Commons:Deletion requests/File:LosAngelesAirTrafficControl.PNG

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File:LosAngelesAirTrafficControl.PNG

[edit]

This file is sourced to a National Weather Service website.

Such sites host a mixture of content created by the US federal government (public domain) and content created by businesses and private individuals (a wide variety of free and unfree licenses). We rely on the captions they were published with to tell us where the photo originated.

Unfortunately, the citation we have points directly to the image itself and so although we can verify that in the Internet Archive, we no longer have access to its copyright and licensing information. The uploader indicated the source as "An associate of the webmaster"

For many years, hosting such images on the Commons was done in good faith under the rationale that:

  • public submissions to the NWS all entered the public domain and/or
  • all files hosted on NWS websites were in the public domain unless they carried a formal copyright notice

An extensive review of this rationale in 2024 revealed that neither of these beliefs held up to scrutiny. These findings were confirmed in an RfC conducted from August to October 2024.

Per COM:ONUS it is the responsibility of the person uploading an image to the Commons or anyone arguing for its retention here to provide evidence of permission from the copyright holder. Nevertheless, I reached out to the NWS regional office who published the photo to ask about its origins on September 20, but they never replied. (VRT ticket:2024103110006014)

Since this is an image created in the US after 1989 and we do not know who took it, this is a presumably unfree file and we must delete it as a precaution under COM:PRP.

Rlandmann (talk) 12:09, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I can check to see which page used the image by poking around the Wayback Machine. From https://web.archive.org/web/20050904232814/http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/images/zla/zlacwsu_bldg_n.jpg I see a larger text that says "ZLA CWSU at Los Angeles ARTCC". One can peek in the Wayback Machine for particular pages, but I havent located the specific one yet. WhisperToMe (talk) 01:19, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I found the image is being used here: https://web.archive.org/web/20041205000431/http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/zla/ I don't see any particular photo credits. disclaimer of the current 2024 page states: "The information on National Weather Service (NWS) Web pages are in the public domain, unless specifically noted otherwise," (When I try to click the archive link on the Wayback Machine page, I got redirected to the current page). WhisperToMe (talk) 01:39, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The page from 2004 stated: "The information on government servers are in the public domain, unless specifically annotated otherwise, and may be used freely by the public." The disclaimer is in all probability free use was presumed for so long. WhisperToMe (talk) 01:42, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hi @WhisperToMe -- We are now a couple of months into a deep-dive into third-party images hosted on NWS websites. The disclaimer you're pointing to has been found to be completely unreliable as evidence of the copyright status of an image. We have dozens and dozens of confirmed instances where third-party photographers never released their copyrights, and the NWS pubished their images without a formal copyright notice. And, conversely, not a single third-party photographer out of hundreds approached as ever confirmed that yes, they released their image into the public domain. Please read the RfC linked in the DR.
To keep this image, we really need specific and proximate confirmation that this image in particular was released by its creator. --Rlandmann (talk) 03:05, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Additionally, it was you who stated that the photo was taken by "An associate of the webmaster".[1] You don't seem to me to be the kind of contributor who would just invent a specific detail like that. Is there some chance that information might have been provided to you via an email account that you still have access to? --Rlandmann (talk) 03:37, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just on the off-chance I remembered the password, I tried to sign back in, but I couldn't enter a password. I was told it was deactivated due to inactivity :( .. I also searched the Gmail account I do currently use and so far haven't found an e-mail related to this. WhisperToMe (talk) 04:15, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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