File talk:German battlecruiser SMS Seydlitz in port, prior to World War I (retouched).jpg

Move to Commons
This image IS on Commons and has been accepted (kept in a deletion discussion). It is available on the US Naval Historical Center site, where it states that it was received from the "U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence   in 1935". It is not clear if it was ever published in Germany. Is there any reason to keep it on en.wiki? Finavon (talk) 20:13, 10 September 2012 (UTC)


 * It should not have been uploaded on Commons, and it should have been deleted in the discussion. The photo is the work of one M. L. Carstens, a postcard publisher from Hamburg. Since these were prewar postcards (and thus pre-1923), they are certainly PD in the US, but there is no indication that they are PD in Germany. For that, we would need to find the date Carstens died, to determine when the photos would enter the PD in Germany, which has a term of life of the author plus 70 years. Parsecboy (talk) 20:43, 10 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Could you clarify this a bit? Sometimes you claim that Carstens is the publisher and sometimes you claim that Carstens is the photographer. The copyright expires 70 years after the photographer died, regardless of when the publisher died. --Stefan2 (talk) 21:14, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
 * It's somewhat unclear, as I have not been able to clarify the nature of Carstens's business exactly. He may have been the primary photographer, or he may have simply collected the photos from a staff or freelancers, etc. Since each photo bears his seal, with a numerical identifier, it's probable that he was the photographer. The relevant point is, he's credited as the creator, and without his date of death, we cannot determine when it entered the PD in Germany. Parsecboy (talk) 21:19, 10 September 2012 (UTC)