The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the media below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the media's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was: delete. —  JJMC89 ( T· C) 06:48, 21 October 2020 (UTC) reply

File:George A Danos, President of the Cyprus Space Exploration Organisation (CSEO).jpg ( delete | talk | history | links | logs) – uploaded by Stellar77 ( notify | contribs | uploads | upload log). 

non-free image of living person, fails WP:NFCC#1 FASTILY 00:47, 5 October 2020 (UTC) reply

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the media's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the media below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the media's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was: Delete; deleted by Fastily ( talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) AnomieBOT ⚡ 02:01, 13 October 2020 (UTC) reply

File:Corticosterone new.png ( delete | talk | history | links | logs) – uploaded by Olaf Fritz ( notify | contribs | uploads | upload log). 

Unused free image inferior to many options on commons. commons:Category:Corticosterone has several SVG and at-least-as-hires PNG, with the stereochemical details that are intrinsic to this specific chemical's identity. DMacks ( talk) 09:25, 5 October 2020 (UTC) reply

Please feel free to replace it with any more modern variant as you see fit. This image was created more than 15 years ago, with a program that may not have been the best for sterochemistry at the time. Olaf Fritz ( talk) 17:58, 5 October 2020 (UTC) reply

• Delete, redundant to Commons files. Salavat ( talk) 00:26, 6 October 2020 (UTC) reply

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the media's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the media below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the media's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was: keep. Consensus determined that this photograph was originally published in 1972 without a copyright notice. Without said notice, the photograph has entered the public domain as a result per {{ PD-US-no-notice}}. Its copyright status in Vietnam is unclear, which makes it ineligible for transferal to Wikimedia Commons. Ə XPLICIT 00:50, 23 January 2021 (UTC) reply

File:The Terror of War.jpg ( delete | talk | history | links | logs) – uploaded by Toohool ( notify | contribs | uploads | upload log). 

File:TrangBang.jpg ( delete | talk | history | links | logs) – uploaded by 172 ( notify | contribs | uploads | upload log).

Second image nominated by George Ho ( talk) 05:17, 24 April 2020 (UTC) reply

Originally nominated for speedy deletion by @ WGFinley with the reason "This is a copywritten image owned by the Associate Press, it is not Public Domain." FASTILY 04:38, 24 April 2020 (UTC) reply

• I found that Toohool's version was attempted but then changed back to the (other) long-standing version ( [1] [2]). BTW, I added the second image as part of nomination, so we can decide whether to keep one of the versions. George Ho ( talk) 05:30, 24 April 2020 (UTC) reply
• Keep at least File:TrangBang.jpg based on the permissions note on the file. The note has a redlink; please see File talk:TrangBang.jpg#Permission Obtained from AP. Reh man 06:41, 24 April 2020 (UTC) reply

Thanks Rehman, I contacted the office about this issue, they were able to retrieve the letter and get it in OTRS now. -- WGFinley ( talk) 14:49, 28 April 2020 (UTC) reply

Great, thank you. I was worried the letter would be lost after the deletion. Cheers, Reh man 14:59, 28 April 2020 (UTC) reply

• Keep PD version, as uploader. The photo was widely published without a copyright notice in 1972 and thereby put into the public domain, as shown on the file description page. A bare assertion of copyright ownership by the AP can't overcome that fact. Note there is also an open FfD discussion on another famous Vietnam War photo in the same situation. Toohool ( talk) 00:25, 25 April 2020 (UTC) reply

Where are you basing your statement that this doesn't have a copyright notice? This image is owned by The Associated Press whom Ut was working for at the time, what is the basis of your claim this didn't have a copyright notice? -- WGFinley ( talk) 02:49, 25 April 2020 (UTC) reply

@ WGFinley: It's based on looking at the newspapers where the photo was published. The file description page includes links to a sampling of newspapers where the image was published with no copyright notice at all. Out of a couple dozen newspapers I found where the photo was published, not a single one had a copyright notice for the photo. Toohool ( talk) 05:03, 25 April 2020 (UTC) reply

