I was flicking through a copy of “Engineering Marvels of Australia – Australia’s Railways” by Alison Hidek when I had a case of deja vu.

With the photo of a Melbourne train in the bottom left corner looking awfully familiar.

Was it a photo of mine that I’d uploaded to Wikipedia way back in November 2007?

Photo by Marcus Wong Wongm, via Wikimedia Commons

After a check of the title page:

Yes!

p21b – Caulfield Group City Loop portal by Marcus Wong via Wikimedia

Content uploaded to Wikimedia Commons is free to reuse, provided you follow the terms specified by the author.

Unlike traditional media repositories, Wikimedia Commons is free. Everyone is allowed to copy, use and modify any files here freely as long as they follow the terms specified by the author; this often means crediting the source and author(s) appropriately and releasing copies/improvements under the same freedom to others. The license conditions of each individual media file can be found on their description page

In my case – Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license.

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license.
You are free:
– to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
– to remix – to adapt the work
Under the following conditions:
– attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
– share alike – If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same or compatible license as the original.

So everything was above board.

Footnote

I’ve written about finding Wikipedia uploads in real life before, in Keeping track of V/Line ‘borrowed’ photos.

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Not everyone can rely on Dancer and Prancer to get them around tomorrow.

So we're putting on free public transport right around Victoria.

Merry Christmas. pic.twitter.com/q8SesyxQ5H

— Dan Andrews (@DanielAndrewsMP) December 24, 2019

My first through – I’ve seen that photo of a V/Line train before – I uploaded it to Wikipedia a decade ago.

Photo by Marcus Wong Wongm, via Wikimedia Commons

So where did the other photos come from? The Z3 class tram looked familiar – Wikipedia again.

Photo by Liamdavies, via Wikimedia Commons

And the bus – another photo via Wikipedia.

Photo by Liamdavies, via Wikimedia Commons

But as for the source of the X’Trapolis train photo – I’ve come up blank – if only they’d followed the Creative Commons licence…

You are free:

• to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
• to remix – to adapt the work

Under the following conditions:

• attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
• share alike – If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same or compatible license as the original.

And through the looking glass

If you take a close look at the original photo on Wikipedia, you’ll notice a green advertisement for Monteith’s apple cider.

Which has been photoshopped out of the ‘Free Public Transport on Christmas Day’ post – replaced by a panel of PTV green triangles.

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It looked like a milk bar in the back streets of the Geelong suburb of St Albans Park, and for good reason – it was.

But where did the original photo come from? That bit is a lot easier than it used to be – thanks to the ‘search Google for image‘ feature in Chrome.

It didn’t find the exact photo I uploaded, but it did find the original unmodified image.

Which then sent me into the swamp of stolen content that is Pinterest.

Once I swatted away the plague of Pinterest popups and overlay text, I could see the full image.

And a link to the original source.

An Instagram post that has since been deleted.

Great.

And a sad ending

From the March 22, 2017 edition of the Geelong Advertiser.

Another Geelong milk bar closes its doors as world moves on

Another beacon of the past will be lost next Friday when the St Albans Park general store ceases trade.

Owner Mick Robertson has cited lost trade in the wake of job losses at Ford and Alcoa as one of the reasons he has decided to shut his doors for good.

“In 2008 we had about 300 people through the door each day with an average spend of $9 each now we have about the same amount of people through the door but average spend has dropped to $3,” Mr Robertson said.

Mr Robertson said his Westmoreland St milk bar and post office has been in business 23 years and at its peak employed the equivalent of four full time staff.

“At one stage we were extremely busy because supermarkets had restricted trade. Supermarkets closed at 6pm on weekdays, 1pm on Saturday and were closed Sunday,” he said.

Mr Robertson said his business took a hit when supermarket opening hours were extended in 1995.

“We took a hit but it was not fatal, because St Albans Park was a growing suburb,” he said.

Mr Robertson said he and his wife, Karyn, have had to dip into their superannuation to pay staff for the past eight months.

“Our margins have been going down and down, and we can’t compete against the supermarkets.”

Mr Robertson said he would look to redevelop the site in coming years.

Property development – the only “industry” Australia has left?

Footnote

The original Facebook post

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An example of this occurred in early January, when someone spotted this temporary travel changes poster at Flinders Street Station and shared on a bus enthusiast group with the following comment – “I wonder who’s photo V/Line has knocked off”.

Turns the photo that V/Line had knocked off was one of mine – taken back in 2013.

Another case of deja vu occurred back in June 2009, when I spotted this locally produced poster at promoting extended opening hours at Geelong line railways stations.

The train at the bottom was the familiar part – a photo of mine that I shared to Wikipedia back in 2007.

In this case reusing photos on Wikipedia is fair game, provided attribution is given – though in reality, people don’t know and don’t care when taking photos from the internet.

Nitpickers corner

If you look closely, you might have noticed that the bus in the first photo doesn’t even say V/Line anywhere on it – it’s an ex-V/Line road coach purchased by private operator GLV Coaches, who stripped off the V/Line logos but kept the red stripe down the side.

How did it end up as the first choice for someone creating a ‘V/Line replacement coaches’ poster – I have no idea!

And an update

In April I was walking past Flinders Street Station and saw the rail replacement bus sign with my own eyes – only now someone had drawn the V/Line logos drawn back in using a black texta.

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There was a good reason for that photo being familiar – I took it at Richmond station back on October 13, 2005.

Over the past few years I’ve uploaded hundreds of my photos to Wikipedia – over 500 at last count – but the photo I found had been uploaded by someone else.

If pinching my photo isn’t enough, the thief had also gotten the date taken completely wrong – by October 2013 the remaining Hitachi fleet had all been stripped of the green and old ‘PTC’ livery when they received a minor refurbishment in 2007, followed by a Metro Trains sticker job in 2009.

Rather than clean up the mess of copyright infringement, the simplest way to fix it was a deletion request – just navigate through the byzantine speedy deletion request page and it is deleted!

Footnote

The bureaucratic processes of Wikipedia have been flagged as the biggest risks to the growth of the free encyclopaedia – both Slate and MIT Technology Review have written on the topic.

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