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-cong...
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?
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_Hat...
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2009Sep#Whit...
Ryan Kaldari
On Tue, Sep 24, 2013 at 10:25 AM, Stephen LaPorte slaporte@wikimedia.orgwrote:
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-cong...
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.*
Advocacy_Advisors mailing list Advocacy_Advisors@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/advocacy_advisors
This is a topic I deeply care about and I have carefully read the specific wording of the White House photos - which basically boil down to the recommendation that you shouldn't use images in a way that suggest endorsement by the White House. Which is probably correct for reasons not rooting in copyright.
There are other cases where US administrations release images under (more or less) restrictive CC licenses. I think there was a "release" from images from the USDA the other week that might be copyfraud-ish.
Mathias
2013/9/24 Stephen LaPorte slaporte@wikimedia.org:
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-cong...
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.
Advocacy_Advisors mailing list Advocacy_Advisors@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/advocacy_advisors
publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org