Just because a newspaper used it without copyright notice doesn't somehow instantly make it public domain. Were that true, you using it on WP would make it instantly PD, that's not the case. Nick Ut worked for AP for 51 years, they clearly own this image. https://apnews.com/1bc4725ece764fcab754a99b030f0397 -- WGFinley ( talk) 11:47, 25 April 2020 (UTC) reply

Yes, it does. Copyright notice was required for works published in the U.S. before 1989, and the failure to include one generally placed a work in the public domain. That is why we have a template for this situation, {{ PD-US-no-notice}}. Toohool ( talk) 17:56, 25 April 2020 (UTC) reply

No, it doesn't. If a license agreement calls for the licensee to include notice, but the licensee fails to do that, that has no effect on copyright status. 17 USC 405(a)(3). We have the template for the situation where, in fact, the notice requirement wasn't met -- not for where Toohool concludes via his naive investigation that it wasn't met.

You have no idea what you're talking about, and the situation's beginning to get serious. There's an enormous body of statute, regulation, and case law on this kind of stuff, and you're running around claiming PD for scores of famous images based on a summary table you saw in some pamphlet. You really think you've made this penetrating analysis everyone else missed? The word sophomoric comes to mind. E Eng 23:03, 25 April 2020 (UTC) reply

@ EEng: As I've asked you already, please dial down the confrontational tone. What basis do you have to believe that the notice requirement was met for this image? You are correct that publishing a work without notice in violation of an agreement that explicitly requires notice is an unauthorized publication and therefore does not put the work into the public domain. However, what evidence is there that AP's agreements with its members required them to place a copyright notice on all photos in general, or on this photo in particular? In fact, all the evidence is to the contrary. Look at any newspaper from the era and you will probably find every AP image to be lacking a copyright notice. In the very rare instances where they distributed copyrighted photos, most papers did attach a copyright notice to the photo (as in the example of the Jack Ruby photo), which suggests that they required copyright notices to be attached only to certain photos, and makes it very easy to draw the dividing line between those photos that were copyrighted and those that were not. Toohool ( talk) 02:59, 26 April 2020 (UTC) reply

You stated that publication by newspapers without notice necessarily kills the copyright, and now you admit that's not true; you seem to just make stuff up as you go along. I don't need to show what was in AP's licenses, or anything else. You need to show the work is PD, and if that means showing what was or wasn't in various licenses, I guess you'll need to do that. You also seem to think that a copyright notice must appear immediately adjacent to the photo, and that's not true either; in fact, I'm pretty sure you have no idea what form an appropriate notice for an AP photo would take.

As the LC points out [3] many wire service images weren't copyrighted, but "determining the copyright status of photographs can be problematic because of the lack of pertinent information, and researchers often have to make calculated risk decisions concerning the appropriate use of an image when its copyright status is unknown or ambiguous." But here at wp (and Commons) we don't take such "calculated risks". (There are some exceptions, as with e.g. movie studio publicity stills, which were commonly intentionally placed in PD from the very beginning to encourage their wide publication, and we allow ourselves to make that assumption. But that's a very special situation.) So we can't use your speculations about a "dividing line"; we need convincing evidence that the work is PD. E Eng 03:50, 26 April 2020 (UTC) reply

I stated that failure to include a notice generally put a work into the public domain, because there are exceptions, such as unauthorized publication. You're the one who's brought up that possibility, with no evidence, aka "making stuff up". You're essentially positing that every newspaper in North America was violating the AP's agreements every day for decades on end, and that the AP never did anything about it. It's a pretty extraordinary theory that you should have some evidence for. If we follow your argument, we'll have to delete every {{ PD-US-no-notice}} image (about 1300 on enwp and 250,000 on Commons), because it's virtually impossible to prove the nonexistence of a contract with such a clause. Toohool ( talk) 04:19, 26 April 2020 (UTC) reply

• I stated that failure to include a notice generally put a work into the public domain – That's what you're saying now. Before that, when another editor said "Just because a newspaper used it without copyright notice doesn't somehow instantly make it public domain", you said "Yes it does", which isn't true. And before that you wrote The photo was widely published without a copyright notice in 1972 and thereby put into the public domain, which isn't true. And before either of those, on the file description page [4] you wrote The photo was published simultaneously in many newspapers, many of which had no copyright notice at all (neither for the photo in particular, nor for the newspaper as a whole). Copyright was therefore forfeited ..., which also isn't true. Like I said, you're just making it up as you go along.
• You're essentially positing that every newspaper in North America was violating the AP's agreements every day for decades on end – I'm not positing anything. I'm just showing that, over and over, you make statements about how copyright works which turn out to be false.

