File:The Gary, Indiana tornado on February 27, 2024.jpg

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Summary

This media file has been nominated for deletion since 28 October 2024.

To discuss it, please visit the nomination page.

Do not remove this tag until the deletion nomination is closed.

Reason for the nomination:

These images were all sourced from webpages of the US National Weather Service but are the work of third-party photographers. However, we have no evidence that any of these images are in the public domain or available under a free license.

For many years, hosting such images on the Commons was done in good faith under the rationale that:

public submissions to the NWS all entered the public domain and/or
all files hosted on NWS websites were in the public domain unless they carried a formal copyright notice

An extensive review of this rationale in 2024 revealed that neither of these beliefs held up to scrutiny. These findings were confirmed in an RfC conducted from August to October 2024.

Per COM:ONUS it is the responsibility of the person uploading an image to the Commons or anyone arguing for its retention here to provide evidence of permission from the copyright holder. For anyone interested in seeking the permission of the creators to retain these files, I offer, as a head start, the following notes left over from when I investigated them:

File:The August 6, 2023 EF2 tornado south of Edinburg, Illinois.jpg: Photographer still owns the copyright. Stopped responding September 12 when asked about releasing it. VRT ticket:2024102810003738
File:A tornado on April 16, 2024.jpg: Photographer still owns the copyright. Stopped responding September 12 when asked about releasing it. VRT ticket:2024102810003756
File:The Gary, Indiana tornado on February 27, 2024.jpg: Photographer and this image easily findable on X; in the thread that follows, they grant permission to multiple media agencies to use, but they eventually stop responding. In my records, I noted that I had also messaged this creator, but I cannot find where I did that, so this might be an error. Anyway, I have messaged them on October 28 and will update this entry if they reply. VRT ticket:2024102810004308
File:Tim Marshall photograph of the 2023 Matador, Texas tornado.jpg: I was in correspondence with Tim Marshall about two other images hosted on the Commons, and he seemed open to the idea of open licensing, but stopped responding on October 2, as soon as I showed him the release form. VRT ticket:2024100110011645

All these images were taken in the US after 1989, and therefore automatically protected by copyright at the instant of their creation unless ineligible for some reason. Unless anybody can provide any evidence of ineligibility for copyright, or permission from the respective copyright owners, we must delete all the files listed in this request per COM:PRP because as far as we can tell, they all are protected by copyright. --Rlandmann (talk) 10:27, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

If this template was added because you clicked "Mark for deletion" in the left menu (right when using Vector 2022 skin), please make sure that all necessary pages have been created. If they haven't been created after a few minutes, or if you added this template manually, you should complete these steps:

1 Visit the deletion requests subpage and place the following code:

{{subst:delete2|image=Third-party photos hosted by the NWS uploaded by WeatherWriter|reason=* File:The August 6, 2023 EF2 tornado south of Edinburg, Illinois.jpg

These images were all sourced from webpages of the US National Weather Service but are the work of third-party photographers. However, we have no evidence that any of these images are in the public domain or available under a free license.

For many years, hosting such images on the Commons was done in good faith under the rationale that:

public submissions to the NWS all entered the public domain and/or
all files hosted on NWS websites were in the public domain unless they carried a formal copyright notice

An extensive review of this rationale in 2024 revealed that neither of these beliefs held up to scrutiny. These findings were confirmed in an RfC conducted from August to October 2024.

Per COM:ONUS it is the responsibility of the person uploading an image to the Commons or anyone arguing for its retention here to provide evidence of permission from the copyright holder. For anyone interested in seeking the permission of the creators to retain these files, I offer, as a head start, the following notes left over from when I investigated them:

File:The August 6, 2023 EF2 tornado south of Edinburg, Illinois.jpg: Photographer still owns the copyright. Stopped responding September 12 when asked about releasing it. VRT ticket:2024102810003738
File:A tornado on April 16, 2024.jpg: Photographer still owns the copyright. Stopped responding September 12 when asked about releasing it. VRT ticket:2024102810003756
File:The Gary, Indiana tornado on February 27, 2024.jpg: Photographer and this image easily findable on X; in the thread that follows, they grant permission to multiple media agencies to use, but they eventually stop responding. In my records, I noted that I had also messaged this creator, but I cannot find where I did that, so this might be an error. Anyway, I have messaged them on October 28 and will update this entry if they reply. VRT ticket:2024102810004308
File:Tim Marshall photograph of the 2023 Matador, Texas tornado.jpg: I was in correspondence with Tim Marshall about two other images hosted on the Commons, and he seemed open to the idea of open licensing, but stopped responding on October 2, as soon as I showed him the release form. VRT ticket:2024100110011645

