Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2011 March 2

File:Bert Acosta Obituary 1954.jpg (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (article|XfD|restore)

Obituary was published in 1954 and no renewal notice can be found despite two editors searching in the copyright database for renewals. There was no copyright notice with the initial publication so it is "irrevocably in the public domain in the United States because it was first published in the United States without copyright notice prior to 1978". Even if it was published with a copyright notice it would still be in the public domain since it was "published in the United States between 1923 and 1963, and its copyright was not renewed." Despite this evidence of absence it was deleted. Unlike showing that my pocket is empty, there is no document I can show that a renewal notice wasn't filed, only one I can show if it was filed. For instance I can find and show renewal notices for the New York Times obituaries and movie revues and theater reviews from the same time because the New York Times was republishing them in book form. Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 02:20, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• What is the basis for saying it was initially published without a copyright notice? I did not see that claim at PUI. Do you have the full newspaper that it came from or just the clipping? --B (talk) 02:35, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Also, since it's an AP story, it doesn't really matter if the publication that reprinted it didn't renew it. The question is whether the AP did and I would be utterly shocked if the AP had let their copyrights lapse. If they had, I would think that would be the kind of thing that would be pretty well known since we'd have a whole lot of photos we could use freely. --B (talk) 02:59, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • And here is what is clearly the same article in the LA Times archive [1]. So it was definitely syndicated. --B (talk) 03:09, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • Here it is in another newspaper [2]. I have no idea how copyright works for syndicated articles. I think we can say, without jumping too far out on a limb, that there probably exists at least one publication that it was in where that publication allowed the copyright to expire and there probably exists at least one publication where the copyright was renewed. Then there's the AP, whom I would be stunned if they didn't renew their copyright. I can't imagine that one newspaper not renewing their copyright automatically spoils it for the ones that did - the copyright was never owned by the individual newspapers to begin with. Unless you know (and can prove) from the law that one newspaper not renewing their copyright invalidates the AP's copyright, we can't just pretend it does. --B (talk) 03:19, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • I have sent an email to the Associated Press, asking if they have always renewed copyright for all their news stories. Hopefully I'll receive a response soon. Jsayre64 (talk) 03:48, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
          • I have a poor imagination, but I have a hard time imagining - even if they had allowed some of their copyrights to lapse - that they would freely admit it in response to an email. I also really think, as I said above, that if there was any appreciable amount of AP content that had fallen into the public domain, it would be, to quote Joe Biden, a big f'in deal, and we would know about it. --B (talk) 04:31, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse, nominator is seeking to forum shop by listing here when consensus has been established elsewhere. DRV is not PUF round 2. Stifle (talk) 09:01, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  Exactly, I hate people that use proceedings to redress a perceived wrong, we should do something to stop it. Appeals Court and a state and federal Supreme Court system are for losers. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 01:52, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  As you are intimately aware, Wikipedia is not a court of law, nor is it a family where we run to the other parent when the first one won't give us any candy. DRV is for where the process has not been followed. The process was followed here, it just came up with a result you didn't like. Stifle (talk) 08:58, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  Dude, using the available processes to address a perceived wrong is the way it is done, the appeals process is here to use. Telling people that use it that they "run to the other parent when the first one won't give us any candy" is unnecessarily assuming bad faith. If you want to eliminate the appeals process, lobby to get rid of it. The issue is larger than any single file. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 05:34, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm sorry to have to say that your DRV listings and conduct connected therewith have exhausted any good faith in you that I might assume.

  Deletion review, as explained at the top of the page, is to be used if the closer interpreted the debate incorrectly, not if you disagree with the debate. Stifle (talk) 10:09, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  I shall withdraw that, as on review it is not fair. What I am trying to get at is that I believe you may have a misconception about the appealability (if that is a word) of deletion decisions on Wikipedia. There is no appeal against deletion decisions on the grounds that the discussion or decision that was arrived at was "wrong", because what is right and what is wrong is a matter to be determined by consensus. One doesn't get to say the consensus is "wrong" because one doesn't agree with it, and a deletion review listing on such grounds ought not to be entertained. Grounds to appeal exist where the closer/deleter made a decision which fails to observe the process correctly. An example of this would be a decision to delete where all the !votes were to keep — this will generally fall into the category of an appealable decision.

  To draw a legal comparison (with apologies, because as I pointed out Wikipedia is not a court of law), there are various court cases which may be appealed "on a point of law only", and others which may be appealed on a point of fact as well. Deletion decisions fall into the former category. Stifle (talk) 13:43, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • I'm not a free-file person or a lawyer, but could you or someone else explain why Seraphimblade's search isn't enough here? What exactly _would_ be sufficient evidence? Hobit (talk) 17:42, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• There seems to be a large legal literature involving AP, contrary to the guess that it must be copyright because otherwise everyone would know about it.. It is not clear from it that it copyrights the stories. It is absolutely clear that at least in 1918 it did not, from a rather famous case [3], see also ."Common Law Intellectual Property and the Legacy of International News Service v. Associated Press" The University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 50, No. 2, 1983), pp. 411-429 . . I don't know & did not research what the copyright status or if is with respect to the papers that reprint it. I'd think that they might possibly own the copyright of their rewritten version, but otherwise they cannot place a valid copyright on material they do not own, & in any case if one paper published it without copyright, that others published it with copyright doesn't affect the first publication, which would now be out of copyright--unless it can be shown that AP actually did copyright this particular item and did renew it. But where this belongs is the copyright problems noticeboard DGG ( talk ) 18:00, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Regarding the court case, IANAL, but from reading the case, I think the situation it was dealing with was that the AP's news was being scooped, not whether or not the AP had copyright for its stories. Facts are not copyrightable — if the AP (or anyone else) writes a story about a certain subject, we can't copy it verbatim, but we can report the facts they report in our own words. So from a copyright standpoint, if I wanted to stand in front of the AP news wire and report on all of their news and beat them to the punch, that's their tough luck as long as I'm not verbatim copying their stories. But this is a different question - the question is one involving copyright as, in this case, we are seeking to verbatim copy the story. --B (talk) 19:22, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I was merely citing the case for the clear statement on the second p. of the decision that AP did not copyright its stories, at least in 1918. (contrary to several uninformed guesses that found it unimaginable) DGG ( talk ) 20:17, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Question: What was the encyclopaedic purpose of this image?

