User:Nick Moyes/Donating Images

Letter to Nigel
Hi Nigel. Thanks for those links, and sorry for the delay in replying to you - busy organising the wife's birthday! I managed to do enough to save the article from deletion, as the original nominator changed their view to 'Keep' as a result of the extra info added. So I've also removed the template that questioned the article's 'notability)

I managed to add the Wellcome Collection image of you in hospital to the Wikipedia article on Frostbite. Here is a link to all the frostbite-related images on Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Frostbite There's not a huge amount there, so if you did want to release any others you personally own to show your injuries and recovery, then I'll gladly guide you through the process.

There are three key points to mention about making images available:

Firstly: you must be the actual copyright owner to be able to legitimately release it for re-use. Normally this means you'll have pressed the shutter (though I tend to interpret it slightly looser in that, if I give my camera to someone and say take my picture now, I regard the image as mine, but legally it's probably not!) You can inherit ownership, of course, from deceased family members.

Secondly, like giving a Christmas present, you cannot take back an image once you've released it under a 'Creative Commons' licence. You are permane ntly licencing it for non-commercial and commercial re-use.

do consider the most appropriate size/resolution you need to release. If you want to retain the ability to sell a high quality version at a later date, I'd advise just to release it here as a small file which works fine on a monitor, but which a publisher would reject as unsuitable for a book or magazine. For 99.9% of people, this is never going to be an issue, but an image is always regarded as Copyright unless actively and unequivocally released under a Creative Commons licence

Thirdly, for use on Wikipedia, all images need to be released under certain types of 'Creative Commons' licence. Not all are acceptable. This is becasue Wikipedia allows anyone to take re,use and even resell its content. That includes text and images. Thus

Longer text
HOW DO I MAKE ONE OF MY PHOTOGRAPHS AVAILABLE FOR USE ON WIKIPEDIA? Background Wikipedia is a free encyclopaedia. It’s created solely by volunteer editors. All content is made available under a free licence that permits absolutely anyone, anywhere, to use or reuse it, even commercially if they so wish. (We call it CC-BY-SA, but more on that below) Wikipedia cares about protecting the rights of content owners. Because we release our content for free use, we cannot accept either copyrighted text (e.g. pasted from a book or newspaper) or copyrighted photographs (lifted from a website, or taken by someone else). All photographs are deemed to be owned by the individual who took the picture (i.e. pressed the shutter button). Only the person who holds the image copyright (or their heirs) can release it for re-use under a so-called ‘Creative Commons’ licence. Wikipedia has a sister project for holding images. It’s called Wikimedia Commons. Wikimedia Commons only accepts photos that have been released under the correct licence. Once done, the image can be used in any of the 312 language versions of Wikipedia. WHAT TYPE OF LICENCE? A range of different Creative Commons licences are in use. Some permit free use just for non-commercial purpose. Others allow both commercial and non-commercial re-use. This is the type Wikipedia needs you to release images under (abbreviation: CC-BY-SA). As part of the licence, in any re-use you must always be given credited as the creator. DO I LOSE CONTROL OF MY PHOTOS

Pictures you’ve already put on FLICKR or your own website. Proviing you own the copyright, it’s simple to make one or many pictures available for reuse under a Creative Commons licence. On Flickr, you can change the default setting for your photos from ‘Copyright’ to CC-BY-SA with a few clicks. You can release just on photo, or a single album or your entire collection. Releasing images under a Creative Coomons Share Alike licence is like giving aa Xmas present. Once gioven, it can’t easily be taken back. So think carefully about which images and which rsioutions you ant to make available. Most people never expect to make monmey from their photos, so they really have no need to worry. But if you want to keep control, ju Once you

Whilst a photo can be upload just to English Wikipedia, it cannot be used in another language version. Both projects actively remove photographs that don’t appear to be properly licenced. This is done to protect your intellectual rights – not to make your life difficult! There are various ways to get an image onto Wikipedia, but It’s not possible to rwstrict image use to just Wikepedia Only works that have been legitimately made available under certain types of licence (called Creative Commons) are accepted. It is important to understand that the there are different types of The most

Even then, certain types of Creatiove Commons licences are An image To put an image on Wikipedia, it must be

So thank you for sending me a selection. I think it is important for you to appreciate how Wikipedia and its sister project for images (Wikimedia Commons) operates. Copyright is owned by the photographer, so only they (or their heirs) have the right to release a photo for use to Wikimedia Commons. Images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons can be used by any language version of Wikipedia (But they must be made available for both non-commercial and commercial use under a CC-BY-SA licence, or similar) It is possible to upload an image just to English Wikipedia on a more relaxed 'fair use' basis - but images placed on Wikiemdia Commons is far bettter.

If you feel a high resolution image might have commercial value, that you don't want to lose, the trick is to release a suitable low-resolution version that a monitor will display, but a publisher would reject. Images can either be made available by the copyright holder in one of a number of ways - You can use your They can use their themsleves, or there is a system where an email from an official account can be sent to

One copyright image of a deceased person https://creativecommons.org/licenses/

This can be done by posting the images in an obviously official place,m such as the organization's web site, with a release statement. It could alternatively be done by following the process at Donating copyrighted material which involves an email sent to permissions-en@wikimedia.org from an address clearly associated with the copyright holder, probably the organization. That email will need to confirm the release, and specify the url where the images are located

Notes on donating MM images
Donating copyrighted materials

permissions-commons (for Commons-hosted media)