By the way, can you please address the point I raised earlier about the acceptable form and location of notice for a wire-service photo? E Eng 04:57, 27 April 2020 (UTC) reply

Instead of just repeatedly saying "that's not true", and trying to wikilawyer to prove that I've said something incorrect, how about making an actual argument to rebut the evidence I've put forward that shows the photo was published without notice. Like, point to some authority that substantively contradicts what I'm saying, or maybe show us even one example of where the photo was published *with* proper notice on its initial publication? Or, instead of assuming that I don't know what a copyright notice looks like, give us an example of what a notice might look like that you think would be easily overlooked. So far, the only thing of substance you've said in this discussion is that the copyright wasn't forfeited if the AP's license agreement required copyright notice, so why won't you explain how that could plausibly be the case? Toohool ( talk) 06:45, 27 April 2020 (UTC) reply

You're the one saying the notices are missing, yet you refuse to explain what you thought you were looking for when checking for one. I actually don't know all the forms and locations acceptable in a situation like this, but what's clear is that you don't either (or, at least, if you do know you don't want to say) so your statement that notice was missing is hard to credit. And you're the one saying that a missing notice means PD, even though that's clearly not true (e.g. [5] says "Images without a copyright notice may still be under copyright"). Nothing else is needed to show that your reasoning is faulty. E Eng 06:35, 28 April 2020 (UTC) reply

The notice requirements for pre-1978 works are outlined in Appendix A of chapter 2100 of the Compendium of Copyright Practices. Per Part 4.2.1, the notice must include the terms "Copyright" or "Copr." or the copyright symbol (or a misspelling or close variant of one of those). It also has to identify the claimant, but that's moot in this case, because no notice satisfying even the first requirement was found. The location of the notice is specified in part 4.3.3: For a single-page contribution to a periodical, notice must be placed "anywhere on" the contribution. One might reasonably interpret this as meaning on or immediately adjacent to the photo, or in the caption, but I also looked everywhere else on the page.

Of course I don't believe that lack of notice absolutely places the photo in the PD. We have discussed exceptions to that rule in this very thread and elsewhere. The source you're quoting is simply pointing out that you can't take a random image off of the web, or off of a paper you find on the ground, and assume that it's public domain because there's no copyright notice. It could be an unauthorized publication, or a limited publication, or an unpublished work. It could be that the notice was omitted from only a few copies because of a manufacturing defect or the like. It could be that the copyright notice was removed by a third party after purchase. If you have a theory of some exception that applies in this case, please explain. Toohool ( talk) 01:37, 29 April 2020 (UTC) reply

• Keep the original file. I secured permission from the AP to use this file 15 years ago for Wikipedia. Notwithstanding that, we're making a fair use claim for it. Using the image that was uploaded later is at a resolution not in accordance with a fair use claim, it's too high of a resolution. This is image is clearly copywritten by the Associated Press whom Ut was working for at the time and he is still alive. There is no valid public domain claim to be made for this image. -- WGFinley ( talk) 02:52, 25 April 2020 (UTC) reply
• Delete "PD", Keep fair-use See above. E Eng 04:57, 27 April 2020 (UTC) reply
• Keep PD version as PD in the United States per 17 U.S.C. §§ 19-21 (1976), as there is no evidence of notice, and no evidence of a contractual requirement to provide one. Replace non-free version with PD, then delete as no longer required. Mdaniels5757 ( talk) 15:07, 12 May 2020 (UTC) reply
• Comment For reference, a discussion on Commons about another AP photo in exactly the same situation has been closed as Keep. Toohool ( talk) 23:02, 4 July 2020 (UTC) reply
• Keep File:TrangBang.jpg, delete File:The Terror of War.jpg — Huntster ( t @ c) 19:37, 9 August 2020 (UTC) reply

