Commons:Deletion requests/PJ Smit

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PJ Smit

[edit]

Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum:

Animal Coloration:

Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London:

These illustrations are by Pierre Jacques Smit, who died in 1960, and were published in the UK. They are therefore not in the public domain in their source country, and must be moved to the English Wikipedia (please ensure they are before deleting them, I will try to get this done). --—innotata 15:27, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, it seems there is not any drawing from the father, Joseph Smit (1836-1929) in this list, it seems good to me. Totodu74 (talk) 16:26, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
PD-1923 surely applies
The plates from Animal Coloration that I uploaded are in the first edition of a book published in London (Swan Sonnenschein) and New York (Macmillan) in 1892, so surely they must be out of copyright -- PD-1923 -- in both Britain and the USA. I believe this will apply to the other images also though I didn't upload them - the British Museum (Natural History) catalogue of birds (CBBM) also having been published (17 vols) between 1874 and 1898; the other monographs likely the same. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:37, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed Animal Coloration was simultaneously published. We just need to know whether it's still copyright in the U.K. (I expect so), depending on how the rule of the shorter term works, and then if so what our policy on source country is. I've asked about this at COM:VPC. I highly doubt that the CBBM, being a catalogue published by the museum, was published in the U.S. at all let alone simultaneously. All the files here are from either Beddard, the CBBM, or the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London. —innotata 17:12, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
These copyright issues quickly become lawyer-only technical, not my bag. However I heard that books published in the UK were normally deemed to be published in the USA also, even if they weren't actually released over there, by virtue of being registered with the US copyright office; this could clearly apply to journals and proceedings also but would need checking.
You're asking if Beddard is still in copyright in the UK? I believe that all books published pre-1923 in the UK are/have always been out of UK copyright. (And aren't catalogues printed works?) Chiswick Chap (talk) 05:04, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Stefan4's explained why this isn't so. The CBBM is a book that catalogs stuff, my point was that the British Museum (the publisher) would be unlikely to register copyright in the U.S. on publication (exclusively in the U.K.). I'm not sure they could, not being an American publisher or something and not actually publishing in America, and I've heard that even in the late 19th century most British books were not copyrighted in the U.S. and were pirated. —innotata 17:08, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
UK works published before 1 July 1891 entered the public domain in the United States immediately upon publication due to lack of copyright relations. On 1 July 1891, a copyright treaty was established, meaning that UK copyright holders were given the possibility to register for copyright and claim copyright in the United States. UK publishers had to follow the same rules about copyright notices, copyright registrations and copyright renewals as US publishers. As it may not have been worth the money to submit forms to the US authorities, and as some publishers probably didn't know about the copyright formalities, many works presumably still entered the public domain in the United States immediately upon publication. See w:Bilateral copyright agreements of the United States. --Stefan4 (talk) 21:07, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Due to EU rules, the United Kingdom doesn't use the rule of the shorter term in at least three cases:
    If the work was made by a citizen of an EU country or by a citizen of Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein.
    If the work was first published within the United Kingdom, or published there within 30 days of the first publication outside the United Kingdom.
    If the work was made by a resident of the United Kingdom.
In this case, the author seems to have been a citizen of the United Kingdom, so the rule of the shorter term is not used anywhere within the European Economic Area. If a work was published simultaneously in multiple countries, then the source country is the country with the shortest term. If the US publication wasn't more than 30 days after the UK publication, this should mean that the source country is the US and that we only need to care about US copyright rules. The problem is that we only seem to know the year of publication and not the exact date, so we can't tell whether the US publication was within 30 days or not. If the US publication was more than 30 days after the UK publication, then the UK is the source country and in that case we will have to delete the files until the author has been dead for at least 70 years.
Copyright registration in the US counts as publication according to the US definition of publication, but there is probably no other country which considers it to constitute publication, so other countries would probably treat such as work as unpublished in the United States when determining the source country of the work. --Stefan4 (talk) 23:40, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's possible there's some needed information we don't have, but P.J. Smit was definitely a British resident if not a subject. There's nothing in Animal Coloration about its exact date, indeed, and the copyright registration catalog for 1892 gives which week a book was registered in, but this book isn't found through search and you'd need to check each unalphabetised list for each week. —innotata 02:59, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wow. P.J. Smit was born in Leiderdorp, Holland; he moved to England when he was 2 years old and was resident in England (Primrose Hill, London) during the 1890s when the book was published, so he was an EU country citizen and a UK resident; no idea if he became a UK citizen. The first English edition states only the year as you say, with both London: Swan Sonnenschein and New York: Macmillan on the title page, so publication seems to have been simultaneous. Not sure if I know how to find the copyright registration catalog but I can give it a go if you tell me how. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:48, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
