Commons talk:Licensing

COMMONS DISCUSSION PAGES (index)

• Commons Help desk
• Village pump (general discussion)
  • Copyright
  • Proposals
  • Technical
• Graphics and photography discussion
  • Photography critiques
  • Image improvement
    • Illustration workshop
    • Map workshop
    • Photography workshop
    • Video and sound workshop
• Categories for discussion
• Undeletion requests
• Deletion requests
• Volunteer Response Team/Noticeboard
• Translators' noticeboard
• Work requests for bots

---

• Contact administrators
  • Vandalism
  • User problems (Dispute resolution)
  • Blocks and protections
• Bureaucrats' noticeboard
• CheckUser requests

---

• Telegram
• IRC ^webchat
• Commons mailing list (archive)
• Commons' bugs on Phabricator

Shortcut CT:L This is the talk page for discussing improvements to Commons:Licensing. This is not a forum for general discussion of the page's subject. Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. Please sign and date your posts by typing four tildes (~~~~). New to Commons? Check out the project scope. Ask questions, get answers. For discussions of specific copyright questions, please go to Commons:Village pump/Copyright. Discussions that do not relate to changes to the page Commons:Licensing may be moved, with participants notified with the template {{subst:moved to VPC|Commons talk:Licensing}}. For old discussions, see the Archives. Recent sections with no replies for 14 days may be archived.

Archived discussions

Seven 2006/2007 discussions organized as subpages, ignoringincl. comments added in 2014:

• ADRM
• Review of license templates
• U.S. patents
• Ecoport copyleft
• Museums Bilder (in German)
• Explaining why Derivative Work and Commercial Use must be allowed
• Which countries' copyright laws determine copyright status?

Copyright images

I was wondering about how some things with copyright worked.

How would I go about searching for free licensed images on google? I see two categories, "Creative Commons license," and "Commercial and other license." Is there a specific search engine or certain websites I can use to find non-copyright images? Can I use images from a site as long as I give credit?

I also found some images on Flickr. Some of them stated that I could use the images as long as I gave credit to the person who took the picture, and provided a link to it. Would I be able to do this, where I put the link to the Flickr image in the description of the image? — Preceding unsigned comment added by LtLemonade (talk • contribs) 13:25, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

You might think of copyrights as the photo owner's rights over the image (how and where it's posted, distributed, etc.) So, while it is important that credit is given, please note that simply crediting the person who took a picture is not always sufficient; it may depend on the purposes for which you are using the images. For example, if you are using an image for a presentation for school, it might qualify for a fair use exception, whereas if you were using the same image for commercial purposes, it likely would not qualify for a fair use exception. There are several sites that offer images that are considered "free for use", such as Pixabay and Unsplash. Please note that it is often best practice to cite from where images (and other information) were obtained, even if the images are considered free for use. Downeycortez (talk) 04:12, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

@LtLemonade: Hi, and welcome. Please see en:WP:FIT and COM:F.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 12:16, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Minor addition

Under Section "Scope of licensing", I'm requesting an addition of the word "public artwork" for a section with reference to FOP, like this (underlined words indicate my proposed additions)

"For a picture of a building or a public artwork (for example, monuments or murals), note that the architect or the artist may hold some rights if distinct architectural or artistic features are shown, but see also Commons:Freedom of panorama."

JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 10:23, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Help with Flickr images

Hi - I was wondering if someone could help me with Flickr licensing items. I thought I was following the rules with File:Doug McDermott Creighton.jpg and File:Oladipo Zeller.jpg (plus two crops of this pic). In each case it looked like the photo was fair use (in the case of McDermott without modifications and the other seemed to allow modifications), but it looks like a bot has scheduled them to be deleted. I am not interested in uploading photos that aren't fair use but would love some help on what to look for - obviously I misunderstood something. Can anyone help me understand what the issues were and how to avoid them in the future? Thanks in advance. Rikster2 (talk) 15:20, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

@Rikster2: According to the bot, they’re not fair use but use a more permissive CC BY-ND (Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs) license. However, not even that is allowed, see § Well-known licenses. (Fair use isn’t allowed either, by the way.) —Tacsipacsi (talk) 15:48, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. The link is very helpful. Rikster2 (talk) 16:06, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Can we link Commons:Village pump/Copyright here?

I think that Commons:Village pump/Copyright would be worth linking in see also section Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 20:59, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Why is "Forbidden licenses" a subsection of "Acceptable licenses"?

I would expect subsections of "Acceptable licenses" to describe different types of acceptable licenses, or perhaps some cases where a forbidden license appears at first to be acceptable. But "Forbidden licenses" doesn't seem to fall into these categories: it is a full discussion of forbidden licenses, and should be its own major section. Brianjd (talk) 10:11, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

•  Agree - I believe that you're right. SV1XV (talk) 10:16, 7 November 2021 (UTC)