@ Huntster: On what basis? Toohool ( talk) 00:33, 10 August 2020 (UTC) reply

Wrapup

@ Fastily can we wrap this one up now? The only support for keep for the new image is the uploader. We've been trying to have discussions about it but his positions usually amount to referring to statutes and caselaw. This is pretty clear lawyering. OTRS has a letter from the copyright holder stating they own this image and granted our permission to use it. Notwithstanding that permission we're making a Fair Use claim here. I think the original image should stand with its Fair Use rationale and the subsequent one should be deleted. Pretty clearly I'm involved here so I won't wrap this up but think it should be. -- WGFinley ( talk) 17:51, 29 April 2020 (UTC) reply

Me pointing out that your argument for deleting the image is based on misunderstandings of the law is not lawyering. And we don't delete public domain images just because someone makes an invalid claim of copyright. Toohool ( talk) 18:28, 29 April 2020 (UTC) reply

• Keep high-res version as PD in the United States per Mdaniels5757 and the reasoning at c:Commons:Undeletion requests/Archive/2020-06#File:Campus Guns.jpg. As odd as it may seem now, when reproductions of old news photos are a lucrative business, we have no reason to assume that AP in 1972 contractually obligated newspapers to provide copyright notices. Wikiacc ( ¶) 02:55, 28 August 2020 (UTC) reply
• Comment If this gets relisted again, please try to keep it together with Wikipedia:Files for discussion/2020 August 24#File:Execution of Nguyen Van Lem.jpg, which has the same core copyright question. Wikiacc ( ¶) 02:59, 28 August 2020 (UTC) reply

• Keep local as PD per the same reasoning as my comment in the thread below. –  Finnusertop ( talk ⋅ contribs) 01:09, 10 October 2020‎ (UTC) reply
• Delete File:TrangBang.jpg because it is smaller resolution. — WinnerWolf99 ^talk _{What did I break now?} 19:38, 1 December 2020 (UTC) reply

• Delete PD, and Keep fair-use, per WGFinley. Neutral, per discussion below. Alexcalamaro ( talk) 13:51, 14 December 2020 (UTC) reply

@ Alexcalamaro: Which part of his argument do you find convincing? As far as I can see, he didn't say anything to rebut the {{ PD-US-no-notice}} argument, other than to suggest that any argument based on laws is invalid. Toohool ( talk) 01:12, 15 December 2020 (UTC) reply

Hi @ Toohool: I am not a copyright expert. But my understanding is that {{ PD-US-no-notice}} applies for images that were always been published without the copyright. That is not the case here. Also, for me it is "common sense" that if somebody did it wrong not correctly notifying the copyright, that doesn't mean that the copyright holder would lose it. Also, we have the ok from AP for the other image, that I think is good enough for our encyclopedic purposes. Alexcalamaro ( talk) 14:24, 15 December 2020 (UTC) reply

@ Alexcalamaro: Your common-sense understanding that a missing or defective copyright notice should not lead to forfeiture of copyright is certainly true for works created today, and for most of the world since 1886, but it is decidedly not the case for U.S. works before 1989. That's why we even have {{ PD-US-no-notice}} and {{ PD-US-1989}}. Under the pre-1978 copyright law that applies here, there are some aspects of leniency for an author/publisher who simply "did it wrong". For example: misspelling "copyright", listing the wrong entity as the author, pre-dating the copyright year, or omitting the notice on a few copies because of a printing defect, are types of mistakes that generally do not forfeit copyright. This case does not seem to fall into any of these forgivable types of mistakes, as far as anyone has been able to identify. What we have here is simply no evidence of any attempt or effort to put a proper copyright notice on the photo (at least not until many years later). Toohool ( talk) 19:38, 19 December 2020 (UTC) reply

I think the issue goes beyond my "common-sense". And considering that the other related nominations (Campus guns and Execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém) have resulted in Keep, I've changed my view to Neutral (not to Keep because I don't have enough knowledge of copyright laws). Alexcalamaro ( talk) 08:10, 20 December 2020 (UTC) reply

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the media's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the media below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the media's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was: Appears to be PD in US (published between 1925-1977 in the US with no notice), but unclear if it is PD in Vietnam. - FASTILY 00:34, 10 December 2020 (UTC) reply

File:Execution of Nguyen Van Lem.jpg ( delete | talk | history | links | logs) – uploaded by Toohool ( notify | contribs | uploads | upload log). 

File:Execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém.jpg ( delete | talk | history | links | logs) – uploaded by Vzbs34 ( notify | contribs | uploads | upload log).

(nominated by George Ho ( talk) 02:28, 22 April 2020 (UTC)) reply

This file was recently uploaded as being in the public domain to replace the same file, File:Execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém.jpg, that has been labeled as being fair use since it was uploaded in 2003. I am not sure, which is correct, but I feel it needs a definite answer here. Aspects ( talk) 00:26, 22 April 2020 (UTC) reply

• Keep as uploader. Image was widely published by its proprietor without a copyright notice in 1968 and therefore became public domain ({{ PD-US-no-notice}}). It just seems that nobody has noticed this fact before. Toohool ( talk) 00:30, 22 April 2020 (UTC) reply

  Toohool, Why would public domain photos be here instead of at c:? ― Justin (koavf)❤ T☮ C☺ M☯ 06:47, 22 April 2020 (UTC) reply

  @ Koavf: In this case, because Commons requires that images be free in the US and in the country of origin. As explained on the file description page, the image is probably copyrighted in its country of origin (whichever country that may be) at least until 2055. Toohool ( talk) 06:56, 22 April 2020 (UTC) reply

  Huh? What do you imagine the country of origin could possibly be, if not the US? E Eng 23:17, 25 April 2020 (UTC) reply

  @ EEng: Please refer to the explanation in the licensing section on the file description page. Toohool ( talk) 03:09, 26 April 2020 (UTC) reply

  You mean where it says The photo's country of origin is unclear, as it was distributed by the Associated Press and may have been published simultaneously in any number of countries i.e. you're just guessing that it "may have been" published simultaneously in any number of countries? This is getting completely crazy. E Eng 03:15, 26 April 2020 (UTC) reply

  I am following Commons' precautionary principle - I can't confidently say that photo is public domain in its country of origin, so I didn't upload it to Commons. I uploaded it to enwp because I'm confident that it's public domain in the U.S. What's crazy about that? And how is it relevant to whether the file should be kept here on enwp? Toohool ( talk) 04:24, 26 April 2020 (UTC) reply

  Huh. Why aren't you following the same logic with everything you've uploaded to Commons? How can you can you know anything wasn't published simultaneously in any number of countries? That's what's crazy. E Eng 04:56, 27 April 2020 (UTC) reply

Because Commons policies are interpreted by humans, and I don't think those humans would try to enforce the rather absurd result of treating photos taken in the US by US photographers working for US companies as having some other country of origin. Again, what does this have to do with whether to keep this image on enwp? Toohool ( talk) 06:55, 27 April 2020 (UTC) reply

• Keep as fair use. Mztourist ( talk) 04:04, 22 April 2020 (UTC) reply

  Just to be clear, no one questions that we can keep a fair-use copy. The issue is the new claim of PD. E Eng 04:56, 27 April 2020 (UTC) reply

• Delete the so-called PD version, as the evidence for PD is full of holes -- precisely the same problems as with WP:Files_for_discussion/2020_April_24#File:The_Terror_of_War.jpg. Keep the fair-use version, of course. E Eng 04:56, 27 April 2020 (UTC) reply

For anyone who doesn't have the time to wade through that discussion, the only "hole" that EEng has identified there is his speculation, against any evidence, that the AP had a license agreement that required these photos to be published with copyright notice (which, if it were true, would mean that copyright was not forfeited). Toohool ( talk) 06:55, 27 April 2020 (UTC) reply

No, the holes are (a) that you keep saying publication without notice means PD, and that's not true, and (b) you are unable to say what form and location of notice is required, and that matters to the question of whether notice is missing. E Eng 13:27, 28 April 2020 (UTC) reply

