Commons talk:Collective work/Archive 1

First archive created on 2018-10-07 at 4:32 PM

If part is non-free then Commons cannot accept

This essay describes how a collective work may become public domain even while elements of the collective work may have a restrictive copyright. It seems like the creative compilation of the work would be free when the work goes into the public domain, but that compilation would still contain non-free elements and so not be compatible with a Commons upload. Wikimedia Commons only accepts media when all the elements either are compatible with free or when the copyrighted elements are Commons:De minimis.

Similar examples are a photograph which contains non-free artwork or a video which contains non-free music. When a collective work contains a mix of free and non-free content then Commons does not accept it. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:20, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

The essay proposes that if the collective work page image contains non-free text, it should be reduced in size so the text is illegible. In effect, the non-free content has been removed. I have changed the essay to say that any non-free image should be blanked out. That seems cleaner than assuming we can get away with de minimis. If editors follow the guidelines in the essay, they will not upload any non-free content. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:21, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Ah, I understand now. That is a clever idea and yes it works. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:25, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

I agree that no need to exhaustively scrutinize

La Patrie (1899-02-19)

If the Commons community evaluates a collective work in the usual way and the work seems all free, then I think that can reasonably be uploaded.

The standard of care in these things is reasonable human attention, and not exhaustive machine analysis. Copyright law was intended for human use and not digital tools, so if Commons users have a collective work that seems free then I think we can accept the upload without computer-like analysis of all individual parts. Generally an old book in the public domain, for example, can be reasonably assumed to contain works in the public domain and should be fit for Commons upload without anyone doing research on each element. The point is to expect modest human evaluation at the scale of managing library collections. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:25, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

The image to the right was used in a discussion at Template talk:Collective work#Comparison to ''de minimis''. There are thousands like this in Commons. We know that the collective work as a whole is public domain, but most of the articles and many of the pictures are unattributed. There is real chance that some of them are non-free, but we do not know which, if any. Tracking down the authors, or proving they are unknown, might prove impossible. Template {{Collective work}} gives a suitable warning, I think. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:31, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Yes good idea I understand and this is totally appropriate. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:25, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Collective works

Hi, Thanks for starting this. I would put the title in plural, i.e. collective works. Regards, Yann (talk) 05:02, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

Definition

Hi, I think there is a confusion in the definition. A work is a collective work only if the works of individual authors cannot be distinguished, i.e. each author doesn't sign her/his own work. The typical example is a dictionary.

In a newspaper, signed articles are not part of the collective work, which only constitutes texts (and images?) under the editorial responsibility of the publisher. So a newspaper can include collective works and individual works. I don't think we can use the publication newspapers as a whole by the BNF as a proof of collective works. As a library, the BNF may use some exceptions to copyright law for that.

This has consequences in the copyright status of the works, but only in other areas. If a signed article is questioned under law, the publisher responsibility is limited to publishing. Regards, Yann (talk) 05:19, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

• See en:collective work for more information (with sources) about the laws in different countries. In all the examples given, the collective work is the whole publication (e.g. newspaper, magazine, anthology, encyclopedia) which collects together a number of individual works. The newspaper does not include collective works: it is a collective work. The copyright laws talk about the collective work and collective author when they are talking about the newspaper as a whole, and the individual work and individual author when they are talking about the contributions. The whole newspaper is the collective work, including the masthead, headlines, ads, pictures and articles with and without bylines. It would be impossibly complicated if this were not the case.

It does not matter whether the publisher attributes a contribution or not. Some papers, e.g. The Economist, never attribute their articles, while others, e.g. The New York Times, often attribute articles. They are both collective works. An individual author has the same rights, often inalienable, whether or not the publisher gives them a byline. If a typesetter or copy editor dropped a byline that would not affect the rights of the publisher or the author. The individual author usually retains the rights to publish outside the context of the collective work, while the publisher has the right to publish the collective work as a whole.

For our purposes it is simplest to just treat a newspaper page image as a collection of individual works. We have to be reasonably confident all these works are free before retaining the page image in commons, regardless of the copyright status of the collective work as a whole. Aymatth2 (talk) 07:57, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

Pre-1977 US law; also dresses

It says "Dress design by Anne T. Hill (1916–1999) in Harper's Bazaar, August 1956. The magazine would have held all rights when it was published." but this is quite a problematic example. It's a 1956 work, so its copyright duration has nothing to do with the death date of the author in the US. Moreover, dress design is not copyrightable in the United States, and never has been.--Prosfilaes (talk) 05:37, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

@Prosfilaes: The wording is poor. All rights to the picture (not the dress design) would have been held by the magazine. But perhaps there is a better example of a pre-1976 picture in a US collective work that is out of copyright although the author was alive until quite recently? Aymatth2 (talk) 13:09, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

There are any number of examples of pre-1989 works in the US that are out of copyright even though the author is alive. The Time cover still confuses the issue, as if when the artist died matters, or the fact that it's a collective work matters.--Prosfilaes (talk) 20:16, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

I substituted a Time cover, and moved it down beside the section on durations. Think this works better. Aymatth2 (talk) 17:48, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

@Prosfilaes: I have tried to make the caption clearer, but may be blind to the problem. Please feel free to improve it. The idea is to contrast the former and present duration rules in the USA in as few words as possible. There should probably be separate articles for each country that cover their rules for individual, collaborative, collective, derivative etc. works in more detail. Aymatth2 (talk) 23:16, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Oy ttoo

Física ott hoortaeilo joor Kroas goe hoee ksoolg disiento rooe mei fpor uro área ido mee ott y moo dios llegar boe gor joo wpor wood for meor joo kooe tho u,eo que lo ttooy mooy bien hooy momento cjpichardo19@gmail.com 69.127.107.99 00:10, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

If I would guess I'd say that the above is in a creole language. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 00:14, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

I can't make head or tail of it. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:10, 6 February 2022 (UTC)