wikipedia. From the footnote on page 10, another document apparently exists specifically about the photographic part of the collection, but I didn't find it online. Still, in the general catalogue it is possible to find useful information : "Hendrik Muller (...) bequeathed  the  collection  to  the  State  Archives  of  the  Orange  Free  State  on  his  death." Some photographs are well documented as to their respective authors and/or original publication. Well enough to ascertain their public domain status, both under US copyright law and the copyright law of the country of origin. Others may miss absolute proof of their first publication year, but in my opinion they pass a reasonable test that they were actually published, either near the time of their creation (they are type of photos which by their nature were obviously meant to be published, not hidden in the photographer's attic), or anyway at the time when their authors gave a copy to Muller, or to someone who gave it to Muller, i.e. in 1941 at the latest (Hendrik Muller died in 1941). The good faith assumption in that sort of situation, where photograhs have been transferred, is that they have been transferred legally, not stolen. And I think that when it is actually shown that they were actually published (in the loose pre-1978 US acception), then it is good enough for us, it is a prima facie proof that they are ok, and from that point there is a reversal of the burden of proof, i.e. it is reasonable to assume that the publication was legally made and that it was made without a restriction, unless someone provides evidence that it was made illegally or that there was a documented restriction. In conclusion, per the above facts and considering the professional archival work by the uploader about documenting those photographs, I think they are fine. -- Asclepias (talk) 21:41, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I guess I should have made clearer my thinking: that the photographs were legitimately acquired by the State Archives in question, but were not necessarily published before the uploader scanned them at the archive. I don't think it's right to assume publication too easily. Now I've found an email address for what I'm pretty sure is the uploader; let's see if that gets us more info. Rd232 (talk) 23:11, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

File:Logo who target.jpg

Surely {{PD-self}} doesn't apply here? It may be ineligible for copyright, but it's certainly not an original work. Guy0307 (talk) 07:07, 30 November 2012 (UTC)