dcf.cymru stimulus sheet · History · Year 10

Wales at Work: six photo records and the rules

The six records, the photographers and the archives are invented for practice. The events they show are real, and the rules in the box come from the UK Intellectual Property Office and Creative Commons.

Cover teacher — how to use this

Print one per pair. No computers needed. Pupils keep the rules box beside them for every question on the worksheet.

The project

Your class is making an exhibition called Wales at Work, 1900–1990. The photographs could be used in three ways:

  1. Classroom display — printed and pinned up in the history room, with a caption.
  2. School website — an online gallery that anyone in the world can see.
  3. Fair booklet — a printed booklet sold for £3 at the Christmas fair to raise money for the Year 10 history trip.

The rules

  1. Copyright is automatic. A photograph is protected the moment it is taken. Nobody has to register it or add ©.
  2. Photographer known: copyright usually lasts until the end of the 70th year after the photographer died. The photo enters the public domain — free for anyone to use for anything — on 1 January of the next year. Example: a photographer who died in 1950 → 1950 + 70 = 2020 → copyright ends 31 December 2020 → public domain from 1 January 2021.
  3. Photographer unknown: copyright usually lasts 70 years from the end of the year the photo was taken — or, if it was published in that time, 70 years from the end of the year it was published. “Copyright does not disappear simply because the owner cannot be found.” (Intellectual Property Office)
  4. Who owns it: if a photographer took the picture as part of their job, their employer usually owns the copyright — but the 70 years still count from the photographer’s death.
  5. Scans of old photos: “Simply creating a copy of an image won’t result in a new copyright in the new item”, and the IPO says a retouched scan of an old image is unlikely to count as original. But an archive or picture library can still set terms and conditions for using the files it supplies, and those are a contract you agree to.
  6. Teaching exception: the law lets pupils and teachers copy a work in class and in coursework when it is used only to illustrate a point, is not for commercial purposes, has a proper credit, and uses no more than is fair. It does not cover publishing it to the world or selling it.
  7. A credit is not permission. Naming the photographer is polite and often required, but it does not replace a licence.

Simplified for this lesson: photographs taken before 1 June 1957, and photographs that were never published, have some special rules. That is why real historians read the archive’s own rights statement first.

Rights statements you will meet

Statement What it lets you do
No known copyright restrictions / Public domainUse it for anything, including selling it. A credit is good manners.
CC BYUse, share and adapt it for anything, including selling, as long as you credit the creator.
CC BY-NC-SAUse, share and adapt it with a credit, but not commercially (nothing sold or made for money), and anything you make from it must use the same licence.
In copyright — all rights reservedNothing beyond the legal exceptions without the owner’s permission.
In copyright — educational use permittedOnly what the statement says. Read it word for word.

A good credit gives Title, Author, Source and Licence (TASL).

The six records

Photo A — Coal trimmers at Cardiff Docks

Taken: about 1905 · Photographer: unknown; never traced · First published: 1906, in a shipping magazine · Archive: Cardiff Docks Heritage Trust, ref. CDH/0412

Rights statement: “No known copyright restrictions.”

Photo B — Quarrymen at Dinorwig slate quarry, Llanberis

Taken: 1912 · Photographer: Evan Pritchard (1874–1941) · Archive: Archif Llechi, ref. AL/EP/077

Rights statement: “Digital image © Archif Llechi 2020. All rights reserved. Images downloaded from this website may not be reused without written permission.”

Photo C — Nain and Taid on their day off, Barry Island

Taken: 1958 · Photographer: Gwilym Rees (1930–2019), an amateur, photographing his parents · Source: uploaded to a community history website by his daughter, who inherited the copyright, ref. CHW/5519

Rights statement: “CC BY 4.0. Please credit Gwilym Rees.”

Photo D — Protest at the opening of Llyn Celyn reservoir, Tryweryn

Taken: 21 October 1965 · Photographer: Dilys Morgan (1931–2003), staff photographer for Gwasg y Gogledd, a news photo agency · Archive: Gwasg y Gogledd picture library, ref. GG/65/1021

Rights statement: “In copyright. © Gwasg y Gogledd. All rights reserved. To license this image, contact the picture desk.”

Photo E — Soup kitchen during the miners’ strike, Maerdy

Taken: 1984 · Photographer: Siân Howells (born 1956) · Archive: Rhondda Community Archive, ref. RCA/1984/233

Rights statement: “CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.”

Photo F — Steelworkers at the Abbey Works, Port Talbot

Taken: 1968 · Photographer: Alun Jenkins (1925–1990) · Archive: Port Talbot Heritage Society, ref. PTHS/AJ/310

Rights statement: “In copyright. Educational use permitted: may be used in classroom teaching and coursework. Not to be published online or in print without permission.”

Where the rules come from