[Advocacy Advisors] Unclear usage restrictions on US Government works

Tue Sep 24 20:50:42 UTC 2013

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 at 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-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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-- 
Mathias Schindler
Projektmanager
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
web: http://www.wikimedia.de
mail: mathias.schindler at wikimedia.de

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