Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Images reliant on OTRS ticket 2011101010016175

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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.

Files in Category:Images reliant on OTRS ticket 2011101010016175[edit]

Photographs taken from the site Football.ua, are reliant on a release from the 2011 site owner. There is no evidence that the aggregation website made effort to keep records of releases by the original photographer, or to ensure that they had original images from the photographer/copyright holder. The images are often crops from the originals and are generally of low resolution and have no EXIF data.

Two example past deletion requests are:

  1. Commons:Deletion requests/File:Nocerino - AC Milan 2011.jpeg
  2. Commons:Deletion requests/File:FIFA World Cup 2010 Netherlands Uruguay 6.jpg

Both of these examples were found on Getty images and hence there was a good basis to start deletion nominations. However, all of the images reliant on this ticket must be considered to fail the test of significant doubt per COM:PRP and should be deleted unless a specific release can be verified beyond a general assurance from the site owner (who has changed since most of these photographs were uploaded).

Refer to Commons:OTRS/Noticeboard#.232015012710019552 and the list of 2,498 images at /list. Fæ (talk) 18:01, 15 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I have seen these rationales for a kept image. Let's test the theory, taking the first image in the above list, File:2015 UEFA Super Cup - Ciro Immobile.jpg, the source is http://football.ua/gallery/2387.html. However when you track down the image in the gallery, and click on it, the copyright is "© ОЛЕГ ДУБИНА". As far as I can tell, ticket 2011101010016175 is being used to give both the wrong attribution and a false copyright license and it is not sourced to Getty images, unless we can understand how Олег Дубина irrevocably released their work, including the right of attribution, to the website Football.ua. --Fæ (talk) 18:38, 15 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The examples you adduced (about Milan) don't concerne files I uploaded. All these photos are for 100% made by photographers of Football.ua, simply because all the occurences on that photos happened in Ukraine, where these photographers work. Please, tell what file is violating the copyright. As for now, this nomination seems to be far-fetched.--TnoXX (talk) 19:33, 15 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
As Сидик из ПТУ said, there're two types of photos: their own photos and Getty Images ones. Their own photos can be uploaded to Wikicommons due to appropriate lisence. Getty Images can't be used in Wiki. Most of Football.ua own photos were made (and, actually, is still being made) in Ukraine. All files I uploaded belongs to that "own photos" category.--TnoXX (talk) 19:48, 15 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
 Keep AGF. In previous DRs there were Getty Images' images. They are non-free, but other images are made by Football.ua's photographs. Otherwise we should delete images with many similar permissions, when owner/administrator/user of site gives permission for photos from this site.--Anatoliy (talk) 19:51, 15 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Then there must be a release of copyright and the right of attribution for the original image by the photographer. Please provide a link. --Fæ (talk) 19:52, 15 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I do not understand what do you want. Is © ОЛЕГ ДУБИНА not attribution?--Anatoliy (talk) 19:57, 15 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Yes, that's the point. It means all rights reserved by the named photographer, not a full release to a website owner. --Fæ (talk) 20:15, 15 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
No. According Ukrainian Сopyright law (part 3 of the Article Eleven of the Law No. 3792-XII) Latin circled letter c (symbol ©) states only who is copyright owner but not how the rights reserved. So, you may write © Fæ, 2016, CC-BY-SA 4.0. It will be correct statement which says that author is Fæ, first published in 2016 (so will be in PD since 2087), and licensed with CC-BY-SA 4.0.--Anatoliy (talk) 20:27, 15 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Interesting, so just as you qualified my name in your example with a copyright release, where is the release from the photographer, or a statement about contractual agreements with each contributing photographer with associated transfer of intellectual property to "Football.ua"? I have yet to see exactly where on the website the named photographers irrevocably release all the rights to their works to the owner of the website, and despite a couple of keep votes here, nobody has yet given a valid link. In the absence of any copyright statement by the photographers, COM:PRP means that we have to presume "all rights reserved" applies. With reference back to COM:AGF, this is what is meant by "Editors have an obligation to properly document the files they upload and material may be deleted if the documentation is incorrect or inadequate." --Fæ (talk) 21:55, 15 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
If there is no permission on site, we can ask additional permission to sbe send OTRS. As was made in this case. Otherwise, we do not need OTRS if you accept only on-site permission. Well, and what text of permission should be in this case (as your opinion) to make permission correct?--Anatoliy (talk) 22:05, 15 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
What is needed for the copyright release to be legally meaningful, is for each photographer to have given an irrevocable CC-BY-SA-3.0 release to the website/website owner and agreed that the legal attribution for the photograph will be to "Football.ua" rather than themselves. If that can be validated then the photographs can be hosted on Commons.
Unfortunately it is quite common for website owners and even publishers to falsely presume and make claims that they own the copyright of images sent to them, even when they have not asked for legal releases and kept no records. This is especially seen to be the case when only derivative digital versions (i.e. at reduced resolution and with no EXIF data) are held by the website or publisher, which never happens if a photographer is transferring their rights under an employment contract as the publisher would insist on holding the originals that they have paid for. --Fæ (talk) 22:17, 15 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Case study[edit]

