[WikiEN-l] Seals and Commons

Wed Sep 14 14:27:43 UTC 2005

On 9/14/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

That restriction is *not* a copyright restriction.  The logo is
clearly in the public domain under the federal work doctrine.  The
rules in question are closer to trademark restrictions than copyright
restrictions; their main purpose is to prohibit fraudulent
representation, and as such are direct restrictions on speech.  The
main targets of these laws are (a) people who try to forge credentials
to appear to be CIA agents (or whatever) and (b) people who send out
phony solicitations using such logos to give their solicitations added
weight.  Since the laws in question are direct speech restrictions,
their enforcement is narrowly drawn; they cannot be enforced in
borderline situations without running smack dab into a First Amendment
challenge.  You most certainly can use the CIA logo in an article
ABOUT the CIA in a commercial context, as long as you don't imply that
the CIA has endorsed the contents of the article.

I don't think that the mere storage of the logo in a repository
"implies endorsement" and so I don't see it as making the logo unfree
for the purposes of the Commons.  However, editors in the United
States need to exercise care in the use of this logo (as well as all
other protected logos, including not only those of many federal
agencies, but also most military insignia and the logos of the USOC,
IOC, Red Cross/Red Crescent, and IIRC the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts)
to avoid federal criminal liability for unauthorized use.  Most states
have similar laws relating to the use of their various state logos and
insignia.

Kelly