Those aren't "holes", those are just you taking my statements out of context, making assumptions about what I do or don't know, and jumping to conclusions from the fact that I haven't written a treatise on copyright law in response to your demands. Toohool ( talk) 01:44, 29 April 2020 (UTC) reply

• Neutral, cautiously, due to Toohool's replies below so far; was Delete as a potentially-copyrighted image for which we already have a fair-use version: This file has significant doubt about its public domain status, particularly as nobody has shown actual citations of Associated Press member agreements or policy of the time, let alone U.S. policy or case law about whether a publication that was authorized with the requirement to provide copyright notices, then published without the copyright notices, was actually an authorized copy. Details:
  1. This is a 1968 photograph, created (i.e. put in tangible form) by a U.S. citizen in what was, at that time, Saigon, South Vietnam; I don't think there's any doubt that it was soon after published in newspapers around the world. In 1968, the U.S. copyright law was a version of the Copyright Act of 1909, not of the present Copyright Act of 1976 that took effect on January 1, 1978. Wikisource:United States Code/Title 17/1976-10-18/Chapter 1/Sections 19 to 21 shows United States Code Title 17, Chapter 1, § 20: "notice of copyright shall be applied ... if a periodical either upon the title page or upon the first page of text of each separate number or under the title heading" but also says "One notice of copyright in each volume or in each number of a newspaper or periodical published shall suffice." § 21 then says: "Where the copyright proprietor has sought to comply with the provisions of this title with respect to notice, the omission by accident or mistake of the prescribed notice from a particular copy or copies shall not invalidate the copyright or prevent recovery for infringement against any person who, after actual notice of the copyright, begins an undertaking to infringe it, but shall prevent the recovery of damages against an innocent infringer".
  2. Wikipedia and Commons have a common principle that the burden is on those wishing to include content, not those wishing to exclude it, to prove that the external content meets wiki guidelines. Commons:Commons:Project scope/Precautionary principle is a manifestation of this. In order for the file to be kept on English Wikipedia, either it would have to be beyond significant doubt that the photograph was not registered for copyright, or both of the following would have to be true without significant doubt:
     1. The publication's copyright notice was omitted or defective not only on the photograph page, but also the title page, the "title heading", and the "volume" of the publication; and
     2. the Associated Press either had not "sought to comply" with the copyright notice requirements, or the copyright notice omission was not "by accident or mistake" and someone can find U.S. law to clarify whose "accident or mistake" excuses the lack of notice.
  3. There was some mention of "simultaneous publication in multiple countries" that included the U.S. For works before 1978, I wouldn't defend a file with that on English Wikipedia. First, before 1978, works published in the U.S. within 30 days of first foreign publication were U.S. publications for purposes of U.S. law, and U.S. law is what carries on English Wikipedia. Second, following another country's copyright provisions would, if anything, make it more likely that the work retains copyright: Other countries either were part of the Universal Copyright Convention and followed roughly the same rules as the U.S., or were part of the Berne Convention and already copyrighted everything regardless of copyright notice or registration.

-- Closeapple ( talk) 08:59, 9 May 2020 (UTC) reply

There is a lot to unpack here, it will take me some time to respond in detail. Toohool ( talk) 17:41, 9 May 2020 (UTC) reply

@ Closeapple: In reading § 20, you are conflating the copyright to a periodical with the copyright to a contribution to a periodical. The copyright notice for a periodical, as you point out, may be located on the title page or first page or under the title heading. But, it only secures copyright to the portions of the work owned by the publisher, as SCOTUS summarized in 2001: "Pre-1976 copyright law recognized a freelance author's copyright in a published article only when the article was printed with a copyright notice in the author's name... Thus, when a copyright notice appeared only in the publisher's name, the author's work would fall into the public domain, unless the author's copyright, in its entirety, had passed to the publisher." (The "author" in this case being the AP, and the "publisher" being the individual newspaper.)

