This is a fairly typical case of using non-copyright restrictions (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Non-copyright_restrictions) to try to limit reuse. The practice on Commons is to typically just ignore such restrictions. Surprisingly, it's actually not a topic of much debate or discussion on Commons. I imagine this is because there are much juicier problems in actual copyright law to deal with. The only discussions I know about are:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Miyuki_Hatoyama_Michelle_Obama_Yukio_Hatoyama_and_Barack_Obama_20090923.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2009Sep#White_House_photos.3F

Ryan Kaldari


On Tue, Sep 24, 2013 at 10:25 AM, Stephen LaPorte <slaporte@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Public Knowledge has an interesting article about ambiguous usage restrictions appearing on some US government photographs and video: 

"The White House is not explicitly claiming copyright on these photos (the license makes that clear), but this type of scary quasi-legal language gets awful close to flirting with a bit of light copyfraud."

http://www.publicknowledge.org/blog/what-going-usage-restrictions-media-congress-

I know a number of Wikimedians are interested / activist in this area -- Jean-Frédéric had a great session on this general subject at Wikimania 2012. Do you know any other Wikimedians working on this? Does Commons have any documentation or guidelines on the topic?

--
Stephen LaPorte
Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation

For legal reasons, I may only serve as an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation. This means I may not give legal advice to or serve as a lawyer for community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity.

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