On 01/04/2008, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
What are their rationales? That US government produced symbols can't be put in images inside of wikipedia even though the image is Public Domain by law?
I'm not entirely sure; they seem to be claiming that the meatball itself is copyright (but it ISN'T). If you read the wikipedia's [[Template:PD-USGov-NASA]] this template says it is, but:
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/policies.html#Guidelines
*doesn't* claim this, and I checked the regulations and they say that the meatball is PD; but that you have to get permission to use it.
It seems to be a confusion relating to the fact that you or me can't just stick the meatball logo on anything (since that would be basically FRAUD ;-) ), but that's not maintained via copyright law (in fact the meatball specifically is public domain!); but there's a specific *law* that says you can't do that without permission from NASA.
The thing is, all the material we've added to the wikipedia essentially has pre-existing permission that it can bear the meatball when it was originally published by NASA. But the deletionist morons seem to be just deleting everything willy-nilly.
Can't fight fair use guys though.
The deletionists certainly seem to be 8-(
Peter