[WikiEN-l] Seals and Commons

Wed Sep 14 13:58:51 UTC 2005

Fastfission wrote:
> 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.
> 
> 

So they will SUE US IN A COURT OF LAW IN TRENTON, NEW JERSEY? :)

It's only illegal to use their image if you impersonate them. The
copyright of the image itself is that the image is in the public domain.
Effectively, it's a Trademark (albeit one without copyright), the
misrepresentation of which may render one liable to prosecution.

And if they want to stop us, fsck them. We'll move the media servers to
Paris or Amsterdam, on wheels if needs be.

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