Commons:Deletion requests/2025/11/06

November 6

Files in Category:Files from Presidential Museum and Library PH Flickrstream

These files were initially tagged by 218.208.8.94 and 211.25.195.245 as Speedy (speedy) and the most recent rationale was: Copyright violation: The Flickr source “Presidential Museum and Library” clearly states “© All rights reserved”. Even though the uploader is a government institution, works explicitly marked with “All rights reserved” are not public domain under Section 176 of the Philippine Intellectual Property Code (Republic Act No. 8293). Therefore, this file remains copyrighted and is ineligible for Wikimedia Commons. Converted to DR, appears to be quite complicated for speedy deletion. Thanks.

Tvpuppy (talk) 00:13, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

 Keep Work of the Philippine government thus in the public domain. Metadata in the photos clearly attribute the photos to the Malacañang Photo Bureau. howdy.carabao 🌱🐃🌱 (talk) 00:32, 6 November 2025 (UTC)
These files were originally sourced from the Presidential Museum and Library PH Flickr account, where each image is explicitly marked “© All rights reserved.”
Under Section 176 of the Philippine Intellectual Property Code (Republic Act No. 8293), government works are public domain only if no rights are reserved. However, the same law provides an exception — government agencies may reserve their rights if they explicitly indicate so.
Because the Flickr source clearly displays “All rights reserved,” these photographs are not public domain and remain copyrighted. Consequently, they are ineligible for Wikimedia Commons, which only hosts freely licensed or public domain content.
In summary:
  • Government authorship alone does not make a work public domain when rights are explicitly reserved.
  • The Flickr metadata and copyright notice confirm the reservation of rights.
  • Therefore, deletion is appropriate per Commons’ licensing policy.
218.208.8.93 01:57, 6 November 2025 (UTC)
Where does it say that in Section 176?

Section 176. Works of the Government. - 176.1. No copyright shall subsist in any work of the Government of the Philippines. However, prior approval of the government agency or office wherein the work is created shall be necessary for exploitation of such work for profit. Such agency or office may, among other things, impose as a condition the payment of royalties. No prior approval or conditions shall be required for the use of any purpose of statutes, rules and regulations, and speeches, lectures, sermons, addresses, and dissertations, pronounced, read or rendered in courts of justice, before administrative agencies, in deliberative assemblies and in meetings of public character.

