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Commons:Deletion requests/Category:Images from Auckland Museum marked with cultural permissions

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  • Add {{delete|reason=Fill in reason for deletion here!|subpage=Category:Images from Auckland Museum marked with cultural permissions|year=2025|month=March|day=15}} to the description page of each file.
  • Notify the uploader(s) with {{subst:idw||Category:Images from Auckland Museum marked with cultural permissions|plural}} ~~~~
  • Add {{Commons:Deletion requests/Category:Images from Auckland Museum marked with cultural permissions}} at the end of today's log.
This deletion discussion is now closed. Please do not make any edits to this archive. You can read the deletion policy or ask a question at the Village pump. If the circumstances surrounding this file have changed in a notable manner, you may re-nominate this file or ask for it to be undeleted.

Category:Images from Auckland Museum marked with cultural permissions

[edit]
A list of 2,501 files

This deletion request is an extension to previous deletion requests to the same batch upload by User:Fae, see Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Images from Auckland Museum marked with cultural permissions, Commons:Deletion requests/File:Brooch (AM 2015.76.5-3).jpg, Commons:Deletion requests/undefinedintitle:"AM 2004.52.223", Commons:Deletion requests/Auckland Museum cultural permissions.

These images are subject to Auckland Museum's cultural permissions process and have been uploaded due to a technical error in the Museum's internal systems - these images should not have been openly licensed (as covered in the discussion in Commons:Deletion_requests/Non-free_images_uploaded_from_Auckland_Museum%27s_API).

As previously discussed in other debates re: previous deletion requests relating to the same batch. The uploader User:Fæ acknowledged that some files in this batch upload could have copyright issues, see Commons:Batch uploading/AucklandMuseumCCBY. Fæ envisaged that any problematic files could be "weeded out as housekeeping" and possibly by "raising non-controversial speedy deletions as needed".

This request is a further implementation of Fae's housekeeping, although it has taken some time for the Museum to assess what is sitting on Wikimedia Commons currently due to a lack of staff capacity and technical knowledge of wikimedia commons process. 