As the periodical copyright did not cover articles or photos not owned by the periodical itself, those had to be individually copyrighted as contributions. The notice requirements for such contributions are specified in Appendix A of chapter 2100 of the Compendium of Copyright Practices. The location of the notice is specified in part 4.3.3: For a single-page contribution to a periodical, notice must be placed "anywhere on" the contribution. There was no such notice in this case. (For that matter, neither was there a periodical copyright notice for most of the newspapers.)

Reliance on the "accident or mistake" clause (§ 21) is misplaced. As you have asked for citations about how this clause is applied, see Leaffer (p. 153), McLain (pp. 693-694), or van Gompel (p. 22), and the cases cited therein. That provision was narrowly interpreted to cover omission from a small percentage of copies, because of mistakes like manufacturing defects. It did not cover negligence or mistakes of law (such as "I didn't think a copyright notice was required" or "I just forgot to add a copyright notice"), and certainly did not cover cases where notice was omitted from all copies of a work.

Nevertheless, it is valid to theorize that the AP's member agreements might have required the photo to be published with a copyright notice, and therefore copyright was not forfeited if the newspapers violated that requirement. This is a legally sound theory (per American Press Ass'n v. Daily Story Pub. Co.), as I've acknowledged earlier in this discussion. But it is not a factually sound theory. What evidence is there to suggest that such a requirement existed? AP photos were routinely published every day by newspapers all over the country, with no copyright notice in sight (except in very rare cases). If the AP required all of its photos to be published with a copyright notice, wouldn't you expect that there would be at least one newspaper somewhere that did that? I don't think anyone will be able to find an example of such a paper. If the AP required copyright notice to be affixed to this particular photo, wouldn't you expect at least some newspapers to have done so? I looked at a lot of newspapers where this photo was published, and not a single one had such a notice.

As for your concern about publication in multiple countries, I think you may have misinterpreted that conversation above. The point was raised in response to a question about why I uploaded the photo here instead of on Commons. As you correctly state, it is likely that the photo might be under copyright under another country's laws. That is exactly why the photo is here at English Wikipedia, where we are only concerned about U.S. law, instead of at Commons, where policy requires PD photos to be PD in the U.S. and in their country of origin.

I agree that we should not keep the photo if there are significant doubts about its PD status, and I hope this puts your doubts to rest. Toohool ( talk) 05:53, 10 May 2020 (UTC) reply

The main reason that I'm guessing that the AP must have required a copyright notice as a condition of use, if not enforced than at least nominally, is that your alternative hypothesis seems even more astounding: You're saying generally that the AP, which has been a massive content source in the United States for decades, and which would have both motive and resources to uphold the exclusivity of its output, nonetheless spilled everything right out into the public domain continuously and immediately for decades on end. If true, then even more astoundingly, nobody else seems to have substantially exploited it before now. Are you basically calling open season on everything that came from or through the AP up to 1978? If so, this seems like a big deal for English Wikipedia and Commons; it almost seems like something that would require a new PD tag like {{ PD-US-AP-no-notice}} to explain what's going on. -- Closeapple ( talk) 08:34, 10 May 2020 (UTC) reply

@ Closeapple: It seems astounding from the perspective of today's world, where copyright exists by default and there's been an explosion of content that presents many new opportunities for licensing. But 1968 was a different world.

The AP said it themselves in 1942 when they argued before the Supreme Court that news "has no value after it has once been published". One expert discussed the question in 1953 of why so many newspapers were not copyrighted, attributing it to this idea of news having little durable value, combined with a perception that the formalities of copyright (registration and deposit) were too onerous.

To some extent, the AP had means other than copyright to protect their work. There are a number of cases where they tried to stop competing news outlets from copying their reports immediately after publication. They were able to do this because they convinced SCOTUS to create the hot news doctrine. See for example Associated Press v. KVOS, where a radio station was sued for broadcasting AP reports verbatim without permission, but there was no suggestion that it might have been a copyright violation.

They did, however, distribute some copyrighted concept. It shouldn't be assumed that any AP rules about copyright notice were "nominal", because newspapers did, to some degree, attach notices to whatever content was meant to be copyrighted. For example, on the same day this photo was published, there were at least 62 newspapers that printed an AP copyright notice for their daily stock quotes. I also found 4 examples of photos that were distributed by the AP in 1968 with copyright notices (copyrighted by the local papers that had produced the photos), and out of 63 total instances I found where one of them was published, 33 to 55 percent included the copyright notice. So the total absence of copyright notice for other content should be taken as good evidence that there was no intent to copyright it.

