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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   33712 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 11, 2024

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What is the licensing issue with a mug-shot?

The licensing issue with the previous photo appears to be that there was no license on it.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&logid=355493040

Yes, police departments do not typically license their mugshots -- this does not mean that they aren't in the public domain.

Mugshots probably don't even meet the requirements for originality. It's a low bar, but it's not zero.

It is not generally the case that works of state and local governments are public domain.

State and local governments usually do retain a copyright on their works. 17 USC ยง105 only places federal documents in the public domain.[11] However, laws and/or court decisions in some states may place their work in the public domain.

Even if the photo in question was in the public domain, it's still required to indicate this on the photo (example). Having no license on a file is not the same as having a PD license on it.

The equivalent article for Charlottesville uses a the work of a newspaper photographer who literally won a Pulitzer for it -- reduced in resolution, relying on fair use I presume. Does WM really think that the Waukesha Sheriff's department is more likely to sue for infringement than an actual news photographer?

I'm not an expert on Wikipedia policy, but I would suspect that likelihood of being sued is not a consideration when evaluating if a photo should have a license attached or not.

As far as I can tell, the policy is very simple - photos must have a license. Happy to be corrected if I'm overlooking some policy details here.

The Charlottesville photo he mentioned has no license submitted with it, only excuses for why it's fair use.

Quite the opposite. There's a licensing section that clearly indicates that it's a copyrighted image that's used under fair use.

"Copyrighted image" is not a license, and neither is "fair use". If this fulfills the requirements, they could just write "fair use" under the mugshot.

Copyright is obviously a license.

If this fulfills the requirements, they could just write "fair use" under the mugshot.

Yes, that's one way to add a license to a photo. However, as I mentioned, nobody actually did this.

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So what's the problem? The mugshot would be "copyright Waukesha Sheriff's dept" (assuming that it's copyrightable, as you suggest) and the rationale some variation on 'fair use'.

The problem is that it did not include that, and thus it did not have a license attached. Hence, removed for not having a license.

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I wonder if the dudes that used to upload pictures of their semen submitted them with an accompanying license.

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