Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Cameron Rowland

Files in Category:Cameron Rowland

After reaching out to Cameron Rowland's representative to see if there was another solution to the subject's issues with these photos, I've learned more about their provenance. Columbia made a written agreement not to release photos of Rowland at this event; the person or people operating the GSAPPstudent account are in fact employed by Columbia's GSAPP, were aware of the agreement, and published these images here as "own work" and under a free license. Rowland contacted Columbia after these images appeared online, but GSAPPstudent and other users in deletion requests did not explain that the account is essentially a representative of Columbia. I believe these images should be deleted; I also directed Rowland's rep to info-commons@wikimedia.org to follow up or provide documentation as needed. See my full explanation at the Village Pump.

19h00s (talk) 02:31, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Forgot this page wouldn't include the previous deletion discussions. Here they are for reference: 1, 2, 3. 19h00s (talk) 02:33, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Rowland's representative could have handled cease and desist request better using COM:DMCA take down request. To Rowland's representatives, the DMCA contact/designated agent of Wikimedia is found here JWilz12345 (Talk|Contributions) 04:51, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Jwilz - to be clear, I don’t think this a DMCA concern as the photographs are correctly licensed and labeled. This was a case of Columbia violating a written contract with Rowland not to release the photos; GSAPPatudent and other Columbia users never clarified that they were in fact reps of Columbia and thus were subject to that contract. Honestly quite frustrated at folks with Columbia for not just chiming in with the truth of what happened and leaving us to work it out (GSAPPstudent requested deletion several times without being clear about the above circumstances/contract). 19h00s (talk) 11:17, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. We only have the word of Rowland's representative about this, nothing from GSAPPstudent. Since when did we allow third parties to impugn the actions of photographers? And even if what that representative says is true, the images appear to have been released under a valid licence, by the copyright holder. And as noted in the 8 October 2024 closure by @Bastique: "Image is properly labeled with personality rights, there are no copyright issues and Commons cannot dictate policy at Columbia University policy does not dictate Commons policy".

You should be pinging all those who participated in previous deletion discussion, BTW. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:42, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Pinged. And tbh I feel like it's clear that GSAPPstudent is not going to do any follow up, they've been pinged/notified quite a few times about these various discussions and have never chimed in with additional information. Rowland's rep says that the images appeared in other places online too, before being added to Commons, and were immediately removed from other platforms after they reached out to Columbia to remind them about the agreement that was made. I mostly was raising for the attention of folks with more experience in complicated issues/disagreements like this, I've never run into an issue where a non-copyright agreement seems to clearly preclude files from being hosted here, even after an analysis of copyright/licensing. 19h00s (talk) 14:01, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thinking about it more, I do wonder (assuming the details I was provided are in fact correct) what our strictly legal obligations are here. Columbia's agreement with Rowland is certainly enforceable between Columbia and Rowland insofar as it's legitimate under US/New York law, but Commons was never party to that agreement. Columbia violated it by publishing the images, but that agreement presumably did not impact Columbia's legal ability to create works like this generally, it just created an enforcement mechanism against Columbia if they were to publish/share such works. So, Columbia is liable to Rowland for publishing, but Commons really didn't do anything except host a self-published work, published legally as far as copyright is concerned.

Still, I think this is an ethical grey area; I don't personally believe it's right to continue hosting these images if the depicted subject did in fact do the work to legally protect themselves from this exact situation by getting the host to agree in writing to not do what they did here (publish images of the subject). But obviously this DR should play out and others should chime in, my nomination of these images clearly is nowhere close to general consensus. 19h00s (talk) 14:45, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just one additional point on the moral/ethical issues here. I think this is in some ways just a case of "house rules" on photos of people (assuming again that the provided information is accurate). In this specific instance, it just seems to have been an employee of the "house" that didn't follow the rules, and the rules only restricted the employees, but they were house rules nonetheless: if you work for Columbia, don't publish pictures of Rowland that were made at this event. That's certainly an odd situation with narrow parameters but is it not comparable to other "house rules" on pictures of people? (sorry for adding so much here, but this is really puzzling me now and there seems to be a compelling ethical obligation to delete but no real legal one) 19h00s (talk) 00:46, 15 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging previous participants in these discussions: @Abzeronow: , @Yann: , @Ankry: , @Ikan Kekek: , @Bastique: , and @Wdwd: --19h00s (talk) 13:59, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the ping. Are these the only photos of him on Commons? I suppose they are, and that makes the case more difficult. I think the issues have been laid out well in the discussion so far, don't have anything else to add and will be interested to see how things play out. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:16, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

First, we are not bound with the contract between Columbia's GSAPP and their employee. If an employee violated a contract, this should be resolved between them. If User:GSAPPstudent is under legal pressure and can provide (eg. through info-commons) an evidence of that, we can reconsider our earlier reject decisions. Anyway, if the photos were made by an employee as their duty, Columbia's GSAPP may have copyright to them and can take legal steps provided in DMCA. Anyway, more information may be needed as this seems to be a COM:Non-copyright restrictions case. At this moment my opinion is

Neutral tending to

Weak keep. Ankry (talk) 14:37, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For the moment, these photos are all that we have of Rowland. Now, I'd be willing to take a CC-zero licensed photograph of Rowland (I could fit the time in when I'll be in New York City in October, but that would take some off-wiki emailing and such to set up) so that we have a different freely licensed photo (and thus could acquiesce to the request to take them down). I also agree with Ankry that this is more of a breach of contract case than a copyright case and Commons was never a party to any contract between Rowland and Columbia University. Abzeronow (talk) 22:08, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Getting an alternate image to solve this is partly why I asked Rowland's rep about this in the first place - I laid out the options for publishing their own freely licensed image (in addition to giving the context about why the other images weren't deleted), but it doesn't seem like that's something Rowland is interested in. 19h00s (talk) 22:48, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]