File talk:VanGoghShoes1885.jpg

I thought that this image should be put on wikipedia because of it's representation of Van Gogh's style, as well as it's significance in the writings of Martin Heidegger. I searched all over trying to find the copyright laws, but see none. The link it is from is taken from a "Van Gogh Meuseum" so I (perhaps incorrectly) assumed that it is public domain.

Please help me figure out the licensing of the image. Out of the best intentions, I think this image should be on wikipedia.

Copyright mess
Now, here is a quite obviously unnecessary copyright mess, which needs to be cleared. This picture has two sets of copyright: copyright of the painting, belonging to Van Gogh, and copyright of the photo, which seems to be anonymous, supposedly belonging to the museum. Van Gogh died in 1890, and in the EU, copyright only lasts for 70 years after the author's death, and that's it. With the photo, there are different options, but the general practice across Wikimedia projects has been to assume that a mostly mechanical, non-artistic photo that mainly aims to create a truthful reproduction of an original artwork has no copyright of its own, as copyright needs some level of creativity or originality. That's valid for many, if not most jurisdictions, and we can deal with that. The original uploader had no idea about copyright ("it's on museum's webpage, hence PD, right?") and the user who added the "PD-US only" and expiry date in 2046 thought they knew what they were doing but actually didn't. Now, both of them have departed from the project and even if they weren't I doubt they could add any valuable information, as they both dealt with the picture years ago. Thus, it is quite clear there is no reason to believe there is any non-expired copyright to the file, and therefore it should be transferred to Commons, where five more photos of the same pair of boots are ready to welcome it into the family. --Ehitaja (talk) 10:42, 7 June 2020 (UTC)