[WikiEN-l] Seals and Commons

Wed Sep 14 18:51:42 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.
>
>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.
>  
>
I generally concur that their prohibition in more in the nature of a 
trademark restriction than a copyright restriction.  It all depends on 
how you interpret the word "use"

We may very well be more centrally intelligent, but it could be a 
problem if we started calling ourselves the Centrally Intelligent 
Association.

Ec