--Dactylantha (talk) 23:28, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  1. On a sampling of a few, none of the individual image files see to have been tagged in a way that leads to this deletion discussion.
  2. I do not understand precisely what is the issue. Exactly how is an image like File:Pestle (AM 2014.92.24-1).jpg culturally sensitive? Is this a claim that Commons cannot depict any articles coming from certain cultures or, if not, what exactly is the claim? These are not recent uploads, which was a significant part of the rationale to allow deletion in the earlier discussion. - Jmabel ! talk 22:37, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Jmabel: The cultural permissions issue is a bit of a red herring, the real issue here is that the copyright holder (the photographer - Auckland Museum) never released these images as CC-BY in the first place (and the reason was due to internal cultural permissions processes). Prosperosity (talk) 02:54, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
 Speedy keep. @Dactylantha: , museum house rules and cultural permissions are just non-copyright restrictions, and such reasons are not sufficient grounds for deletion. Deletion is usually granted on cases that violate artistic copyright with respect to images of artistic objects. Museums typically do not hold artistic copyrights; you need to provide proof that the designers of the works (sculptors, painters etc.) are still alive or have been dead for less than 50 years (but still, {{FoP-New Zealand}} is applicable if a work is a copyrighted sculpture found inside publicly-accessible premises). JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 23:10, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@JWilz12345: These images absolutely do violate artistic copyright. These works were never legitimately released on CC-BY licenses, and were uploaded by mistake by Fae's bot. In terms of NZ copyright, the copyright holders for these images are the photographers (who created the works as a part of their employment at the museum, meaning the museum is the copyright holder). --Prosperosity (talk) 23:29, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Prosperosity however, CC-BY license is irrevocable. It is the mistake of Auckland Museum to license those under commercial CC licensing, but that license cannot be revoked in perpetuity. If they indeed wants to take those images down, they can instead file a DMCA takedown request to Wikimedia Foundation instead of requesting users here to take down Fæ's images en masse. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 23:37, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@JWilz12345: CC-BY licenses are irrevocable, but this content wasn't validly released under CC-BY in the first place (i.e. the rights holder has actively agreed to release the content on a CC-BY licence) - the same reason why I can't download publicity shots of Taylor Swift, and put them on Flickr using a CC-BY license. Auckland Museum, as the copyright holder, did not agree to this content being made available under a CC-BY license, it was put up online either due to a bot mistakenly identifying images as CC-BY, or due to an internal server issue where some content was erroneously shown as having a CC-BY license.
Many previous batches of AM images with the same issue have been removed from commons by going through Commons:Deletion requests - a DMCA takedown request seems like overkill if going through Commons:Deletion requests has worked well in the past. Prosperosity (talk) 03:01, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There should definitely be some official request of the museum send to COM:VRT explaining the situation also also give the VRT team the permission to publish their explanation. Then we have a better basis to decide on. GPSLeo (talk) 17:35, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Linking Commons:Batch uploading/AucklandMuseumCCBY. - Jmabel ! talk 02:59, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@HughLilly: . - Jmabel ! talk 03:02, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm hoping for a little more clarity here. Am I correct in understanding that two people who work for the Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira (User:Dactylantha and Wikimedian-in-residence User:Prosperosity) are presenting a deletion request on behalf of a different New Zealand museum (the Auckland Museum), and are stating (or at least Prosperosity is stating) that they believe the Auckland Museum never granted free licenses for these photos, for all of which it owns copyright? (The issue of why they would or wouldn't want to grant a license is really not Commons' affair, and I'd prefer we just lay that aside if it is not the proposed basis for deletion.) Is this a correct statement of the situation, or is it wrong in some respect? - Jmabel ! talk 03:19, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! That's correct! I'll try to make it very clear:
Dactylantha (talk) 03:31, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Further: @Prosperosity if you are saying that the museum, with apparent authority to release these under a CC-BY license, and with legitimate ownership of the copyrights of these photos, had them posted for years with that license by mistake and is now trying to walk that back, that seems pretty thin. If you publish work to which you own the copyright, and it is posted for years as free-licensed with a supposedly irrevocable license, it's hard to imagine a court saying that "oops" amounts to a grounds for revocation, or anyone could just say they'd erred and cancel any such license at any time. - Jmabel ! talk 03:26, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's right. This issue was identified reasonably quickly, only two years after the files were uploaded (although very shortly after the category was created), but the user did not do a proper deletion request. Files listed for deletion in this request fall into two types:
  • Files uploaded by a bot unrelated to the museum or its staff, which scraped hundreds of thousands of photos from Collections Online. While almost all of these were valid and were of images that had a CC-BY license, many did not, and many of these were images where cultural permissions applied and the images. The uploader, Fae, identified this issue after they had ran their bot, and recommended any files that were listed as such be removed.
  • Some files were mistakenly labelled as CC-BY on the museum's website, due to an internal issue. The files were mistakenly listed as such online, but a mistake does not mean that the images were properly licensed. In order for te ao maaori cultural heritage content to be released under a CC-BY licence, the museum's internal policy (He Korahi Māori) dictates that we would need widespread agreement with stakeholders to do so, otherwise the organisation can't agree to the content release. I have no evidence that stakeholder meetings happened, or of stakeholder agreement (because that didn't happen, because the works were not intended for release).
