Bsouthwell

Welcome to Wikimedia Commons, Bsouthwell!

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-- Wikimedia Commons Welcome (talk) 19:33, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

File tagging File:Courses Taught by John C. Cook at San Antonio College.pdf

This media was probably deleted.

Thanks for uploading File:Courses Taught by John C. Cook at San Antonio College.pdf. This media is missing permission information. A source is given, but there is no proof that the author or copyright holder agreed to license the file under the given license. Please provide a link to an appropriate webpage with license information, or ask the author or copyright holder to send an email with copy of a written permission to VRT (permissions-commons@wikimedia.org). You may still be required to go through this procedure even if you are the author yourself; please see Commons:But it's my own work! for more details. After you emailed permission, you may replace the {{No permission since}} tag with {{subst:PP}} on file description page. Alternatively, you may click on "Challenge speedy deletion" below the tag if you wish to provide an argument why evidence of permission is not necessary in this case. Please see this page for more information on how to confirm permission, or if you would like to understand why we ask for permission when uploading work that is not your own, or work which has been previously published (regardless of whether it is your own). The file probably has been deleted. If you sent a permission, try to send it again after 14 days. Do not re-upload. When the VRT-member processes your mail, the file can be undeleted. Additionally you can request undeletion here, providing a link to the File-page on Commons where it was uploaded ([[:File:Courses Taught by John C. Cook at San Antonio College.pdf]]) and the above demanded information in your request.

 

And also:

• File:The Life Story of Carl and Ella Cook.pdf
• File:The Life and History of Phineas Wolcott Cook.pdf
• File:An Analysis of Airborne Surveying for Surface Radioactivity - Doctoral Thesis, John C. Cook.pdf

Yours sincerely EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:39, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Please be advised that PDFs have a function to provide metadata, which includes title, author, description, and licensing data. Each of these referenced files have had their metadata competed by the heir to John C. Cook's estate after consultation with an attorney, including licensing information. In the case of the first document:

"To the extent possible under law; Carl A. Cook has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to John C. Cook - Courses Taught at San Antonio College - 1953. This work is published from: United States."

... in full compliance with Creative Commons, as noted during the upload of these files.

As a side-note, as far as other documents previously copyrighted and not related to these uploads, I doubt that copyright law is well understood by a number of editors here, judging from comments I've read on IRC. (variously "98 years", "75 years", misconstruing of 'public domain', etc) Here is the law: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Licensing#Material_in_the_public_domain

A newspaper article was wrongfully removed from the Cook article because of this misunderstanding. (viz. "for works first published before 1964"...) The law is very precise; if copyright is not renewed in the 28th year for this tranche, copyright expires. I doubt that 95% of the population understands this.

Further, the author or the heir to his/her estate, may place their work in the public domain at any time by licensing it as such. Bsouthwell (talk) 18:22, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Encouragement

I'm sorry that your early experience on Commons has been rough. There is no question but that copyright is a difficult area with a steep learning curve. That is particularly true in the USA, where the rules have changed radically twice in the last 100 years, retroactively in some respects and not in others. Take a look at File:PD-US table.svg for a quick summary.

Most of the experienced hands at Commons try to be helpful to newbies, but I'm afraid you got off on the wrong foot with several of us. We're only human, and when a new user makes several mistakes and then starts using words like "inaccurate", "arbitrary", "bias", "improperly", "capricious", and "self-prideful" while talking about users with close to a million contributions, it rubs us the wrong way.

As I think I showed with the newspaper clipping, when we have made mistakes, we're not only willing to fix them, but want very much to do so. None of us likes the fact that File:RadLab.png may have to be deleted, but we take copyright very seriously and all the available information suggests that it was unpublished until now and therefore under copyright for many more years. If you can find a prior publication without notice or without renewal, that would be great.

I'm also sorry that our documentation is not as good as it might be. I myself often have trouble digging out policy on special topics. We're understaffed everywhere and I guess that there is little glory in writing better instructions, so it doesn't get done. The templates you were looking for are {{PD-US-no notice}} and {{PD-US-not renewed}}. I've just spent a little time cleaning up various PD categories, and you'll now find all of the relevant tags in Category:PD US license tags or its subs.

I hope you reconsider your decision to throw in the towel on Commons -- we value conscientious editors who will improve the project as long as they can see their way to valuing the rest of us and not simply assuming we're fools who don't know our own rules. If you do decide to continue here, by all means feel free to ask questions at User talk:Jameslwoodward. .     Jim . . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 15:27, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

It's hopeless. My undelete requests have now been denied, and I've just spent the past week and a half defending my uploads rather than working on articles. Hounded and punished, for being comprehensive. There are yet more patents, publications, and history for the Cook article, and I've found a book with the RadLab photo, but I'm not trying anymore. These people don't have anything better to do, and I do.

It is difficult and takes a great deal of concentration, research, and knowledge to improve the better articles, and I'm tired of putting up with editors who don't give a clue what their beef is. Not worth it. Go ahead and delete all my work.Bsouthwell (talk) 16:43, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Fine. Commons rules and policies are designed to make it easy to upload properly licensed media and hard to upload copyvios, but they do require that uploaders properly set forth the reasons why a file is acceptable here. If you can't be bothered to learn the rules, then please don't do any more here. It not only wastes your time, but also ours, when a newbie insists on debating copyright law with experienced editors. If you change your mind, by all means ask all the questions you need to. .     Jim . . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 20:26, 26 January 2015 (UTC)