[WikiEN-l] Possible legal violation in the use of a government seal?

[Daniel R. Tobias]

On 21 Aug 2007 at 16:58:41 +0000 (UTC), Benjamin Esham 
<bdesham at gmail.com> wrote:

> I recently sent an e-mail to the Livingston County (New York) government,
> inquiring about the possible misuse of one of my Commons images, a picture
> of the Livingston County seal [1].  They use a very similar image on their
> website, but it was scaled down too small for me to tell whether or not it
> was my image.  If it was my image they were using, then they would be in
> violation of the cc-by-sa license on the image.

It seems a bit of a WP:DICKish move on your part to try to enforce 
whatever copyright you might have to a picture of a seal against the 
actual owners of the seal itself, and that seems to have prompted 
them to retaliate by being dickish right back to you.

> | Your email to Livingston County has been referred to me for response.  I
> | would refer you to section 30-e of the Judiciary Law of the State of New
> | York.  The use of Livingston County's seal or any replica or simulation
> | thereof, in form or substance, by any unauthorized person, is prohibited.
> | A violation of this prohibition constitutes a misdemeanor and is
> | punishable as such.  Since you are not authorized to use our seal, I would
> | suggest you remove it at once. 

I'm not a lawyer, but from what I know, it's highly questionable 
under U.S. precedent that you have any protectible rights to your 
image that merely reproduces an existing work.  Whether the county or 
anybody else has protectible rights, copyright-wise, to this seal 
depends on a lot of things such as how old it is and who created it.  
However, the rights they're asserting are based on a separate, non-
copyright law.

If it were to go to court, it's quite possible a court would carve 
out a fair-use exception for reproduction of the seal for the purpose 
of commentary when it's clear that you're not using it to represent 
yourself or your works as being official county documents, based on 
the constitutional principle that free press may only be limited for 
sharply delineated compelling interests of the government.  However, 
it could take many levels of appellate courts to reach this point, 
which would be pretty expensive.  However, an out-of-state entity 
such as the Wikimedia Foundation might prove to be harder for the 
state to reach to enforce their laws, though people have sometimes 
been successfully dragged long distances into court over things 
posted to the Internet.


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