I'm separating out this case study of one of the files nominated as it may be of collegiate value for illustration, but is not strictly part of the main discussion.

After looking through a couple of photographs dated in 2016 in the list linked in the nomination, the third I tried with a google search showed some interesting matches. The analysis of File:Artem Hromov2016.jpg (uploaded to Commons at 661 × 549px) takes you to the source at http://football.ua/gallery/2496.html, this in turn takes you to the source file inside football.ua at http://s.ill.in.ua/i/gallery/950x0/2496/138162.jpg (resolution now 900 x 601px, though still with no EXIF data). A Google Images search immediately leads you to a Shutterstock image, http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-407454841/stock-photo-poltava-april-artem-hromov-of-vorskla-poltava-during-a-match-ukrainian-premier-league-vorskla.html which is available in resolutions up to 9,390 x 6,266 px (25MB). The copyright at shutterstock is non-commercial reuse only, and the required attribution is to "Oleh Dubyna" (i.e. the same named photographer as at football.ua).

It seems unlikely that photographers publishing recent photographs at over a hundred times the size (in total pixels) seen at Football.ua on a non-commercial license, have agreed a irrevocable free license including any commercial reuse, that then can apply to their full resolution images were anyone to scrape those versions from Shutterstock (which can be done by bot). The possible reuse of all higher resolution versions of a photograph is a consequence of CC-BY-SA-3.0 that is rarely understood as a risk by photographers or publishers. It is a disappointment that Wikimedia Commons is allowing the mass upload of poor quality thumbnails of photographs, and have turned a blind eye for the past 5 years by relying on a dubious and possibly mistaken statements from an owner of a fan-site who's business relies on advertising and drawing in more website hits, when the full size originals are freely available online if the photographers are truly prepared to verify that the copyright release being used on Commons is valid. --Fæ (talk) 23:30, 15 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I sent a message to Oleh Dubyna.--TnoXX (talk) 06:39, 16 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
And here comes Illya Khokhlov: [1]. It is the official Facebook page of football.ua. Here you can read: our permanent photographer Ilya Khokhlov (Илля Хохлов) made the photos of the match Man. City vs Dynamo.--TnoXX (talk) 07:05, 16 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The answer from Oleh Dubyna: Доброго дня. Та ні, все нормально. Я працюю на football.ua вже 5 років, хоча й не отримую останній рік зарплатні. Хай залишається все так, як є. (Good day! That's all OK. I have already worked for football.ua for 5 years, though I don't get salary this year. You can keep everything [photos] the way it is.--TnoXX (talk) 07:13, 16 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • @TnoXX: Could you forward this and other related emails to permissions-ru@wikimedia.org with tag Ticket#2011101010016175. --sasha (krassotkin) 08:49, 16 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Separate statements are a solution, leaving us free to upload higher resolution files wherever we find them, but evidence of a standard release for football.ua would validate the OTRS ticket for all images. --Fæ (talk) 09:12, 16 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Krassotkin, this is not the e-mails. I sent the message to Oleh Dubyna in VK. I can just copy the text. But here's his official site, so everyone can send him a message to his e-mail. Getting back to Khokhlov, it's a short advertisement in Facebook (on the official football.ua Facebook page), everyone can check it out too.
I can't see a problem anymore. I've just proved, that football.ua does have own photographers. The actions of some unconscientious wikipedians, who uploads Getty Images pictures, shouldn't affect me or other uploaders, who acts legally.--TnoXX (talk) 10:51, 16 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
You demonstrated that one photographer used to work for Football.ua, but does not any more, and yet we upload their photographs created since they left the site; in fact we have no idea just by looking at the website who is a paid employee photographer under contract and who is not, nor do we (or for that matter OTRS volunteers) understand the terms under which they may or may not release the rights to their photographs. There has yet to be any evidence supplied by anyone that photographers correctly release the copyright of their photographs to the website owner, so that they both waive all future commercial rights and allow the Football.ua site to claim a legal right of attribution (known as the moral rights) instead of themselves. Even in the case of Oleh Dubyna who seems to not care about the reuse of their photographs, we have not had evidence that they have legally released their commercial rights to football.ua over the last 5 or 6 years that they published image thumbnails there, including the time since they left employment.
