Talk:Dances and Balls

We had File:RackhamCupidsAlley.jpg on the page. The CC license of the image clearly states "no derivatives", but it won't fit on this page without being resized - which is a derivative... no?

That seems to be a reasonable interpretation which makes the image useless in many contexts. Does Wikipedia use a similar image? If so, how do they handle the resizing/thumbnailing issue? Is a reference thumbnail considered a version of the work, or the visual equivalent of an index entry?

As far as I can tell, Wikipedia refrains from using images with a ND license.

Ah. Yeah, that would seem to indicate that's the way to interpret the license, then.

I just noticed: The original artwork was painted in 1904. The photograph is newer.

Wikipedia's policy on photographs of public domain works is that they are usable in the same way the original public domain work is usable. I don't know whether that's been tested in court, but if it's valid, then that "CC-BY-NC-ND" image is essentially PD.

I think we need to make a policy decision here.

I think we should follow Wikipedia's model in that case. However, since photos of works can be copyrighted, it behooves us to determine if there is anything identifying the source of the photo embedded in its metadata -- or perhaps a subtle watermark we've missed before now. If the photo cannot be reliably attributed to any particular photographer, it is almost certainly safe for us to use.

Here's the metadata for this particular image:

• Copyright holder: Photo (c) Tate, Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)
• Image title: The Dance in Cupid's Alley 1904 Arthur Rackham 1867-1939 Bequeathed by Major-General Sir Mathew Gossett KCB 1909 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N02479
• Short title: N02479
• Headline: The Dance in Cupid's Alley 1904 by Arthur Rackham 1867-1939

No identification of the specific photographer, but there is a copyright claim by the original work's current owner.

Okay, let's come at this from a different angle. A quick Googling reveals that we are not the first to ask if resizing counts as derivation. It has, not unsurprisingly, been the subject of discussion in several fora.

Flickr appears to hold that resizing is not derivation; this seems to be based on the following passage from the legal code for Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported:

The above rights may be exercised in all media and formats whether now known or hereafter devised. The above rights include the right to make such modifications as are technically necessary to exercise the rights in other media and formats, but otherwise you have no rights to make Adaptations.

(Emphasis by the poster who initially quoted this passage.)

Creative Commons itself says on the page for CC-BY-ND 4.0 (in a little definition pop-up) that "Merely changing the format never creates a derivative"; I am inclined to think that a resize is a change in format, especially if we do it as a thumbnail linking to the full image.

In an entry on her blog, Molly Kleinman, a specialist in "copyright, academic publishing, and scholarly communication in its various forms" (to quote her site), lists "Reproducing an unedited image on a website" as a permitted non-adaptation under ND, and adds

Creative Commons licenses do not affect your fair use rights. No Derivatives licenses do not prevent people from making fair uses of the work, which may include copying excerpts, creating parodies, and other activities that involve using the work without making an exact reproduction.

She also notes that you can simply ask the rights holder if you want to use a CC-licensed work in a way that is not permitted by the license; the ND license doesn't prevent them from granting additional licenses with more freedom.

So based on this quick bit of research, it appears resizing is permitted. We are not changing the content of the image, and we are exercising our fair use rights. If we really want to be sure, we can just email the Tate Collection and ask them.

Since we've made an ongoing and serious effort to analyze rather than simply list tropes, I do believe ATT counts as "academic publishing".

Given this discussion, I'm taking the comment marks off of the page and scaling the image down to something that should fit in most browser windows (desktop or cellphone).