Talk:Dalí Atomicus

Photo nominated for deletion at Commons
I've nominated the photograph for deletion at the commons because it is potentially still under copyright. It could likely be uploaded in a smaller version under fair use if the image is deleted from the Commons. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:00, 9 October 2023 (UTC)


 * , i just wanted to check with you to see if you had any reason to believe, aside from the copyright notice found on the moma source, that the image may still be under copyright. the actual notice on that page says "&copy; 2023 Halsman Estate", which makes me wonder if the notice is regarding the image in question, because the year mentioned in a copyright notice is typically the year of first publication, and this image was first published in 1948.i did some research before including this image in the article, and believe that the copyright was not properly renewed.  i could be wrong, and my search may not have been exhaustive enough, but i admittedly have yet to find the time to type up my reasoning, and wanted to see if you had anything that could prove dispositive first.  dying (talk) 08:59, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * @Dying I have nothing else, so I nominated for deletion at Commons to get discussion going. voorts (talk/contributions) 14:28, 28 November 2023 (UTC)


 * and, hopefully it won't be deleted, but if so please move a copy to English Wikipedia before deleting. This image is the principal page image for this article and thus would be a fair use image. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:54, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * ,, , and , below is my argument regarding why i think this photograph is currently in the public domain. i had been working on this intermittently before the deletion discussion closed, but figured that it would still be worth posting because the argument is somewhat different from those presented for the unretouched version of the photo.the image appears to have been first published by life in 1948, with the copyright notice "&copy; 1948 PHILIPPE HALSMAN", as seen here.  i believe this indicates that halsman allowed life to publish the photo under a license while still personally retaining copyright of the photo.  however, i believe that this also means that halsman had the responsibility of renewing the copyright.  life may also renew the copyright of the magazine in which the image was published, but i do not think that would extend the period of protection for halsman's image.  (otherwise, it would seem that one could prevent an image from entering the public domain by simply republishing it in a periodical every time the copyright was about to expire.)  the copyright alliance addresses a similar situation with images in books here, stating that "[i]f all of the exclusive rights in the image were not owned by the claimant of the book at the time of registration, the image must be registered separately", which strongly suggests that all such images must also be renewed separately.as explained here, because this image was published before 1964, its copyright should have been renewed during the 28th year of its protection to avoid entering the public domain.  this would mean that, if the copyright for this image was renewed, it should have been done in 1976.  i found pdf files containing all the renewals under the artwork category (which includes photographs) from 1975 to 1977 (here, here, here, and here), and was unable to find any instance of "halsman" or "atomicus" in any of them.  in addition, project gutenberg has compiled all the copyright renewals of artwork from 1965 to 1977 into one file, available here, and neither "halsman" nor "atomicus" appears in there either.to me, it is a bit surprising that i could not find any mention at all of halsman in that last file.  in fact, project gutenberg also has a compilation of the copyright renewals of artwork from 1960 to 1964 here, and one for those from 1951 to 1959 here, and halsman's name appears nowhere in those files either.  (i eventually cast a fairly wide net in my search just in case i was missing something, and i did end up finding a renewal here filed in 1976 of a book by halsman published in 1949.)it seems quite possible to me that halsman may have simply not realized at the time that he needed to renew the copyrights of his photos if he wished to prevent them from entering the public domain after 28 years.  (he may have thought that he only needed to renew the copyrights of his books.)  this would explain why the library of congress mentioned here being unable to find a copyright renewal for the unretouched version of dalí atomicus.  in addition, this search of the u.s. copyright office's online copyright catalog suggests that halsman (or his heirs) may have only realized in 1979, the year of his death, that many of his photos had to be registered with the copyright office in order to be protected for more than the standard 28 years.  (notice that the only results of that search for renewals of his works published before 1960 are for two of his books.)if this is so, then it appears that none of halsman's photos that had to have their copyrights renewed separately under the artwork category (because he retained the copyrights to them) was properly renewed between 1951 and 1978, meaning that any such photos first published between 1923 and 1950 have fallen out of copyright.  to be clear, any of halsman's images that were first published in one of his copyrighted books may still be under copyright, and there are plenty of his images published after 1950 that have had their copyrights renewed (see, e.g., this entry for an example of a renewal of such images), but i believe all of his photos first published in life between 1923 and 1950 that had a copyright notice stating that halsman remained the copyright owner, such as dalí atomicus, are now in the public domain in the u.s. due to failure to renew.this admittedly seems like a startling conclusion, and i am surprised that i could not find anyone else that has followed this train of thought before on wikipedia or on commons, which makes me really wonder whether this conclusion is correct.  i eventually realized, though, that these older copyright renewal records were only digitized and placed online recently, so it is possible that no one simply bothered to search for these renewals when they were not easily accessible.  (for example, the project gutenberg compilation of renewals from 1965 to 1977 was only released earlier this year.)  i would appreciate it, though, if someone more experienced than i am on copyright law could point out any flaws in my argument.  the only issue i can think of offhand is the possibility that the copyrights were transferred temporarily to a third party who renewed the copyrights of these photos under alternative titles, but that possibility sounds really contrived.  dying (talk) 04:59, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks @Dying for your research into this. Your explanation makes sense, but I haven't dug into it at all. The fact that the Estate claims copyright and the MOMA recognizes that claim gives me pause. Given that the close at Commons tied this image to the unfinished photograph, I think the close rationale was incorrect, so perhaps you can share this with the closer and see if they're willing to reopen the discussion. voorts (talk/contributions) 15:25, 18 December 2023 (UTC)