I understand that a lot of contributors are football fans and keen to illustrate Wikipedia articles using these apparently free low resolution versions of photographs, however wishful thinking and argument is not a replacement for verifiable evidence of a copyright release by the copyright holder of a photograph. --Fæ (talk) 11:18, 16 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
What? Not ververifiable evidence? I've proved that at least two photographers work for football.ua (I used Present Perfect Time, maybe this is my mistake, but they still work there). We have the permission from site, we have the answer and the report. What else shold I do? Ask the owner of football.ua for documents, which show that he pays or don't photographers? He gave the permission, we have it. We can run in this bureaucratic circle for long time, but for me all is clear. Some guys uploaded Getty Images pictures, you want to check all the files out. That's OK, but don't make it too absurd.--TnoXX (talk) 11:32, 16 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
We have some individual photographers stating that they are employed by Football.ua. This is not the same thing as Football.ua having secured copyright releases that transfer full intellectual property rights to the website.
My understanding of the OTRS ticket is that the previous owner of Football.ua claimed to own all copyright of the images on the website. The fact that some images are from Getty Images is a slight tangent, so long as those are clearly marked on the site, though there are images the site uses from elsewhere which have no marks or are incorrectly attributed, such as their general photographs of Paris.
What is needed from Football.ua is a statment that all images on their website with photographers attributed are legally released on a CC-BY-SA-3.0 license and that the required attribution is to "Football.ua" so that the photographers lose all rights. Where the photographs are from employees, copyright transfer should be part of their employment contract, for non-employees there needs to be a release statement on record.
There is nothing special about this requirement for contributions, these are standard questions that an OTRS volunteer who validates a ticket should have asked and received in a verifiable email. If it later turns out that the owner of Football.ua made an error or was misleading Commons volunteers, then they are personally liable for damages, not the Commons image uploaders. --Fæ (talk) 11:44, 16 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I'll try to send a message to football.ua. But I'm sure that won't be enough for you. Actually, if you want to remove all these files, do it. We're all "building" an encyclopeadia, aren't we?--TnoXX (talk) 10:11, 17 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Thanks, it's worth asking the site owner for a firm statement, including a copy of the release text they require to be granted by all photographers. The fact that at the current time the site does host misattributed photographs, including failing to attribute one photograph which has Featured picture status here on Commons, does cast serious doubt on their understanding and competence with basic copyright law.
As for building an encyclopaedia, no that's an objective of Wikipedia not Commons. Refer to COM:Project scope which makes the difference clear, along with the emphasis on ensuring correct licensing at Commons:Project_scope#Must_be_an_allowable_free_file_format. --Fæ (talk) 10:53, 17 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Fæ: I could not find any example of misattributed photographs on football.ua website, could you please provide them? In particular I would be interested in an FP example — NickK (talk) 09:19, 23 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I only researched a couple of images, the portraits I have used as examples in this DR. The one that I could confirm as a copyright problem is used on http://football.ua/travels_france/305843-o-pari.html and has no attribution or source. The image is hosted for the site at http://s.ill.in.ua/i/custom/1024x0/63600/63600971184558.jpg. This is File:Paris_Night.jpg, which has an attribution copyright requirement and became a Featured Picture on Commons in 2008, being picture of the day a couple of months after it was uploaded. The issue here is the uncertainty about the exact copyright release given by photographers, which should have been queried by the OTRS volunteer and put on record before issuing the ticket, especially considering it is highly unusual for photographers to release all attribution requirements so that their name is replaced by a requirement to attribute "football.ua", unless this is part of an employment contract. --Fæ (talk) 16:50, 23 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Btw, from above page also http://s.ill.in.ua/i/custom/1024x0/63600/63600970901952.jpg = File:Finale Coupe de France 2010-2011 (Lille LOSC vs Paris SG PSG).jpg...Gunnex (talk) 17:43, 23 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
This has nothing to do with this case. {{Football.ua}} covers only materials from http://football.ua/galleries/ , while the files you cited are not in this section. We don't really care what happens in other sections, as these sections are most likely managed by different people — NickK (talk) 09:12, 25 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