For the first type, it is entirely unreasonable that anyone could have uploaded these. For the second type, it's reasonable for a user to have uploaded these (because they saw the notice), but this notice was invalid in the same way that a mislicensed Flickr image would be. I genuinely don't know how at this point to tell the difference between the two types, and from my perspective neither should be on Commons (and if you're talking about hypothetical courts, I could absolutely see a NZ court agreeing that this is a Wai 262 issue - remember that these images are subject to NZ law as well as US copyright law).
Does that help? I'm happy to explain more if there's something unclear. Prosperosity (talk) 04:29, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see that the notice was invalid in the second type. It strikes me like the recent Air Canada case where Air Canada was forced to abide by the policy offered by its AI chat-bot despite that disagreeing with their normal policy.--Prosfilaes (talk) 17:35, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
 Comment It seems that the museum accidentally allowed the images to be freely licensed for two years, and is now attempting to revoke an irrevocable license. This situation differs from those mislicensed Flickr images, where the uploaders aren't the copyright holders. Here, it's the copyright holder that released the images under a free license, making it legally binding, even if unintentional. Since the museum really wants the images removed, the community can decide whether to delete them as a gesture of courtesy. Alternatively, as JWilz12345 suggested, they can file a DMCA request with the Wikimedia Foundation. Stevenliuyi (talk) 19:51, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi User:Sevenliuyi Images mistakenly slipped through in a bulk upload due to technical difficulties with the API at the time (and it was acknowledged at the time of upload by User:Fae that this would be a potential issue in advance). It is regrettable that mistakes were made in previous uploads. If this discussion comes down to a gesture of courtesy in this instance, it would be much appreciated by our staff as we continue working on uploading another 100k+ images in the near future, and we are requesting a relatively small removal in ratio to what has already been contributed. Dactylantha (talk) 22:47, 6 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You write "our staff" but I think you still did not confirm that you are writing here in behalf of the museum. Please confirm this first. After this you can write an explanation why you never had the right to publish the photos under the given licenses. Then we can decide if we accept this or if you need to go through the WMF DMCA process. GPSLeo (talk) 07:04, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have made it clear in this thread that I am an employee of Auckland museum, as is User:Prosperosity who is the Museum's Wikipedian in Residence. User:Prosperosity has already covered why these photos were never actively published under the given licenses - earlier in the thread they stated,
"These images absolutely do violate artistic copyright. These works were never legitimately released on CC-BY licenses, and were uploaded by mistake by Fae's bot. In terms of NZ copyright, the copyright holders for these images are the photographers (who created the works as a part of their employment at the museum, meaning the museum is the copyright holder). Many previous batches of AM images with the same issue have been removed from commons by going through Commons:Deletion requests - a DMCA takedown request seems like overkill if going through Commons:Deletion requests has worked well in the past."
I have also confirmed that the incorrect license was applied due to technical mistakes in User:Fae's bulk upload via bot.
This discussion has also been covered in similar requests relating to the same bulk upload in these deletion requests:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Non-free_images_uploaded_from_Auckland_Museum%27s_API
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Files_in_Category:Images_from_Auckland_Museum_marked_with_cultural_permissions
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Brooch_(AM_2015.76.5-3).jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/undefinedintitle:%22AM_2004.52.223%22 Dactylantha (talk) 03:08, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So the photographs are not the problem because the museum has all rights to publish them. The problem is the copyright of the objects depicted. But most of the objects are stones they do not have any copyright? GPSLeo (talk) 06:57, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The museum employees have the law wrong. One is stuck with one's mistakes -- there is no "Oops, I made a mistake" in copyright licensing. If the museum makes a mistake and posts files with a CC license, the museum is stuck with its mistake. It cannot, even seconds after the posting (much less two years later), revoke the irrevocable license. Therefore, to the extent that the museum can prove that any of the 2,501 files above never had a CC license attached to it on the museum's web site, such files should be taken down. However, all files that did have a CC license on the museum's web site, even briefly, are covered by that irrevocable license. .     Jim . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 20:52, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • Sorry I'm late to this party, but despite having been involved with lots of images here, I didn't see a notification.
Can anyone please explain to me two things:
Why have File:Portrait of two women seated at a table with a large pile of wool on it (AM 76085-1).jpg / File:Two men shearing sheep while girls gather wool (AM 81641-1).jpg been deleted (and others)? Is this DR now closed and being actioned? What's going on?
What is the rationale for File:A man and a child bundling wool (AM 86990-1).jpg? Because "copyright housekeeping" just doesn't cut it! That's a speedy-keep-all just for the laziness of it. Now that one is one of a large batch (10k images, Category:Photographs by Tudor Washington Collins) that I've put a lot of categorization work into, so have some familiarity with. They're 1930s-1940s photographs by a known photographer and are (AFAIK) a donation to the local museum and then all released as CC-by 4.0 by Auckland Museum. I can see no cultural sensitivity issue to any of those, and if one of them is under threat of deletion, then surely that's all 10k of them likewise? That is going to need a better justification than 'housekeeping' ! Andy Dingley (talk) 21:31, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, and for anyone arguing the case that "Auckland Museum are the valid rights holder for these images, but they made a mistake and never intended to grant a licence for them", then here's an interesting legal case to be keeping an eye on: Wrong couple divorced after computer error by law firm Vardag's Andy Dingley (talk) 21:37, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Kept: no valid reason for deletion -- CC licenses are irrevocable. .     Jim . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 22:02, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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