Gregory Maxwell wrote:
However, Raul recently uploaded http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Morissette_-_Ironic.ogg
I brought this issue up to him, and his reply was that yes, it looks somewhat fishy but the boilerplate copyright waver on a government website should be sufficient.
It seems strange to me that the discussion has gone on so long without someone quoting the relevant law. 17 USC S105 says:
"Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise."
It's not sufficient for material to be on a .gov website, I thought our policy pages had always made that clear.
-- Tim Starling