In response to NickK's request for more examples of possible copyright violations, but just from the gallery pages rather than the rest of the website, I went to the top page of football.ua/galleries and picked out a few images. However I quickly realized that every single image on the top of the gallery pages are from Getty Images. Unfortunately each image has to be clicked on, launching another page, before you can see the attribution to Getty Images. By page 4 I found some non-Getty Images.

  1. 2535 - Станислав Ведмидь, is at unian.net with no attribution as all rights reserved and mignews.com with no attribution as all rights reserved. Both of the ARR alternatives are higher resolution than football.ua which is normally taken to indicate that the copyright is more credible.
  2. On page 5 I came across an photographer called "Heineken" which has 199 images which appear to be promotional shots for Heineken. If these photos were commissioned by Heineken, I find it highly doubtful that they would not require the minimum of an attribution for copyright, and have legally accepted that football.ua have a right to be attributed instead. If the name Heineken is being used by an amateur, then I think we should be concerned that football.ua is accepting legal releases from anonymous people like this without any explanation given in the OTRS ticket.
  3. 2517 - no text credit, but these ten images have visual credit bars to Carlsberg. Certainly we must doubt whether the logos are copyright free. It is possible that the images have been released by fans, but with no attribution there can be no OTRS release for these images that would be meaningful, as it remains impossible to legally confirm that the photographer has given a free release and given up the right of attribution (moral rights).
  4. 2504 - Богдан Заяц. It is not credible that Заяц owns the copyright of posters like this, which must lead us to doubt whether the generic OTRS release is sensible for all images from the galleries which are not credited to Getty Images, as there appear to be no meaningful copyright checks on what is being uploaded. The source image was created by United Senses for UEFA, see Designweek, and there can be little doubt that copyright is hotly protected.

In general, I find that images that can be confirmed as freely available, can be sourced to better higher resolution versions on Flickr or other streams. The rest seem to be of low quality and have these questions about legitimate copyright releases which have yet to be answered (and confirmed as doubtful on the OTRS noticeboard).

I am aware that the images are very popular with football fans wanting to illustrate Wikipedia articles, but there has yet to be any hard evidence that football.ua correctly understands what is required for a legally meaningful copyright release from a photographer, so that they not only give a free release, but transfer moral rights to "football.ua". Vague assurance from a prior owner of the site is not the same thing as ensuring that every image in the galleries which are not marked as "@Getty Images" can be presumed to be suitable for Commons, just because we can quote an OTRS ticket number for an unpublished correspondence that nobody really believes in any more. --Fæ (talk) 11:48, 25 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

