Wikipedia:Media copyright questions

Media copyright questions

Welcome to the Media copyright questions noticeboard, a place for help with image copyright tagging, non-free content, and media-related questions. For all other questions, use Wikipedia:Questions.

If you have a question about a specific image, link to it like this: [[:File:Example.png]] (Note the colons around the word File.) If a question clearly does not belong on this page, reply to it using the template {{Mcq-wrong}} and leave a note on the poster's talk page. For copyright issues relevant to Commons, questions may be directed to Commons's copyright village pump.

How to add a copyright tag to an existing image

1. On the description page of the image (the one whose name starts File:), click "Edit this page".
2. From the page Wikipedia:File copyright tags, choose the appropriate tag:
   • For work you created yourself, use one of the ones listed under the heading "For image creators".
   • For a work downloaded from the internet, please understand that the vast majority of images from the internet are not appropriate for use on Wikipedia. Exceptions include images from flickr that have an acceptable license, images that are in the public domain because of their age or because they were created by the United States federal government, or images used under a claim of fair use. If you do not know what you are doing, please post a link to the image here and ask BEFORE uploading it.
   • For an image created by someone else who has licensed their image under an acceptable Creative Commons or other free license, or has released their image into the public domain, this permission must be documented. Please see Requesting copyright permission for more information.
3. Type the name of the tag inclusing the curly brackets (e.g.; {{Cc-by-4.0}}) in the edit box on the image's description page.
4. Remove any existing tag complaining that the image has no tag (for example, {{untagged}})
5. Click Publish changes.
6. If you still have questions, ask a question below.

Click here to start a new discussion

File:Petras Kraujalis.jpg

File:Petras Kraujalis.jpg was uploaded as non-free content, but might've already entered into the public domain given that the subject of the photo Petras Kraujalis died in 1933. I looks like the country of first publication might be c:COM:Lithuania (or c:COM:Soviet Union,I guess, since Lithuania was part of the USSR at that time). If more information about the provenance of this photo can be found, then it could've already entered into the public domain under Lithuanian copyright: either 70 years p.m.a. (if author is known and their date of death is also known) or 70 years after publication (if an anonymous work). Otherwise, I don't think this file can be kept as non-free per WP:FREER given that another image of Kraujalis (also used in the article) is found on Commons as File:Lietuvių draugijos nukentėjusiems dėl karo šelpti centro komitetas.jpeg. Can anyone help sort this out? -- Marchjuly (talk) 04:54, 12 August 2026 (UTC)

@Marchjuly: Hello, probably you are right and this photo is already in public domain. The source (which is a very reliable source Visuotinė lietuvių enciklopedija) do not provide name of the author of this photo and only mention that it is kept in the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences (Lithuanian: Lietuvos mokslų akademijos biblioteka). If Vle.lt authors would have known the author of the photo, then I think they would have definitely included its name and authorship. By the way, Petras Kraujalis lived most of his life in Lithuania's capital city Vilnius and Vilnius Region (which was controlled by Poland since 1920 until World War II), so the photo possibly could have been taken in Poland's controlled territory of the Vilnius Region and probably licensing Template:PD-Poland is also relevant here, but the photo could have also been taken in Lithuania's temporary capital Kaunas, etc. We will probably never know exactly where it was photographed as at the time private photographers were doing business taking such portraits in their private studios. -- Pofka (talk) 15:25, 12 August 2026 (UTC)

I think Pofka's reasoning for anonymous publication is better than many cases where Commons accepts this rationale, in my opinion. The main question is American copyright as restored by the URAA, and for that purpose, it's source country would be the current (or 1996, to be precise) polity governing the place of first publication. If we suppose that the entry of the encyclopedia suffices for assuming it is indeed anonymous, what would have to be established is whether the photograph has been published (in a loose sense also including studio portraits, say, handed by a studio photographer to the client) in what is currently Lithuania before 1946. I think that is likely, unless the Wroblewski library kept unpublished negatives of images or similar items in their repository. So, if we think it is close enough to a formal portrait to most likely have been made by a professional photographer, then we could relicense it as {{PD-1996}} in addition to its present-day copyright status in Lithuania. Felix QW (talk) 13:29, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

