[WikiEN-l] Seals and Commons

Wed Sep 14 13:46:50 UTC 2005

Arf arf! No, no that kind of seal... 

There are a number of U.S. federal agencies which have seals the
usages of which are restricted by federal law. For example, about the
seal of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA):

Use of the Central Intelligence Agency Seal
Federal law prohibits use of the words Central Intelligence Agency,
the initials CIA, the seal of the Central Intelligence Agency, or any
colorable imitation of such words, initials, or seal in connection
with any merchandise, impersonation, solicitation, or commercial
activity in a manner reasonably calculated to convey the impression
that such use is approved, endorsed, or authorized by the Central
Intelligence Agency.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/notices.html#seal

Now I don't know what it's *copyright* status is -- is it a work of
the federal government and thus in the public domain, or is it
considered an exception? -- but it seems clear to me, anyway, that it
is not "free" in the sense required to be listed on Wikipedia Commons.
In the United States its usage is restricted fairly heavily, including
the "non-commercial" bugaboo. It looks to me like, in effect, this
would be a "copyrighted with permission but no commercial use" tag.
Which, as I understand it, is verboten.

Of course, when I raise things like this on Commons, I seem to incite
a lot of ire from people who want to pick nits about whether or not
its usage is limited because of its *copyright* or because of federal
laws. I have to admit, for a place which is supposed to care so much
about whether or not things are actually free, people seem to think
deleting images is the worst thing in the world, even if there is
little compelling reason to think they are truly in the public domain.
Personally, I'd shoot at first suspicion that something was not really
in the public domain -- there would be nothing worse for Commons than
to be in continual doubt whether or not its licensing information was
correct, it would defeat the entire point -- but that's just me.

Any ideas? I tend to think that any image with this sort of legal
restriction does NOT qualify as "free" in the sense required by
Commons and is antithetical to its purpose -- to provide a repository
of "free" images.

FF