Policy: persons who download Ancestry photos and upload to WT

Question

Is there an official policy on people who download photos from Ancestry and upload to WT, without contacting the person who posted the photo on Ancestry? 

A person who did this recently gave as answer to the below requirements entered ' From a family album' it was downloaded from an Ancestry tree(mine). The person agreed they downloaded the photo. I have the original photograph.

The photo upload rules say: Say where you got this image, e.g. if you took the photo, if it was scanned from a family collection, etc. This is required. If you found the image on another website explain why it is not copyrighted or how you obtained permission (images on Find A Grave and most other websites are copyrighted).

Comments

If you own the copyright you can ask them to take down the picture.

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This would be helpful to define as I see many photos uploaded from there to Wikitree pages I manage without asking. When someone has done this for a Find A Grave photo, I have tracked down the photographers and personally asked if I could repost them on Wikitree, So far they have been gracious. For Ancestry, I would like to remove the images.

Contributors should not be doing this, it could cause issues for Wikitree and it's very common.

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It is a picture of a great aunt, taken by another great aunt, given to me by my grandmother, the sister of both the great aunts. All of these people are now deceased. 

If the not related person had contacted me through Ancestry I would have replied, I have edited and improved the photo and now plan to upload it to the person's profile on WT. 

The response to my request for a possible though very unlikely other source was that there is no source other than the original individual who posted the photo.

In several G2G discussions it is suggested that contacting the person who was the original poster on Ancestry to ask for permission to download/copy/post the image was the recommended procedure. 

My question: Is there an official policy. 

Guidelines for photos state: 

How do you know if you have permission to upload a photo?

Generally speaking, you have permission to upload a photo if:

1. you took the photo yourself.

2. the person who took the photo gave you permission to share it on WikiTree.

3. the image is in the public domain. 

You generally do not have permission if you downloaded it from another website.

Answer 1

Part of the problem with photos on Ancestry is this: Someone uploads a photo to a profile. Someone downloads that photo to their computer and then uploads it to their tree on Ancestry. This can happen several times. Each time it is re-uploaded to an Ancestry tree, the person who is uploading gets the credit for the photo. So, once it is uploaded to WikiTree, the original owner is lost to time. I have had this happen many times with photos I originally uploaded. These were from my family's photo albums but I did not take the photos - they are very old. My view is that they will never be lost in a trunk somewhere or be thrown away - they will always live on the internet.

Comments

I am not averse to collaboration or to sharing, however I would prefer being asked/ contacted.

I have made many family contacts thru Ancestry, FS, and  WT which is wonderful, but please contact first before you copy, download documents or photos I have uploaded.

Answer 2

Wow, that is frankly rude, taking somebody else's pics to post elsewhere without even asking.  

I've had a cousin send me family photos of some of our common ancestors;  before uploading them to WikiTree I asked her if I could post them here, even though these were also my ancestors and it was perfectly legitimate for me to put them up.