Petras Kraujalis at the time was a famous person and died before World War II, so I think there is zero chance that the Wroblewski library kept unpublished negative of this photo for so long. They definitely have an old printed version of this photo and scanned it to upload online as it is a very typical formal portrait of that time. -- Pofka (talk) 19:30, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

Thank you very much – I agree that this looks like a formal portrait typical of the time. I uploaded a slightly higher resolution version to Commons as File:Petras Kraujalis.webp and summarised the argument there. Felix QW (talk) 19:55, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

Is this Penrose diagram too simple to be copyrightable?

I am currently needing a Penrose diagram for my articles Mass inflation and Shock singularity, but I don't know how to make one myself. I really like this one (figure 4), but I'm not sure whether it is detailed/stylized enough to fall under copyright. And if it is, if I were to recreate the image myself, would that still be considered violating copyright, considering it is a physics diagram? Shocksingularity (talk) 04:17, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

My question would be, could you give ten physicists the exact same input parameters, and have them produce the exact same diagram from them as an output (well, provided they did it correctly anyway)? That is, for example, true of a Feynman diagram, and to the best of my knowledge those are not copyrightable since they are a depiction of factual information, and since for any given set of inputs there's only one correct output, no creativity is involved in making one. But if there is any level of creative input/discretion by the creator into how the diagram is going to be drawn, what will be depicted in it, etc., it is likely copyrightable. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 07:13, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

There really is only one correct output in this case, since it's basically a graph. I guess the colors and the choice of dotted/dashed/bold lines could be original? I'm not sure that those elements really meet the WP:Threshold of originality though, especially considering that they are simple. Shocksingularity (talk) 21:48, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

In something like a logo, things like a choice of font, color, etc., are not sufficiently creative to pass TOO. So, while of course my opinion is worth exactly as much as you paid for it, I would say that if there is only one possible output for any given set of inputs, there is not enough creativity involved for these to be copyrightable, at least in the United States. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 08:27, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

Looking around (this is nowhere near my scientific knowledge), the Penrose diagram is a standard method of presenting information related to this types of behaviors, including some of the symbols. The only thing unique here, cited to the paper (and an earlier reference) is the four named lines, and that's coming off the explanation in the paper of how they'd fall on this type of diagram. Therefore, yes, you should be able to recreate the diagram, but I'd avoid using the exact colors, line styles and fonts. Also make sure the paper is properly referred on the image description page. Masem (t) 11:42, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

Portrait of deceased individual from National Portrait Gallery under free use rationale

The (frankly horrible) current image used in a bio article (V. C. Wynne-Edwards), contains the following free-use rationale:

• to provide visual identification of one or more specific individual(s), or an identifiable gathering of them,
• where the individual(s) concerned are deceased, or where access would for practical purposes be impossible,
• and for whom there is no known representation under a 'free' license,
• on the English-language Wikipedia, hosted on servers in the United States by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation,

I think these apply also to this one, which is far superior (the current one is virtually unrecognizable, really) and available through CC but only under under an insufficient BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. Mausfield (talk) 12:34, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

@Mausfield I agree, upload the other one correctly and change it in the article. The unused pic will get deleted automatically after awhile, not being used in an article. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 14:53, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

This cannot be done using the basic upload wizard, correct? I don't see an option for non-free licenses Mausfield (talk) 17:01, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

@Mausfield The file upload wizard has an "upload a non-free file" button. Nthep (talk) 18:50, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

Ah, yes it does. I was mistakenly looking at Commons. My bad. Mausfield (talk) 19:32, 25 August 2026 (UTC)