Can we safely and legally put these images on Wikimedia Commons?

[keithamoss]

e.g. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Part_of_Plan_for_Mole_Harbour_by_J.S.Roe_Surveyor-General.jpg#Summary

Helen has sent State Records Office an email enquiring.

Ref. issue #2.

Assign to: Helen

[samwilson]

My understanding is that the works must have passed into the public domain in both Australia and the USA. Which means pre-1966 for government-published works in Australia, and pre-1923 to be allowed to be published on the USA servers of Commons. So basically just pre-1923 then.

• Summary about Australia PD: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Copyright_rules_by_territory#Australia
• And the general statement is this: "Public domain works must be out of copyright in both the United States and in the source country of the work in order to be hosted on the Commons. If the work is not a U.S. work, the file must have an additional copyright tag indicating the copyright status in the source country."