-howdy.carabao 🌱🐃🌱 (talk) 10:46, 6 November 2025 (UTC)
  • Delete. Recent photographs that are not free in the United States per the U.S. Copyright Act and therefore cannot be on Commons. It's not necessary to debate the subtleties of their use in the Philippines. -- Asclepias (talk) 17:57, 11 November 2025 (UTC)
  •  Keep. Philippine government agencies are notorious for slapping copyright notices on their websites and media feeds and are almost always ignorant of the relevant provisions of the Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines (IPC) that are mentioned above. Unless pieces of works are explicitly marked as copyrighted and with non-government ownership/provenance clearly stated, works published by the government are free of copyright per §176 of the IPC. Please see COM:GVT Philippines for the summary of past discussions on this topic. —seav (talk) 07:07, 26 November 2025 (UTC)
But whether those photographs may be copyrighted or not in the Philippines under the copyright law of the Philippines, works on Commons must be free in the United States under the United States Copyright Act. Those photographs are directly copyrighted under the U.S. Copyright Act. The situation is the same as for all other works that are uncopyrightable in their country of origin but are directly copyrighted by the U.S. Copyright Act. Commons doesn't host them, unless their creator, or whoever their copyright owner is under the U.S. law, explicitly releases their worldwide copyrights or issues a free license. For a similar situation, see for example the status of the Brazilian pre-1998 non-artistic photographs published after 1 March 1989, which are uncopyrightable in Brazil under the Brazilian copyright law but are directly copyrighted in the United States under the U.S. Copyright Act, and therefore not accepted on Commons. (The U.S. copyright of similar photographs published before 1 March 1989 may be debated, but that detail is outside the scope of the present discussion.) The above Philippine recent photographs not only are not freely released worldwide but their worldwide copyrights and non-free status are explicitly asserted as © All rights reserved. -- Asclepias (talk) 14:33, 26 November 2025 (UTC)
It seems like your view on the interaction of PH-US copyright laws is pretty novel. I don't see anything about this at Commons:Copyright rules by territory/United States. That page only discusses works outside the US in the context of COM:URAA, which does not apply to works of the PH government. Besides, if we go by your logic, then whole categories of photographs would be deleted such as photos of sculptures installed in public spaces the United Kingdom (like this one) which can be published in the UK because of FoP, but supposedly not in the US because US FoP only covers buildings. I don't think this DR is the proper venue to discuss this PH-US interaction or the wider implication of your logic. —seav (talk) 21:17, 26 November 2025 (UTC)
There is nothing new to the rule that the content must be free in the United States. Works that are copyrightable in the United States and published anywhere after 1 March 1989 are automatically copyrighted in the United States, whether they are copyrighted or not in their source country. The files listed above are more recent than 1989. If you wish, you can check the page Commons:Hirtle chart. (In case you are not already familiar with that page, scroll down to the section "Works First Published Outside the U.S.", subsection for works published "1 March 1989 or later". It will say that it is the same thing as for works published in the U.S. and refer to the U.S. section. So, scroll up to the section "Works Registered or First Published in the U.S.", subsection for date of publication "2003 or later". It gives copyrighted in the U.S. 70 years pma if known author, or 95 years after publication.)
That is not related to the URAA. The URAA restorations are partly dependent on the copyright law of the source country. The URAA does not apply to works published after 1 March 1989. Works published after 1 March 1989 get a straightforward direct U.S. copyright. Another known illustrative example of the relations is the case of the non-artistic, simple Italian photos, which have a short copyright of 20 years in Italy. Those created before 1976 are ok for Commons because they were already in the public domain in Italy before the URAA date of 1996. Those created after 1975 and published before 1 March 1989 have a U.S. copyright because of the URAA (deletions based on the URAA are sometimes questioned, so some admins delete them, some do not). Those published after 1 March 1989 have a direct U.S. copyright and there is no question, they are always deleted even if they are in the public domain in Italy (example).
Works published after 1 March 1989 are not kept on Commons, unless they are explicitly freely released or unless they are very specific types of exceptions. The archives have hundreds of deletion discussions of such files. Photos of copyrighted statues are indeed a very particular de facto exception on Commons (they were accepted in the beginning of Commons and the habit has persisted, although the Wikimedia Foundation does delete them if the copyright holder of the statue sends a formal notice, which almost never happens). But that special exception does not change the general rule. This DR about the nominated files is very certainly the proper venue to say that the nominated files cannot be on Commons per the policy. -- Asclepias (talk) 03:29, 27 November 2025 (UTC)
Going by the Hirtle chart you linked to it seems that we first look under the "Works Published Abroad After 1 January 1978" section. And the case that applies to these nominated photos is the third row ("[Published] 1 March 1989 or later; Published without copyright notice, and in the public domain in its source country as of URAA date"). This instructs us to "Use the US publication chart to determine duration". Whatever the case (the publication date and copyright notice doesn't matter) we either get "In the public domain" or "Use the US publication chart to determine duration". So if we then look under the "Works Registered or First Published in the U.S." section for guidance, I then argue that the nominated photos fall under the case "[Published] anytime; Works released into the public domain by the copyright holder" which then implies that these are also under PD in the US. The fact that these photos were produced and then published by the PH government legally means that there is no copyright ab initio. Just because the Flickr account likely didn't configure the copyright setting from its default "All rights reserved" setting doesn't negate the fact that these works are already in the public domain when they're published. —seav (talk) 04:09, 27 November 2025 (UTC)
  • Note: Since these photos were taken from Flickr, which is a US company and likely has servers in the US, then these photos might be considered published in the US when they were uploaded to Flickr. —seav (talk) 03:59, 27 November 2025 (UTC)
  • Keep per both howdy.carabao and seav. The general presumption for Philippine government works is that they are in the public domain by virtue of being government works, regardless of whether or not someone erroneously put a copyright tag or it is uploaded to a platform where copyright is presumed. --Sky Harbor (talk) 15:58, 27 November 2025 (UTC)
  •  Keep. Philippine government employees working on websites and web content are usually unfamiliar with Philippine copyright laws and erroneously put the wrong copyright tags on web content they put online. This is clearly one of those cases. -Object404 (talk) 23:17, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

File:Karachbalkar1944-ru.svg

Карта является откровенной дезинформацией без источника информации, балкарские земли не были переданы, было лишь временно изменено название республики с Кабардино-Балкарской АССР на Кабардинскую АССР. Балкарские земли не были такими, запад КБР(Зольский(Нагорный район)) никогда не был ни в составе Балкарского района, ни в Балкарской АО, ни в Балкарском округе. Джунгарик228 (talk) 12:43, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

File:亞聯客運1728路線圖.jpg

This file was initially tagged by Solomon203 as no permission (No permission since) 6D (talk) 13:34, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

File:監理服務網 - 牌照報廢及繳銷吊(註)銷查詢.pdf

This file was initially tagged by Solomon203 as no permission (No permission since) 6D (talk) 13:35, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

File:WFAA 2021 blue.svg

This file was initially tagged by Wcquidditch as no permission (No permission since) Below US TOO? 6D (talk) 13:40, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

File:Zorin OS 18 Desktop.jpg

This file was initially tagged by Didym as no permission (No permission since) Linux is open source, so the Linux distributions could have free license? 6D (talk) 13:43, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

  • Keep - it is a free software screenshot under GPL. The file has been updated to indicate this, please close this deletion nom. - Ahunt (talk) 14:32, 25 November 2025 (UTC)
    Is (a) the profile image of the user freely licensed, is (b) the wallpaper part of the OS, and (c) are all apps such as the Brave browser icon freely licensed - if so, who should be attributed and under which license? --Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 21:00, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

File:Epidemiology of Mpox - Part 2.webm

what's the purpose/usefulness of this? the user's other videos should probably also be checked Prototyperspective (talk) 15:18, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

For example, also File:1. Polio - Definition.webm. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:19, 6 November 2025 (UTC)
 Comment The 2nd file is INUSE. JayCubby (talk) 17:25, 14 November 2025 (UTC)