Talk:Mary McGeachy

Photograph

Thirukannan, with regard to your query on Ipigott's talk as to whether the photograph which appears in Women of the World: The Rise of the Female Diplomat published in 2014 can be used in this article. The quick answer is no, unless you upload it as fair use, but there are problems. I am completely unconvinced that the title of that photograph is correct. I can’t figure out how to see it in google books, but accessed it here at page 1162. She looks like a much older woman than in the contemporary photographs from the 1940s. In fact, I would venture that that photograph appears to be much more in line with this 1967 image, which is not copyright free. So, looking at 1940s images,this (push the link that says “view article pages”) according to the Canadian rules would be in the public domain as it was created before 1949, but it also has to be in the US public domain and I don’t see that it qualifies as Ronny Jaques didn’t die until 2008 and I cannot find evidence of publication in the US before 1952 (which would be required for it to be 70 years past publication). This is marked as 1942 and the back of the image shows no copyright. The dating appears to be in period, as there is another image of her in that same dress, which was first published as far as I can tell in the Richmond Times-Dispatch with "all rights reserved". This also appears to be a press photo without copyright from the 1940s, possibly 1943, because this image appears to show the same hat but a different dress. (It is also from the Richmond Times-Dispatch so was copyrighted). Though the newspaper photographs cannot be used, I think the publicity photos would likely be in the Public Domain because they are unmarked, but I'm going to ping GRuban. If he thinks the publicity photos cannot be used, I can go back to researching newspapers and see if we can find one. SusunW (talk) 20:40, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you so much for your suggestion, and the great work in searching the copy right free photo.! It is really a good lesson for me on this issue. Grateful for your valuable time. Thanks & regards, Thirukannan (talk) 09:33, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Thirukannan it's really, really complicated. I am still learning, and because it is so complex I rarely upload a photo without input from others to see if I have missed an angle. We'll give GRuban some time to answer, and if he is too busy, I have others I can ping, but he is my "go to guy". SusunW (talk) 13:42, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

All right, let's see. Image copyright is often among the more persnickety things we have to deal with in writing articles.

• Women of the World: The Rise of the Female Diplomat p. 1162 - I am not at all sure I know which photo you mean here; I can download the ePub, but without page numbers. This page for the book on Goodreads says it only has 403 pages, so ... Anyway, there is a picture of her at the Picture Section in the back, labeled "Canadian born Mary Mc Geachy, the first woman to be given formal diplomatic status by the British government, at her desk in the Washington Embassy in 1942." Is that the one? She doesn't look that old to me, but what do I know. In any case, it's not guaranteed to be public domain, since we don't know when and where it was first published. If it's a US photo, for example, it's almost certainly after 1927, which is the date before which it's almost certainly PD.
• MacLean's, "Lady Diplomat" image, originally published 1942, Canada. I think we're actually good here. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Copyright_rules_by_territory/Canada says "{{PD-Canada}} – for Government images and other works first published over 50 years ago, photographs created before 1949 and works where the author has been dead for over 50 years." So it's PD in Canada. What Susun is getting at in "it also has to be in the US public domain" is the persnickety bit that the US, where Wikipedia servers live, sometimes gives copyright status to otherwise PD images from other counties: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-1996 - it's only PD in the US if it was also PD in its original country in 1996. (And 2 other qualifiers, but those are usually less of a problem.) In this case this photo qualifies: the "photographs created before 1949" bit of PD-Canada actually meant "photographs created over 50 years ago"; for example, you can see https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-Canada say 1952 (I'm guessing the earlier page saying 1949 wasn't updated). 50 years before 1996 is 1946. 1942 qualifies. I think we can safely upload the MacLean's, "Lady Diplomat" image to commons and mark it {{PD-Canada}}{{PD-1996}}. (If you want me to do it, could you send me a good quality image? It's paywalled for me; I can work around that a bit, but it won't be a very good quality image if I have to do that.)
• 1942 Press Photo Mary Craig McGeachy works at her office - sax21447 Unfortunately, this is debatable. What Susun is talking about is that US press photos before that age are usually public domain, because US works published before 1978 need an explicit copyright statement on the work, or they're public domain: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-US-no_notice So we can often find US press photos that are public domain; if this is a US photo, it is probably PD. Unfortunately I am not at all sure this is a US photo. It is, after all, a photo of a Canadian woman working in a UK office. (I looked at the back for hints of origin, but the writing on that spells Parliament as "Parlament", so not the most comforting either way!) If it's a Canadian work, that might still be all right as above, but quite possibly it's a UK work, and that would be life+70 years, or publication+70 years if anonymous, so if it were published in 1942, that would make it PD in the UK as of 2012, but not in the US per the PD-1996 rules as above... it's a mess.
• Mary Craig McGeachy - Vintage Photograph (This is the one with her sitting with someone who looks like, but probably isn't, Lyndon Johnson.) Same issue, except here the back of the photo seems to be written in ... is that German? https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Copyright_rules_by_territory/Germany is similarly 70 years, so it it's German that hits the "copyright in the US even if PD in Germany" 1996 issue as above.
• The 1943 Richmond Times-Dispatch image with the hat might actually be good, for a different reason. It says "staff photo", from a US newspaper, so it's clearly a US work. US works published before 1963 needed copyright renewal 28 years later https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-US-not_renewed and most did not get it. We'd have to search for that in https://archive.org/details/copyrightrecords which would be a bit of a pain, partly because we wouldn't be quite sure what to search for (McGeachy? Times-Dispatch?), partly because the OCR isn't perfect, partly because proving a negative (it's not there) is much harder than proving a positive (it's there, look, this link, book X, page Y, three quarters of the way down the left hand side of the page, says "Photo of Lady Brit Diplomat from Times Dispatch staff photographer, renewal number R012345"). Yet, if we didn't have the MacLean's image, I'd still recommend making a best effort search there, because it's a full face reasonably good quality image, and that hat is just gorgeous.

I'm not sure if that's all of the ones Susun listed, but it's some, and we have at least one, possibly two, images to choose from. If I missed discussing some you really want me to look at, please say, if you want help editing or uploading, also please say. --GRuban (talk) 20:51, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

@GRuban and Thirukannan: thank you! I had forgotten to use the 1996 date in my calculations. Yet another reason why it is always good to check with someone else. I cannot access either the goodreads or google versions of that book from Mexico, alas, but I will e-mail you the MacLean's image. It seems to be the clearest path to a copyright free image. I totally appreciate your help. SusunW (talk) 21:44, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

Uploaded, added to article. --GRuban (talk) 22:22, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

@GRuban and SusunW:Extraordinary efforts.! It is so wonderful to see how this image has been uploaded. Thank you so much for guiding on how to find copy right free images. These meticulous works and the responses may be, with appropriate modification, made as guidelines/manuals for accessing copy right free images. Thank you for your valuable time.! Thanks & regards, Thirukannan (talk) 08:01, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

Yes! Thirukannan You can go to GRuban's page and search his archives for many, many photo discussions. His talk page is definitely a master class on photo uploading. In this life, we are all students and teachers of each other. Glad we could help. SusunW (talk) 12:54, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

SusunW Thank you so much for the valuable information, and an inspiring message.! Thirukannan (talk) 13:51, 15 May 2022 (UTC)