But yeah, for the most part, it is open season on the vast majority of content distributed by the AP and other wire services before 1978 (and maybe to some extent, 1989). I'm not sure there will be some big rush to exploit this though. It's been known for some time that the AP renewed copyright for virtually none of their photos, so that pre-1964 photos are public domain, yet there hasn't been any flood of these images of Commons. For one thing, it's hard to find decent copies of most of these photos--a scan of a grainy newspaper print is not going to look very good. Toohool ( talk) 06:37, 11 May 2020 (UTC) reply

• Keep as PD in the United States per 17 U.S.C. §§ 19-21 (1976), as there is no evidence of notice, and no evidence of a contractual requirement to provide one. Mdaniels5757 ( talk) 15:03, 12 May 2020 (UTC) reply

• Keep high-res version as PD in the United States per Mdaniels5757 and the reasoning at c:Commons:Undeletion requests/Archive/2020-06#File:Campus Guns.jpg. As odd as it may seem now, when reproductions of old news photos are a lucrative business, we have no reason to assume that AP in 1968 contractually obligated newspapers to provide copyright notices. Wikiacc ( ¶) 02:56, 28 August 2020 (UTC) reply
• Comment If this gets relisted again, please try to keep it together with Wikipedia:Files for discussion/2020 August 9#File:The Terror of War.jpg, which has the same core copyright question. Wikiacc ( ¶) 03:01, 28 August 2020 (UTC) reply
• Keep: PD status in the United States is unambiguous and certain, thus the file can be kept as a PD image on enwiki. PD status in other countries is uncertain, thus it is a safe precaution to not host the file on Commons. Fair use policy is not relevant to the issue at hand, since there is no need to follow FUP for a PD image. -- benlisquare _{T• C• E} 00:15, 18 September 2020 (UTC) reply

• Keep local as PD. Having read through all three threads ( The Terror of War.jpg and Campus Guns.jpg in addition to this one), I think it has been established that it is extremely unlikely that this image was published with copyright formalities (or to put it another way, there is no significant doubt about the fact). The reasons are that AP generally did not observe such formalities and, for this image specifically, no first publications have been found with a copyright notice despite extensive search. Because, in a few cases, other AP photos were in fact published with a copyright notice, we know what to look for and where (in the Rudolf Hess case, an extensive search easily located first publications with the notice). The theory that U.S. newspapers were under a contractual obligation to always comply with formalities but failed to honor it for decades with impunity is unreasonable (instead of something that would cast significant doubt on the freedom of this file) both because it is unlikely to be the case and because it is impossible show the (non-)existence of such a contract. Finally, the AP letter claiming blanket copyright over all AP content ever is both predictable in covering all bases and demonstrably false, not only because copyrights expires in general but because other AP photographs have been shown to have expired. –  Finnusertop ( talk ⋅ contribs) 01:06, 10 October 2020 (UTC) reply
• Delete the one with the diacritics because it is lower resolution and otherwise identical. — WinnerWolf99 ^talk _{What did I break now?} 19:40, 1 December 2020 (UTC) reply

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the media's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the media below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the media's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was: Delete; deleted by Fastily ( talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) AnomieBOT ⚡ 09:05, 13 October 2020 (UTC) reply

File:Konkan Sevak.jpeg ( delete | talk | history | links | logs) – uploaded by Abhishek Pujari ( notify | contribs | uploads | upload log). 

File:Konkan Shakti.jpeg ( delete | talk | history | links | logs) – uploaded by Abhishek Pujari ( notify | contribs | uploads | upload log).

already on https://goenchimathi.wordpress.com/tag/konkan-sevak/

and (earlier) https://www.flickr.com/photos/larserlandsson/314562795/ and http://www.shipspotting.com/gallery/photo.php?lid=61562

Finavon ( talk) 16:17, 5 October 2020 (UTC) reply

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the media's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.