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Possibly unfree File:Penrose CCC.jpg

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A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Penrose CCC.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Possibly unfree files because its copyright status is unclear or disputed (specifically, because Roger Penrose is the copyright holder of the original drawing). If the file's copyright status cannot be verified, it may be deleted. You may find more information on the file description page. You are welcome to add comments to its entry at the discussion if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you.

By the way: if you could get Penrose to email WP:OTRS to give permission to use the image, that would be the best possible resolution of this problem! -- Chronulator (talk) 15:53, 18 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(Bryan writes:) Thanks very much -- you can't be too careful! -- but I think this is incorrect. I photographed the slide in a public lecture hall at the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, PA (you can see the slide projector head at the bottom of the image). Presumably, US copyright laws apply, which generally give the photographer full copyrights to photos taken in a public place -- even when the photographed work is copyrighted! There is a useful summary on the wedding photography directory. And from the US copyright website:

  • "The owner of the 'work' is generally the photographer or, in certain situations, the employer of the photographer." (FAQ)[1]
  • "Copyright in a work [such as my photo] that portrays a useful article [such as Penrose's slide] extends only to the artistic expression of the author of the pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work. It does not extend to the design of the article that is portrayed. For example, a drawing or photograph of an automobile or a dress design may be copyrighted, but that does not give the artist or photographer the exclusive right to make automobiles or dresses of the same design." (Circular 40)[2]

These statements suggest that although Penrose owns the copyright to the original drawing, I (the photographer) own the copyright to the photo. (Except that I've chosen to release it to the public domain!)
-- Bryan (talk) 16:19, 18 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your swift reaction -- as you say, we can't be too careful., and I'm sorry to be such a nit-picker about this. I'm glad you're sorting this out -- it's not that I don't appreciate your efforts, it's just that this is an instance of a type of edge case of the copyright ruleset that occurs quite often here.
However, I will have to respectfully disagree with you about photography conferring a new and completely independent copyright in an image that entirely supplants the original copyright in the creative work pictured. Otherwise, photography would be a magical copyright-stripper that could be used to remove original copyrights from any kind of visual work, and replace them with new ones.
My (non-lawyer's, non-expert, this is not legal advice, etc. etc.) understanding of U.S. law is that, as the photographer, you in general own the copyright to the photograph as your own creative work, as a result of the creative expression inherent in your choice of camera position, focus, cropping, lighting, moment of exposure, and so forth, but that in this case the photograph still also remains a derivative work of Penrose's drawing. Thus, the photo is now arguably the joint work of both Penrose and yourself. If this was not the case, consider, for example, the case of an art book consisting of a couple of hundred artistically framed, focused, lit, and cropped pictures of each and every one of the pages of one of the Harry Potter books -- would this create a new work, free of J.K. Rowling's copyright? Or a movie shot in a cinema of the cinema screen, consisting of the entire original movie, but shot from a variety of artistically-chosen viewpoints of the screen, with artistic selection of viewpoint from shot to shot? Would that create a new work that was totally independent of the original movie's copyright?
Actually, in this particular case, you may not even own that, under U.S. copyright law: in the case of a simply-shot straight-on photograph of a two-dimensional surface, without any particular artistic choice of camera position or lighting, Feist v. Rural may apply.
All of this is blurry edge-case stuff -- at what point from straight-on placement and uniform lighting, for example, does the camera placement or lighting become artistic? how does freedom of panorama affect things? -- but I think we certainly can't eliminate the possibility that Penrose may still maintain at least some part of the rights in the image, and, I think that it's better to choose to err on the side of being over-cautious in this case.
Anyway, thanks for doing the right thing. I look forward to seeing lots more of your contributions here! -- Chronulator (talk) 12:02, 19 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Incidentally, for the sake of being polite (and safe), I've sent a note to Penrose requesting the ability to publish on Wikipedia. -- Bryan (talk) 16:33, 18 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! Thanks again for all your efforts. -- Chronulator (talk) 12:10, 19 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Dear Chronulator -- Penrose replied granting permission to post this image. Thanks very much for your kind help and thoughtful comments with this! Here is a copy of the email:
Thoughts on how to proceed? It seems the image copyright should be in Penrose's name now but used with his permission. Cheers -- Bryan (talk) 03:41, 22 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hadamard Lemma in CBH expansion

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An anonymous editor beat me to it (reverting your correction). Indeed, the identity you cite on p 160 of Miller is a typo, as evidenced by the line immediately following it (or merely taking A=0). In Miller's case, it is a luckless carryover from writing the adA expansion. Cuzkatzimhut (talk) 19:08, 20 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Lovely, thanks for the correction. And how unusual to find such a typo in Miller! -- Bryan (talk) 22:10, 20 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

FA review?

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Hello,

I noticed that you are involved with the physics articles on Wikipedia, and I was wondering if you could help me out. Right now, I'm working to bring the article AdS/CFT correspondence to FA status. So far, people have had many good suggestions and many positive things to say about the article, but I'm having trouble getting people to support or oppose the nomination.

I was wondering if you'd be willing to take a look at it and tell us your thoughts at this page. Please note that you do not have to be an expert on the subject. The article has already been checked quite carefully by other reviewers, and at this point, I'm just looking for people who can check that it meets the FA criteria.

Please let me know if you're interested. Thanks. Polytope24 (talk) 15:41, 28 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  1. ^ http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html
  2. ^ http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ40.pdf
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