All these images were taken in the US after 1989, and therefore automatically protected by copyright at the instant of their creation unless ineligible for some reason. Unless anybody can provide any evidence of ineligibility for copyright, or permission from the respective copyright owners, we must delete all the files listed in this request per COM:PRP because as far as we can tell, they all are protected by copyright. --Rlandmann (talk) 10:27, 28 October 2024 (UTC)}} ~~~~

2 Go to the deletion requests log and place the following code at the bottom:
{{subst:delete3|pg=Third-party photos hosted by the NWS uploaded by WeatherWriter}}

3 Notify the item's uploader or the creator of the page by placing the following code on the user's talk page:
{{subst:idw|File:The Gary, Indiana tornado on February 27, 2024.jpg|Third-party photos hosted by the NWS uploaded by WeatherWriter}} ~~~~

4 Additionally, you may want to check for Wikimedia projects that use this item and then remove or, if possible, replace with a superior item.

For mass deletions: If you want to nominate several related images, please make a mass request by manually adding {{delete|reason=write reason|subpage=write name|year=2024|month=November|day=10}} to each image page and then following the steps hereinbefore. (Help on mass requests.)

Note: This template is for requests that may require discussion in order to be deleted. For speedy deletions, you can use {{speedydelete|reason}}.

In other languages

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Description	English: A photograph of the Gary, Indiana tornado, which occurred on February 27, 2024. The photograph was taken by 𝕏 user @SpaceSim2 and was given to the National Weather Service in Chicago.
Date	27 February 2024
Source	https://www.weather.gov/lot/2024_02_27_Severe (Archived webpage, Exact URL & Archived URL)
Author	𝕏 user @SpaceSim2

Licensing

Caution: License review in progress

As of November 2024, the copyright and licensing status of this file is under review.

A Commons contributor has asserted in good faith that this file is in the public domain either because:

it is a work of the National Weather Service, and as a work of the US Federal Government, ineligible for copyright or
a third party might have submitted it to a National Weather Service regional office under terms and conditions that placed it in the public domain. For example, the La Crosse, Louisville, Norman, Omaha, Peachtree City, and Sioux Falls offices are known to have had such terms and conditions for certain contests and other public outreach at various points in time (see here for a complete list) or
it is free of copyright for some other reason (for example, it contains no copyrightable elements, or its copyright has expired)

If, during review, this file is found to be in the public domain or available under a free license, a new rationale will be applied as part of the review process and this notice will no longer be displayed. Files that cannot be established with reasonable certainty to be in the public domain or available under a free license will be deleted.

To uploaders

If uploading a file created by NWS and its employees, use {{PD-USGov-NWS-employee}} instead
If uploading a third-party file hosted on an NWS site or channel, use {{PD-NWS-third party}} instead

Before re-using this file
You must verify that at least one of the above conditions is true.

In particular, if the file was created by a third party, verify that the specific terms and conditions under which its creator submitted it to the NWS included an explicit release of the file into the public domain. Read such terms and conditions carefully; at least one of these (Omaha) contains one option which would place the file into the public domain and another option which would not.

If you cannot verify the terms and conditions that applied to the submission, or these terms and conditions did not contain an explicit release into the public domain, contact the creator of the file and ask their permission to re-use it. If you are unable to verify that this file is in the public domain or available under a free license, please consider nominating this file for deletion.

See below for the original rationale for asserting that this file is in the Public Domain.

Original public domain rationale

This image is in the public domain because it was stored on the web servers of the U.S. National Weather Service. NWS-created images are automatically public domain in the U.S. since the NWS is a part of the U.S. government. However, the NWS sites also host non-NWS images which have been submitted by individuals: these are generally shown as "Courtesy of ...". Such images have explicitly been released to the public domain by the copyright owner as part of the upload process.

As stated at https://www.weather.gov/disclaimer/: "The information on National Weather Service Web servers and Web sites is in the public domain, unless specifically annotated otherwise, and may be used freely by the public."

As stated at https://www.weather.gov/fsd/disclaimer: "By submitting images, you understand that your image is being released into the public domain. This means that your photo or video may be downloaded, copied, and used by others."

Thus, all images on NWS servers are public domain (including "Courtesy of ..." and “Photo by ...” images) unless specifically stated otherwise through a copyright (©) watermark.

English | suomi | македонски | português | +/−

File history

Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.

	Date/Time	Thumbnail	Dimensions	User	Comment
current	05:38, 2 March 2024		1,233 × 1,179 (63 KB)	WeatherWriter	Uploaded a work by 𝕏 user @SpaceSim2 from https://www.weather.gov/lot/2024_02_27_Severe ([https://www.weather.gov/images/lot/pastevents/2024/Feb27/GaryTornado_%40SpaceSim2.jpg Exact URL]) with UploadWizard

File usage

The following 2 pages use this file:

File:The Gary, Indiana tornado on February 27, 2024.jpg

Summary

Licensing

Captions

Items portrayed in this file

depicts

inception

27 February 2024

media type

image/jpeg

File history

File usage