Commons talk:Licensing

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For discussions of specific copyright questions, please go to Commons:Village pump/Copyright. Discussions that do not relate to changes to the page Commons:Licensing may be moved, with participants notified with the template {{subst:moved to VPC|Commons talk:Licensing}}.

For old discussions, see the Archives. Recent sections with no replies for 60 days may be archived.

Other archives

Seven 2006/2007 discussions organized as subpages, ignoringincl. comments added in 2014:

• ADRM
• Review of license templates
• U.S. patents
• Ecoport copyleft
• Museums Bilder (in German)
• Explaining why Derivative Work and Commercial Use must be allowed
• Which countries' copyright laws determine copyright status?

Explicit permission from photographer

If I were to gain explicit permission from a photographer to use their photo of an individual on a BLP would it be allowed even if the original photo is not under the permitted CC licensing protocols? Robertclarke32 (talk) 20:18, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

@Robertclarke32: No. We need a free license. Permission to use in Wikimedia/Wikipedia is not enough. Yann (talk) 08:22, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

But if you can convince them to license the photo with a free licence, such as CC-BY-SA-4.0, then it can indeed be uploaded. They can still give different licence term elsewhere (but anybody is allowed to copy the image from here under the free licence). –LPfi (talk) 15:15, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

@Robertclarke32: you may find Commons:Uploading works by a third party useful, especially the later sections (skim till it starts to look relevant). - Jmabel ! talk 23:52, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

PD-Germany-§134 can't be imported to commons even if CC0

I don't know where else to post this but there are a lot of portraits (and some other media) on German Wikipedia that are hosted under w:de:Vorlage:Bild-PD-§-134 (Template:PD-Germany-§134 on commons), a template that, in my understanding, primarily effects images that have left copyright according to the referenced law. Despite this, images with the template cannot be ported to commons at all. I would ask anyone, especially from dewiki, to check how this can be fixed so that images that clearly left copyright can be ported to commons for use on other wikis. Thank you. Frijfuhs (talk) 18:41, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

@Frijfuhs: what specific tool is refusing to transfer these? - Jmabel ! talk 21:16, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

I always just use the "Export to commons" button on the file's Wikipedia page which redirects to Special:ImportFile with the respective URL attached. Frijfuhs (talk) 21:21, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

There are probably ways around the problem, but please be aware that any of these images published for the first time after 1929 is still protected by US copyright and therefore not (yet) suitable for Wikimedia Commons. --Rosenzweig τ 21:52, 7 August 2025 (UTC)