Wikipedia:Media copyright questions/Archive/2012/February

Copyrighted images and copyright notice not allowed on the English Wikipedia?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Binksternet and JAL78 have agreed that a copyright notice does not belong in a caption. Their content dispute is beyond the scope of this forum. —teb728 t c 06:24, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

---

Will somebody please have a look at this. I added a picture to an article, but it was removed by the user Binksternet with the reason, that "No copyrighted images allowed, no images with requirement for copyright notice"[1] Is this true? I think Binksternet has misunderstood something. Many images on Wikipedia are not in the public domain, but are copyrighted and can be used under a license. If one think that copyright means "do never use this image" then one have misunderstood the situation. Does the English Wikipedia have a policy saying something like "No copyrighted images allowed, no images with requirement for copyright notice"??? --JAL78 (talk) 03:19, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

We do allow copyright images, but the case here is that being a picture of a real-world object that is not a piece of artist work, we can reasonably expect a free replacement can be taken particularly since its used around the world, per WP:NFCC#1. --MASEM (t) 03:26, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I suspect he misused "copyrighted" to mean "non-free". Free licensed image are acceptable equally with PD. (Some of the helpers on this forum make the same mistake.) —teb728 t c 03:31, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I see the root of the misunderstanding: You added a photo with a copyright notice in the caption. We put copyright notices on file description pages not in captions. (See WP:CREDITS.) The other user removed the whole image, not just the copyright notice. —teb728 t c 04:10, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

The guideline at WP:CREDITS says that no copyright notice should be placed in the article. The larger issue with the image in question is that it is part of a promotional campaign by JAL78 to replace Bösendorfer, Bechstein and other competitor piano images with an image of a Steinway & Sons piano. ([2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]) I reverted all of the images thus placed because of conflict of interest issues. Binksternet (talk) 05:05, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

– Yes, the credit does not necessarily need to be on the article page itself – that cannot be required by the copyright holder; having it on the image page is enough by most Wikipedia projects' standards. Binksternet said that copyrighted images are not allowed on Wikipedia, which is false. Binksternet deleted the image – not only the optional byline – and he wrote that "No copyrighted images allowed, no images with requirement for copyright notice".

– Binksternet's accuse of my edits being a "... part of a promotional campaign..." is just an attempt of removing the focus from the case about a misguided Binksternet deleting pictures, because he doesn't understand what "copyright" and "license" mean. And yes, I removed some bad pictures, including pictures of Steinway(!) pianos, and replaced them with this extremely good picture. There is nothing wrong or suspicious about that – it's actually pretty normal to replace pictures when better pictures become available; that is a part of making Wikipedia better, which is an ongoing process. And by the way, be aware that other editors revert Binksternet's edits.^{example here} --JAL78 (talk) 05:59, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

You both need to take your edit war to the talk pages of the articles in question and let uninvolved editors decide which (if any) photos to keep. If you don't, you are likely to be blocked for disruption. With the subject edit of the present section, however, I fail to see why Binksternet objects to a photo of a Steinway D-274 on Steinway D-274. —teb728 t c 06:09, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.