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Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/M777

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Photograph of a M777 howitzer in action

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Original - An M777 Light Towed Howitzer in service with the 10th Mountain Division in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Charkh District, Logar Province, Afghanistan.
Reason
I find the quality of this photo superb and I think a picture at such a close range and with such good timing must be unusual.
Articles this image appears in
M777 howitzer
Creator
Jonathanmallard
  • I suggest you do, the current FP has higher encyclopaedic value and better composition. I doubt this would pass in contrast, however you can leave it to process if you wish, it's your decision. —Vanderdecken∴ ∫ξφ 12:12, 22 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Well personally I support it, as quality is decent and EV seems great. It is a different howitzer than the above referenced M198, though admittedly of the same caliber. We don't have a "scope" concept here similar to the the Commons version of Valued Pictures, so it's possible to have more than one FP for similar subjects. The nom'd image is in a separate article as well so I'm not sure it's diluted too much by the existence of the other FP. Fletcher (talk) 00:51, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Sophus Bie (talk) 01:13, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I have a copyright question. This image came from flickr and was licensed there under CC-BY. However, this was changed to PD-USGov-Military-Army. Is this right? There is no evidence that this photo was "made during the course of the person's official duties." The argument goes that I guess any private photos you take while during a tour of duty become PD? Is that correct, or should we revert the copyright tag back to CC-BY?-Andrew c [talk] 13:29, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    I have asked User:Terrillja to comment on this. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:50, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

:::Hi, the question here is was the image taken white the person was on duty. If it was an image of a bunch of soldiers playing football on base, I'd tend to agree that this would belong to the person who took the image. However, this image was taken by a soldier, during deployment, and is of an artillery piece in action, which would indicate to me that they were on duty, and that the image was taken while they were under the employment of the army. Since the image was taken while they were working for the army, the image becomes the property of their employer, similar to how a web designer does not own the copyright to work that they did for a company while they were working for that company. My tagging was based on some other images that I had seen which were also personal flickr images and were imported here: [1] and [2] Apparently the army has an account on flickr too. Go figure. If this was wrong, I will certainly offer my apology. --Terrillja talk 18:24, 23 March 2009 (UTC) per Fletcher below[reply]

I would say the question is more like, was the image taken as part of the person's official duties -- in other words, was the photographer employed by the army to take photographs? In contrast to someone taking a personal photo with their own camera during a tour of duty. The photographer's user page User:Jonathanmallard says he is a medic and the EXIF data indicates it was shot with a Canon Point & Shoot, not a professional SLR like you would expect a military photographer to use, so I tend to think this is a personal photo. I doubt soldiers' personal photos are required to be in the public domain. Fletcher (talk) 22:00, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, my thoughts exactly. Perhaps, without further hard evidence, since no one seems to know for sure, we should just defer to the license this user released the image on flickr? I'm not sure which is worse, releasing someones personal photo into the public domain or adding a CC-BY stipulation to an otherwise PD government image (assuming we choose the wrong license here)?-Andrew c [talk] 22:15, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's better to protect someone's rights that might not exist than to deny someone's rights that might really exist. I changed it back to the CC license. Maybe Jonathan can clarify it for us. Fletcher (talk) 01:53, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

*Note Someone should also check out this one, since it was taken by the same person and tagged pd-usgov-army by another user on commons. Perhaps this needs to be clarified somewhere what official duties entails. Does an image taken while on patrol count as "on duty" if you are not an army photographer? I mean you aren't employed as a photographer, but you are working on taxpayer time, so what is the deal there?--Terrillja talk 02:22, 24 March 2009 (UTC) per Fletcher below[reply]

This would seem to be the answer:

A "work of the United States Government," referred to in this document as a U.S. Government work, is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person's official duties. (See 17 USC § 101, Definitions.56) [...]

An officer's or employee's official duties are the duties assigned to the individual as a result of employment. Generally, official duties would be described in a position description and include other incidental duties. Official duties do not include work done at a government officer's or employee's own volition, even if the subject matter is government work, so long as the work was not required as part of the individual's official duty. (S.REP. NO. 473, 94th Cong., 2d Sess. 56-57) (1976) "A government official or employee should not be prevented from securing copyright in a work written at his own volition and outside his duties, even though the subject matter involves his government work or his professional field.") For further discussion, see Tresansky, John O. Copyright in Government Employee Authored Works. 57 30 Cath. L. Rev. 605 (1981).

So if his official duties as a medic do not include taking pictures of howitzers then the copyright still belongs to him. If he is taking pictures on taxpayer time that is a discipline issue, not a copyright issue. But I don't think we can assume even that much; maybe he is doing it on whatever free time he is given. And it's not like snapping a pic with a point and shoot is a big waste of time anyway. I could see your point if he was doing a long exposure on a view camera trying to be Ansel Adams of Afghanistan while someone is bleeding out on a gurney in the clinic, but I don't think that's what's happening here! :-) Fletcher (talk) 03:05, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Some more input would be nice now that the copyright issue has been resolved by the copyright holder. I'll also point out that the user's Flickr gallery is quite fascinating. Check it out if you have some time (personal opinion, of course). Best of luck to our soldier overseas. ~ ωαdεstεr16«talkstalk» 05:43, 1 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment. I don't know if the creator is still watching, but I don't quite get the dimensions on this image. It looks odd at this size when there's no apparent reason for the crop of the height (this camera takes fullsize images at 3648×2736) - in fact if there was more height then the smoke wouldn't have to be cutoff at the top. I'd like to hear an explanation, but the awkward looking crop along with other reasons given above, inclines me towards opposing. --jjron (talk) 14:25, 3 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Support Outstanding image. Opposing on the grounds that we already have an existing FP of a different towed artillery piece is like opposing the next high quality image of an insect on the grounds that we already have a FP of a bug. --Leivick (talk) 03:30, 6 April 2009

Promoted Image:M777 Light Towed Howitzer 1.jpg ~ ωαdεstεr16«talkstalk» 02:03, 8 April 2009 (UTC) (UTC)[reply]

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