Commons:Joint authorship

Joint authorship is the situation where a group of content creators collectively produce a work in entirety, and together all equally share the copyright for the whole work. Recognizing this is important for Wikimedia Commons when considering whether to accept a free and open license from one copyright holder among a group.

Current Wikimedia Commons guidance

There is no current Wikimedia Commons guidance on accepting works with Wikimedia compatible licenses from a copyright holder with joint authorship.

Interpretations

These are opinions and not Wikimedia Commons guidance.

Yes accept it

when a work has a joint copyright, then any copyright holder alone can apply any sort of non-exclusive license to a work without permission from anyone else. The CC licenses are non-exclusive, and therefore, any single copyright holder of a group with a joint copyright can grant a Wikimedia compatible CC license to that work.

• Works Owned by One or More Creators. Digital Media Law Project. Harvard University.

No do not accept it

By applying a free and open license for a work, a single copyright holder permanently changes the value of the work for a group.

• Avoiding Joint Pain: Treatment of Joint Works of Authorship Conditions. www.bakerdonelson.com (May 2010).

Complications

The rules for joint authorship may vary by country.

United Kingdom

Section 173(2) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 says that where a copyright is jointly held by more than one person, the consent of all of them is required to grant a licence (or to do almost anything else)[1].

Case studies and previous discussions

• Multiple copyright holders; one person grants CC license, August 2020
• Category:Felicia Bond - artist with joint authorship
• User:Kameraprojekt Graz 2015
• Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Videos by Bandai Namco

  Different circumstance - copyright holder granted license for works which contained as elements other non-free works

Bethesda Statement

The Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing is a 2003 manifesto of a group of activists.

• Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing (Q4898000)
• English Wikipedia
• English Wikisource
  • Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing|copyright discussion in July 2020 on English Wikisource

The statement is coauthored by its 23 signatories. Its publication pre-dates the contemporary concept of a copyright license. Under what circumstance can anyone apply a free copyright license to it now? Here are some concepts of the copyright:

• As all coauthors have equal claim to the copyright, any one of them may apply a Creative Commons license to the work.
• As all coauthors have equal claim to the copyright, every one of them must explicitly give consent if the work is to have a Creative Commons license.

Some signatories when asked agreed to apply a Wikimedia compatible Creative Commons license to the work. It would be burdensome in this and similar cases to get permission from all signatories if only one copyright holder's permission is necessary.

This case is special because the statement itself defines a concept of open copyright licensing, and signatories have public reputations of being at the forefront of activism for free and open copyright licensing, yet in 2003, but the signatories did not think to explicitly document free copyright licensing for their own statement.