Category talk:Chandra images
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Copyright in Chandra images[edit]
We have here an OTRS e-mail from a person at NASA who does not appear to be a lawyer or employed in a legal capacity. I think she misunderstands the law.
I don't think for a minute that this is correct. The telescope is simply a very large and expensive camera. It is well established that copyright belongs to the photographer, not the owner of the camera. It is therefore clear that the copyright belongs to the investigators or, possibly, their institution, not to NASA, unless the investigator actually was an employee of NASA at the time the image was created. . Jim . . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 20:20, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
- The only person who appears to misunderstand the copyright law here is you. Ruslik (talk) 07:18, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
- Ad hominem attacks are not useful.
- Please give my any cite that suggests in any way that, as a matter of law, the owner of the tool used to create a work is entitled to any share in the copyright. The law is very clear. It is based in the Constitution's Copyright Clause and is codified at
- 17 USC 201(a) "Initial Ownership.— Copyright in a work protected under this title vests initially in the author or authors of the work. The authors of a joint work are coowners of copyright in the work."
- Please give my any cite that suggests in any way that, as a matter of law, the owner of the tool used to create a work is entitled to any share in the copyright. The law is very clear. It is based in the Constitution's Copyright Clause and is codified at
- Case law makes it clear that photographers are authors and, as I said above, Chandra is simply a large, expensive, specialized camera. That contradicts the assertion in the OTRS e-mail that it is ownership of the telescope that determines the status of the images.
- While it is certainly possible that investigators using Chandra have waived their copyrights, or transferred them to the government, the OTRS e-mail does not say that and we have no evidence of it whatsoever.
- . Jim . . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 11:56, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
- This was in fact discussed before and that OTRS ticket arose as a result of that discussion. Here you are trying to be holier than the Pope. The person who answered the e-mail knows much more about these images than you and the answer was more nuanced than you are claiming: if a third person asserts a claim on copyright this will be noted in the credit line. Ruslik (talk) 13:12, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
- "Ad hominem attacks are not useful" Really? You just accused another person that she does not understand copyright law without any clear reason and now, when somebody makes the same claim about you, you are crying, what a surprise, Ad hominem. Ruslik (talk) 13:17, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
- . Jim . . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 11:56, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
- Ugh. In general, Jim is correct. Whoever controls the camera and makes the decisions as to what is being photographed and how would own copyright. The ownership of the camera itself would in most cases not matter (it might in determining work-for-hire I guess). NASA images though... get more complicated as quite often contracts spell out that there is no copyright protection on the images produced, in line with its scientific goals. Often the "non-commercial" use restrictions seen on affiliated websites have more to do with using that organization's name (protecting trademark or publicity rights, or protecting *themselves* against use of others' property as they are only giving non-commercial permission, or covering works on the site not taken using the space equipment) than specifically copyright, but they are often vague. Some institutions do claim copyright, and we have tended to follow that. Chandra's does seem to be vague; they don't mention copyright at all specifically. Then from the same site you have this document, which is clear that their images have no copyright. But, maybe that is restricted to the images on this page, despite the wording in that document. There are a lot of photos in that gallery, so any of those are definitely OK, although they are a subset of the full photo galleries. The specific note that those photos have no copyright may indicate that others do. We have kept some images before under the theory that such "image use" restrictions were mainly based on non-copyright reasons... meta:Wikilegal/NASA images has some further discussion. It's not clear-cut to me on this one, although this project is primarily funded by NASA itself, making it more likely that copyright would be withheld, but it may all depend on the contracts. In looking through the main galleries, there is actually a fair amount of material from non-Chandra sources there -- composite images using some X-ray information from Chandra but also visible imaging from other (sometimes non-NASA) telescopes. Those could be an issue, though often the credit is very careful about those, and do seem to follow the format mentioned in the OTRS message, in that images with credits (or portions of credits) not starting with "NASA" can be problems. Not completely sure (it's hard to be without knowing the contracts), but I may lean towards keeping the images in line with the OTRS email (just NASA/CXC credits), under the theory that the fuller image use policy is meant to guard more against commercial use of images which they host which contain intellectual property from others (and there are a number) -- they are limiting the general permission to fair use basically but may require more permission for anything else. But the print photo gallery section is fine, for sure. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:06, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
- I actually have disputed the general statement that "Whoever controls the camera and makes the decisions as to what is being photographed and how would own copyright". I only disputed this "let's be sainter than the Pope" attitude. This a clear answer from an official authorized to make such statements. This is the end of story. In addition it is not clear who holds actually the camera? An individual scientist or still NASA? (through their technical staff). I has been recently argued by some that copyright of medical X-ray images rests with radiographers (technicians) who took those images but not with doctors who ordered them. It may be same situation here. Ruslik (talk) 10:45, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