These concerns do not mean that these images are copyright violations.
Regarding Getty, obviously as there are no Ukrainian football competitions going on and there is Euro 2016 going on, there will be little to no images by Ukrainian photographers and many images from Getty. If you come back to the website in, say, August it will be different.
  1. Станислав Ведмидь is also a long-time photographer of football.ua (I uploaded a photo by him from 2013: File:Novomoskovsk Metalurh Stadium.jpg, and it is obviously his own work). Once again, he might provide low-resolution photos to football.ua and high-resolution photos to UNIAN, it is completely his own right as GFDL/CC license is not exclusive. At least I can easily imagine a situation where he provides a photo to both football.ua and UNIAN under different terms (and gets paid by both), but I can hardly imagine a situation where football.ua has stolen a photo from UNIAN but suddenly decided to add attribution omited by UNIAN). The fact that mignews copied this photo from UNIAN, either with or without permission, is not our concern.
  2. I don't find these images anywhere else, thus I don't see why these images could not have been exclusively provided to football.ua by Heineken (they are from a football fan zone in Kyiv sponsored by Heineken and probably also by football.ua)
  3. These images might indeed come from Carlsberg. Lack of author probably means we should not use them, but I am not sure.
  4. Ukrainian copyright laws allow to use images related to current events, and a poster of a football match definitely is related to a current event. I am not sure to which extent this is compatible with US laws but such images are certainly acceptable in Ukraine (there is a related court practice). I can provide more information on this if needed. In any case this is a COM:DW problem.
To sum up, we have a clear permission, we have a person who is responsible for this permission and who assures that these images are available under a free license. We are very unlikely to obtain releases from individual photographers from football.ua as such information is usually classified as private by Ukrainian privacy law (football.ua is not a governmental agency, and contracts with photographers do not belong to public information by Ukrainian law). We might get an answer from individual photographers (like we already have one from Oleh Dubyna) but what you request (internal documents of football.ua) will most likely never be public. What you might do is to group these images by photographer and contact each and every of them: it will probably take months but might result in something feasible. But asking to make a batch deletion simply means assuming bad faith, as at least one photographer (Oleh Dubyna) already clearly stated he gives a permission to use these photos under the given license — NickK (talk) 15:09, 25 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Thanks for the summary. However with regard to "we have a clear permission" please keep in mind that before creating this nomination I asked for a review of the ticket on the OTRS Noticeboard. The feedback there from a Russian speaking OTRS volunteer was "But as it appears they carelessly respect the rights of third parties[...] Therefore, all of them photos should be checked by experienced users. In addition, it seems to me, they changed the company's owner. It would be good to re-request permissions (with the same ticket)." (diff) This is sufficient to be considered significant doubt per COM:PRP in the absence of validation of the release for all images per the current OTRS ticket being applied. --Fæ (talk) 12:22, 28 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Regarding third parties, we already know that the problem is coming from Getty. Thus once again as you already made a list of all images, I encourage you to add authors so that we know whether we have any other images from Getty. This is what checked by experienced users stands for: it means that images should be checked, not deleted.
Concerning new owner, that would be an interesting idea. The new owner (since late 2013) of football.ua is en:Serhiy Kurchenko who is being prosecuted for tax evasion, is under EU sanction and a warrant for arrest in Ukraine. His current location is unknown (including to the employees of companies owned by him), thus there is absolutely no chance to get whatever permission from him: a person hiding abroad from arrest for tax evasion definitely does not care about free licenses. This works both ways however: it is also very unlikely that owner hiding abroad will attempt to overturn licensing decision by the previous management.
The only photographer whom we reached so far confirmed that he is fine with this permission, which means there is no evidence of doubt. I cannot generalise but so far we have no direct evidence of any cases where non-Getty materials were licensed without permission, thus this is just a hypothesis and not a significant doubt — NickK (talk) 00:55, 2 July 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I dind't get a responde, so you can do whatever you want.--TnoXX (talk) 13:27, 19 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

What does "do whatever you want" means? We have no ground to think that these images violate anyone's copyright. We have the case of Getty Images photos where Getty's license do not have an appropriate relicense clause and do not fall into scope of {{Football.ua}}, so these images should obviously be deleted. We have no reason to think that images by football.ua's photographers are copyright violations. As far as I understand the case of File:Artem Hromov2016.jpg the photographer (Oleh Dubyna) is fine with licensing the small resolution of a picture under a CC license with football.ua and selling the high resolution with Shutterstock. There is no reason to delete these photos. Commons is not the place to do whatever someone wants — NickK (talk) 09:05, 23 June 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Kept: per consensus. --Jcb (talk) 21:20, 15 July 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

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