Talk:Rhyolite, Nevada/Archive 2

"New" photos

I added in a couple of nice historic photos. Also available is this nice old postcard shot of the depot (date unknown) -- if we want to do a before and after. Cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 19:49, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

The images are good, and it would be wonderful to use them here if it could be verified that they are not protected by copyright. Mark Holloway on his Flickr site acknowledges at least some of his sources. The Rhyolite depot postcard is sourced to the Online Archive of California. which lists the creator as Burton Frasher and the publisher as the Pomona Public Library. Under "Rights", the library says, "The Pomona Public Library makes no assertions as to ownership of any original copyrights to images digitized for this site. However, these images are intended for Personal or Research use only. Any other kind of use, including, but not limited to commercial or scholarly publication in any medium or format, public exhibition, or use online or in a web site, may be subject to additional restrictions including but not limited to the copyrights held by parties other than the Library. USERS ARE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE for determining the existence of such rights and for obtaining any permissions and/or paying associated fees necessary for the proposed use."

In the case of the postcard image, the old Cook Bank photo, and, I think, the newspaper image, the CC-2.0 licenses are not valid and the images shouldn't be uploaded to the Commons. The verification of the licenses by the Commons Flickr robot is misleading because it only verifies that the Flickr uploader used those licenses; the bot can't examine the question of whether the Flickr uploader was the copyright holder.

I wish we could use these images and many other wonderful photos in the possession of historical societies, state governments, and private parties. But unless we track down the copyright holders one by one and persuade them to license the images for "free use", we can't use them. Finetooth (talk) 01:29, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

The two pre-1923 published items (bank & paper) are clearly PD-US -- I left the CC stuff in the license, I guess because the robot put it there. Maybe we should delete it, to avoid confusion. I'll look into the postcard a bit more, but postcard copyrights were almost never renewed. Thanks for tracking it down. Best, Pete Tillman (talk) 04:51, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Pete, I had to think about this for another 48 hours. You may well be right that the bank and paper images could be licensed as PD-US because they were published before 1923 and that the postcard might also be PD. (I have no idea how to figure out whether it is or not.) Mark gives the original source for the bank image somewhere at his site, and details from that source could be added to the license so that fact-checkers can verify the original source quickly, bypassing the Flickr site entirely. The postcard license could be handled in the same way. I don't know where the newspaper image came from, but we might be able to find the original or ask Mark. Copyright law is so complicated that even though I've become familiar with how simple cases work, there's still a big grey area that I find almost incomprehensibly murky. If you find time to sort this out and do some re-licensing, that would be great. If not, I'll probably find time eventually to do it. As you no doubt noticed, it took me several months to get back to the panorama and re-touch and upload it in a bigger size, but I did eventually do it. Oh, the new images need alt text. I did the alt text a couple of months ago for all of the other images in the article. I can add alt text for these if you like, or you can do them if you prefer. Finetooth (talk) 19:20, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Here's my copyright "bible": Cornell PD chart. Pre-1923 publications are definitely PD, as you can see -- there's no doubt here, thank heavens.

Thanks, Pete. That's a really clear and handy chart and one I hadn't encountered before. I'm saving the url and adding it to my toolkit. I have to point out, though, that "created" and "published" aren't the same. There's no doubt that two of the three old photos were created before 1923, but were they published before 1923? Or, if the works were unpublished, did the authors (photographers) die before 1940? The existing licenses don't include the information needed to answer these questions. The third photo, the one of the front cover of the Bullfrog Miner, appears to be a photo or scan of a recent publication rather than an old one. I can't be sure, but I'd guess that it was a memorial edition published maybe in 1957 on the 50th anniversary or in 2007 on the 100th anniversary, or something like that. Finetooth (talk) 18:13, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Re: facsimile(?) reprint of 1907 Bullfrog Miner. Mere reprinting of a historic doc. doesn't qualify for a new copyright; it remains PD. Let's see if I can find the court case: Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., almost certainly more than you want to know. This is what WP uses as a keystone of their PD image reproductions in Commons. So we're definitely OK here, at least in the USA. Best, Pete Tillman (talk) 03:24, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for figuring this out. I was never sure so just left it alone. I'm glad to hear that it's OK. Finetooth (talk) 03:58, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Renewals are hard. There doesn't seem to be any central registry of photo/image renewals online. So I won't be pushing for quick use of the postcard. And yes, copyright law is very confusing!

Burton Frasher, the postcard photographer, died in 1955, but it looks like he didn't really get going until perilously close to 1923 and that the Pomona Library probably bought all rights to his collection from the Frasher family. See this page. Finetooth (talk) 18:13, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Since I don't even know what alt text is, I guess you should do it sometime... <G> Best regards, Pete Tillman (talk) 03:58, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Alt text is meant for vision-impaired or blind readers who depend on a machine that reads the text to them. The machine can't read images, but it can read alt text that describes the essence of the images. WP:ALT has explanations and examples, and you can see discussions of alt text going on at WP:FAC. Alt text wasn't an FA requirement when this article became FA, but it's a requirement now. (Like the rest of the encyclopedia, the guidelines keep evolving.) I'd be happy to do the alt text if the images survive. :-) Finetooth (talk) 18:13, 1 March 2010 (UTC)