- Ugh. In general, Jim is correct. Whoever controls the camera and makes the decisions as to what is being photographed and how would own copyright. The ownership of the camera itself would in most cases not matter (it might in determining work-for-hire I guess). NASA images though... get more complicated as quite often contracts spell out that there is no copyright protection on the images produced, in line with its scientific goals. Often the "non-commercial" use restrictions seen on affiliated websites have more to do with using that organization's name (protecting trademark or publicity rights, or protecting *themselves* against use of others' property as they are only giving non-commercial permission, or covering works on the site not taken using the space equipment) than specifically copyright, but they are often vague. Some institutions do claim copyright, and we have tended to follow that. Chandra's does seem to be vague; they don't mention copyright at all specifically. Then from the same site you have this document, which is clear that their images have no copyright. But, maybe that is restricted to the images on this page, despite the wording in that document. There are a lot of photos in that gallery, so any of those are definitely OK, although they are a subset of the full photo galleries. The specific note that those photos have no copyright may indicate that others do. We have kept some images before under the theory that such "image use" restrictions were mainly based on non-copyright reasons... meta:Wikilegal/NASA images has some further discussion. It's not clear-cut to me on this one, although this project is primarily funded by NASA itself, making it more likely that copyright would be withheld, but it may all depend on the contracts. In looking through the main galleries, there is actually a fair amount of material from non-Chandra sources there -- composite images using some X-ray information from Chandra but also visible imaging from other (sometimes non-NASA) telescopes. Those could be an issue, though often the credit is very careful about those, and do seem to follow the format mentioned in the OTRS message, in that images with credits (or portions of credits) not starting with "NASA" can be problems. Not completely sure (it's hard to be without knowing the contracts), but I may lean towards keeping the images in line with the OTRS email (just NASA/CXC credits), under the theory that the fuller image use policy is meant to guard more against commercial use of images which they host which contain intellectual property from others (and there are a number) -- they are limiting the general permission to fair use basically but may require more permission for anything else. But the print photo gallery section is fine, for sure. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:06, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
- I do believe that I may know more about this issue than the person who signed the OTRS e-mail -- I have spent the last 35 years as the person in charge of copyright at several high tech companies, and have dealt regularly with various national labs similar to HSCA.
- The problem is that the "clear answer from an official authorized to make such statements" is not as clear as you would like. The same person, acting in the same capacity, signed both the 2007 OTRS e-mail and the NC image use policy of the lab in 2011. As a general rule of law, when a person says two contradictory things, the later of the two controls.
- So, I ask -- how can you repeatedly cite a 2007 e-mail that both Carl and I think is wrong, and ignore a contradictory statement from the same person dated 2011? . Jim . . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 13:39, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
- "The images on this web site may be used for non-commercial educational and public information purposes. " And what? They may be used for these purposes, of course. But this policy is silent about other uses. In Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Sirius_A_&_B_X-ray.jpg someone tried in 2010 to obtain a permission using their copyright request form. The answer was: "the image is in public domain". I also dispute that Carl said above that the OTRS e-mail was wrong. Ruslik (talk) 18:07, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
- So, I ask -- how can you repeatedly cite a 2007 e-mail that both Carl and I think is wrong, and ignore a contradictory statement from the same person dated 2011? . Jim . . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 13:39, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
- I'm no so sure the OTRS email is wrong, at least in the context of NASA images. Many of their contracts deal with copyright issues (as in, mandating public domain) which would override normal copyright norms. Their image page *might* just be there in case someone wants to use one of the non-NASA images on the site which do have copyright issues (the ones where there are credits starting with something other than "NASA/CXC"). Carl Lindberg (talk) 07:26, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Carl is correct. That (c) page on the website is a standard catch-all; government sites often have one, even when their organization's work is all PD (that doesn't keep them from using someone else's photo under website-only permission; you have to confirm with them that a photo you want to use was produced by them, not borrowed for use in a blog post; &c.) Telescopes are not simply cameras. When you use a $2B tool that costs $5M a month to run, you do not get to claim copyright on the resulting image: use of the shared resource requires sharing control of the results; usually the owner retains copyright. In the case of US government scopes, those images are PD.
However: some images have multiple layers drawn from different telescopes. In that case the composite is a joint work, and you have to clear reuse with each scope. So while almost all images on the Chandra site are PD, some require more investigation. --SJ+ 17:42, 11 November 2013 (UTC)