  I can see a logical problem in the debate, which is that the "keep" side were asked to prove that copyright was not renewed: an informal fallacy in the "delete" side's position. I think that such a lacuna in the victorious side's logic would be grounds for a straight "overturn" at DRV, provided (1) it was the sole, or main, reason for deletion and (2) the image had an encyclopaedic purpose.—S Marshall T/C 21:08, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • To answer one of your questions, the sole reason for deletion on my part was copyright. PUF is the wrong forum if you want to delete an image for editorial reasons. I realize that one editor at the PUF raised the argument of editorial reasons to delete the image, but I did not consider that in my decision. If the AP (not this local newspaper) owns the copyright, then it was not the local newspaper's to lose by failing to renew their copyright. A records search at the Copyright Office, which could definitively prove whether the AP released, copyrighted, and renewed some sort of compilation that included this article would prove its copyright status. Soundvisions1 correctly pointed this out during the discussion. The fact that we can't do a Copyright Office records search from our respective easy chairs doesn't change the fact that it is provable, one way or the other, whether the article is still copyrighted. Unless that step is taken or unless there is an online database that we know with certainty would have the record if it exists (which I don't think there is), we can't just assume that it is out of copyright. --B (talk) 22:53, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • What was the encyclopaedic purpose of this image?—S Marshall T/C 07:55, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse: The nom was based on one thing but when actually looked at the image, a scan of a full newspaper article, the first thing I saw was that it came from A.P. The initial issue being discussed was focused on one paper to see if that paper had renewed copyright. However once the true source was provided the "keep" opinions would have needed to provide solid proof that A.P did *not* first obtain a copyright on this and second, renew a copyright on any collection that may have included this. As the article was sent over the wires an unknown (by us anyway) amount of papers across the country, and world, ran it. In the discussion it was made fairly clear the sans someone going to Washington, DC and actually looking by hand nobody could say 100% of this was part of some collection that was under a copyright. Per policy here at Wikipedia the burden of proof would be on the "keeps" to provide proof there was no copyright on this item. That was not done. A secondary issue that I had raised was just a simple question - what was this even being used for? The same AP piece is already explicitly cited in the article. While not related to the overall deletion discussion and why it was deleted it is a valid question to ask in consideration of what we are discussing now. Copyright issues aside for one moment what would restoring the image do for this project? Soundvisions1 (talk) 01:08, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

All copyright renewals are in an online database from the Copyright Office website. There are also scanned copies of renewals at the Library of Congress online. No need to go to DC, I am not sure what going to DC to look through the online database would do. I think you are confused by what the other person who did the search said when he said you would have to go to DC to see if it was initially published under a copyright, but that was moot because that would had expired without a renewal notice. And no renewal notice has been found at either the LOC or Copyright Office online. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 01:44, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This might be sort of obvious, but I just wanted to point out that some of us have been saying that discussing the encyclopedic use of this scanned article is not something we should do, because it is not and should not be a factor in whether to reverse this deletion or not. I disagree, and for this reason: if it turns out that the article is in fact copyrighted, we probably couldn't make a fair use claim due to

WP:NFCC #8, so then, yes: deletion is inevitable. Jsayre64 (talk) 02:17, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply

]

• Comment - US magazine ads prior to 1978 are all considered free by legal precedence because they were sent to multiple publishers, who in fact didn't bother to put a copyright notice on them each time (there is little reason to copyright an image that you want disseminated as far and wide as possible). However, I have never heard this with syndicated content. Originally I was going to say that I doubt the AP had to renew every story created, but a search through earlier records indicates maybe they did. Can't we like, get a lawyer on here, or place a tag calling for help at commons/ Magog the Ogre (talk) 07:57, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Reply:A.P tends to handle thing in various ways, one of them is by copyrigthing "collections" of what they send out. The problem here is that searching online would not tell you about this single wire story if it is part of a collection. That is why someone would need to actually look through the copyrighted collections to see if this was in one of them. Soundvisions1 (talk) 12:11, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, so that's why the online copyright records search for "bert acosta" doesn't get any results! Jsayre64 (talk) 15:04, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

that I found an authoritative statemente they did not copyright in 1918, is indeed not proof of what they did in 1954. DGG ( talk ) 20:19, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I see. That's very difficult to disprove, but I seriously doubt this image is truly free. Someone actually would have to look through the archives. Magog the Ogre (talk) 21:57, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse per Stifle. Determining the usability status of this image as it applies to us would likely involve consulting a lawyer, preferably one with a specialisation in newspaper copyrights. In this particular case there appears to be no encyclopedic purpose to make expert opinion necessary. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 05:17, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]