Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Heart Truth photos

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Files in Category:Heart Truth photos

These pictures came from a now blacklisted Flickr account.

List of 363 Images

* File:2004 Beverly Johnson (cropped to collar).jpg

QTHCCAN (talk) 19:49, 17 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

[1] @Rillke and Clindberg: Keep and remove from blacklist. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 20:05, 17 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. That a reason for blacklisting The Heart Truth? Alrofficial (talk) 20:07, 17 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Here the talk about the blacklisting. Commons talk:Questionable Flickr images/Archive 3#The_Heart_Truth. I agree with @Alexis Jazz: about removing the account from the blacklist if the files are kept. QTHCCAN (talk) 20:55, 17 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - Given all of the recent image descriptions on Flickr say "Photo by Getty Images for Heart Truth" I'm sceptical that those images and these images belong to the government or the employees,

Anyway I don't believe someone related to the company or gov photographed these images and I don't believe the photographer knowingly donated these under a CC licence (Maybe there was an agreement to use them in a campaign?),

~~So IMHO these should all be deleted, Unless ofcourse they reply back to Rillke with some proof that all is legit. –Davey2010^Talk 21:54, 17 March 2020 (UTC)~~[reply]

@Davey2010: it's called "work for hire" and the images are PD-USGov, not CC. And considering this is Getty, the photographer doesn't have much of a say in the matter anyway. And Getty knows when the US government contracts them. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 18:05, 18 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Having read Copyright status of works by the federal government of the United States I've obviously misunderstood the licence, Blacklisting is irrelevant to any DR so therefore there's now no valid reason to delete. –Davey2010^Talk 19:14, 18 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and remove from blacklist. The The Heart Truth's images are clearly marked United States government work on Flickr, the hyperlink confirming they are effectively PD. --John B123 (talk) 22:16, 17 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- @John B123r: , of course but the US Department of State Flickr account itself have been recently blacklisted--QTHCCAN (talk) 23:02, 17 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Keep. The Man with the Iron Fists montage is self-made, so not every picture in it will be blacklisted, the answer would be to modify that image not delete it AND the complex rationale made for it. This is using a saw instead of a scalpel. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 23:37, 17 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. After reading the image descriptions on Flickr, I believe this was a "work for hire" for the US National Institutes of Health. Materialscientist (talk) 06:46, 18 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete A work for hire is not PD-USGov. One has to be an employee of the US Fed Gov to have this copyright exemption apply. Photographers may have given usage rights of these images to this government agency but they will retain their copyright.--Denniss (talk) 23:23, 20 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Denniss: no, see Commons:Deletion requests/File:Chairman McWatters Official Headshot.jpg where Clindberg quoted this from the legislative notes for 17 USC 105: "it can be assumed that, where a Government agency commissions a work for its own use merely as an alternative to having one of its own employees prepare the work, the right to secure a private copyright would be withheld." - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 19:31, 21 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry but that argumentation is garbage. Since when are assumtions base for copyright issues? Either we know such a copyright transfer was made or we don't. If we don't then we can't assume the claimed license is valid especially if the original authorship claims are retained in Exif. --Denniss (talk) 20:19, 21 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Denniss: so you are calling the Copyright Law Revision (House Report No. 94-1476) from the United States House of Representatives garbage? Well, I guess that ends the conversation. You consider it garbage, I don't. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 23:41, 21 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As a counterpoint, File:U.S. Copyright Office circular 30.pdf says that only certain types of works can be considered made for hire (photographs do not appear to be among them), though it doesn't delve into the specifics regarding works made on behalf of the US government. The aforementioned notes of 17 USC 105 essentially say that works made under contract to the US government may or may not enjoy copyright protection depending on the circumstances and purpose of the works. I would lean towards keeping these photos, since they fall under the assumption Clindberg mentioned at the Chairman McWatters deletion discussion and because they're marked as US government works on Flickr, but I recognize that even US government agencies are capable of ticking the wrong box when uploading pictures to the Internet, so I'll reserve my final judgement for now. clpo13_(talk) 02:38, 22 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

We make assumptions all the time. We assume country of origin (most times no way to prove something wasn't published earlier in another country), we often have to assume publication, we most certainly assume good faith on the vast majority of our uploads (i.e. we don't require OTRS on all of them), and so on. There are very few absolutes when it comes to copyright -- you can make theoretical arguments against lots of uploads. That all said, I don't think these fall under the legislative note above -- that would apply when a work is essentially a work for hire, even if just a contractor instead of an employee (in other words, a work that could have just as easily been done by an employee but they chose to use a contractor instead). Works where they need outside expertise would be different, and photography like this most likely falls under that latter case.

I'm a bit torn on these. I did find a note on this photographer linkedin page which mentions the "Images are then distributed for use by the US Dept of Health and Human Services (HHS), the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and sponsors [...]". So, it would appear there is some sort of special contract in place. Whether that contract specifies that the photos are effectively public domain (much like works by NASA collaborators, where we use the PD-USGov-NASA tag), I'm not sure. They have had that license for years and years on Flickr. It's possible the photographers have some rights initially (thus the EXIF), but the photos are eventually allowed to be effectively PD and posted to Flickr. Or it could be that they aren't fully PD, and the license is incorrect. But I hate to second-guess the license on Flickr -- it's not like these are a handful of exceptions to otherwise obviously PD-USGov images, but rather they seem to be the primary content on that Flickr account, and the person making that tag there should presumably know what they were doing. And they have been there for 15+ years (some of them), with no evidence of a copyright issue. It does not seem as though any of the above images have been deleted from Flickr due to complaints with spot checks, and it does not appear that we've ever gotten any DMCA notices on them -- even from Getty. If they were effectively PD, I'm sure Getty would have no problem also hosting them under "rights managed" and not mention their free or virtually-free status. The only DRs have been over doubt raised by Wikimedians, not an actual complaint from Getty or a photographer. Given the lack of problem of these images over the years, and the number of them, I think I'd lean

Keep and remove that account from the blacklist. Carl Lindberg (talk) 03:45, 22 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Túrelio: as user that requested blacklist in 2012 but has not added their view.--BevinKacon (talk) 11:41, 24 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, from what I've seen of some of these files they are in the public domain and educationally useful, I do not see how the "blacklist" status of the original account is relevant to the license. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 22:29, 24 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete The assertion above that if the Federal Government commissions a work, that it is automatically PD-USGOV, is incorrect. While it is certainly possible for the geovernment to buy the copyright (technically to buy an exclusive license), it is usually not done. That is well established in a variety of contexts on Commons, ranging from the Korean War and Martin Luther King memorials to the Sacagawea dollar to presidential portrait paintings in the White House. For a comprehensive discussion of this, see https://cendi.gov/publications/04-8copyright.html#41 . Jim . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 15:30, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per Clindberg and others. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 14:20, 28 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Materialscientist's reasons stated above. Mitchellhobbs (talk) 19:18, 17 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Kept: per consensus above. The account will be removed from the blacklist. --King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:09, 19 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]