How can you tell that the publications were simultaneous? There is nothing saying that the UK publication date (some unknown day in 1892) necessarily was within 30 days from the US publication date (some unknown day in 1892). Without knowing the exact date of publication, there is typically no way to tell whether the publications were simultaneous or not. --Stefan4 (talk) 08:58, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your careful replies, and sorry for the crossed wires - it seems there isn't the 'edit conflict' protection I'm used to over at WP. To prove simultaneity we would need both US and UK dates - not impossible but it would take some doing. We know the publisher intended simultaneity, not whether it was achieved. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:01, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The U.S. catalogs would only provide the U.S. date within a week, and it's much too tedious to look through them. But here they are [1][2]. In case you missed this, Chiswick, these will just be moved to the English Wikipedia if we can't be sure they're PD, so maybe it's not worth that sort of effort. —innotata 17:08, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. Cornell University: Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States states that for "Works First Published Outside the U.S. by Foreign Nationals or U.S. Citizens Living Abroad" where the Date of Publication is Before 1923 then (Conditions None) the work is in the public domain. There is no clause about being published first in the United States. On the face of it to a non-lawyer, this makes all the works listed here PD as they were published in the UK. Chiswick Chap (talk) 04:12, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's totally true in the United States. But it's irrelevant to copyright status in the U.K. —innotata 17:12, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, after puzzling over the complexities I'd worked that bit out for myself, so I thought it not worth asking. Many thanks also for the hard work on this issue. I agree that while we can in principle prove that the book launches were simultaneous +/- 30 days (I suspect it was the same day), it's not to worry. It is kind of amazing to me that we are having to analyse what exactly happened over 120 years ago to determine image status here, but that's the law... you could be making good money as a copyright attorney! :-) Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:01, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There is no doubt that this is in the public domain in the United States. The thing is that Commons requires the work to be in the public domain in the source country in addition to the United States. The source country is defined as follows:
  • If it was published in the United States more than 30 days before it was published in the United Kingdom, then the source country is the United States as it was first published there. In this case, Commons accepts these files.
  • If the publication in the United States and the publication in the United Kingdom were at most 30 days apart, then the source country is the United States as the maximum copyright term of the United States (copyright expired on 1 January 1949 if the copyright was renewed, per File:Copyright term.svg) is shorter than the copyright term of the United Kingdom (copyright expires on 1 January 2031 unless the law is changed before that date). In this case, Commons accepts the files.
  • If the publication in the United States was more than 30 days after the publication in the United Kingdom, then the source country is the United Kingdom, meaning that Commons won't accept the files until 1 January 2031.
The problem is that we don't know the exact dates of publication, so we can't tell if they were more than 30 days apart or not. --Stefan4 (talk) 21:08, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Can/should/must it be moved to the English Wikipedia then? As you can see, these works are frequently used and/or may even have derivatives which are. If so, someone might need to run a bot to upload to WP/flag for delete on COM.
The London publishing date might be enquirable via http://www.allenandunwin.com/default.aspx?page=29 or at Routledge (A&U bought up Swan Sonnenschein; Routledge now seems to own A&U's science publishing.). The New York publishing month can probably be determined exactly via the catalogues linked above. If the London & NY months are the same, it has to be PD. If NY is more than 2 months post London, we know it is not PD. Only if NY is in the immediately succeeding month, it must be determined more precisely.
Anyone wanna try and do this? Checking it seems less work than fixing it if it's not in fact broken, and they should have some sort of record in the Swan Sonnenschein/A&W/Routledge catalogues. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 01:47, 20 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Deleted: Unclear copyright status. Unless we have clear, explicit written/textual, tangible evidence indicating that these files are indeed freely licensed under a Commons compatible license, we cannot host them on Commons FASTILY 22:05, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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