[Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] contents under education/information licenses

Tue Nov 21 18:45:23 UTC 2006

Stan Shebs a écrit :
> One thing I wonder - if US govt images are PD, then theoretically they 
> could be misused for advertising or political purposes; but does that 
> actually happen now? Are we talking about neo-Nazis using the "big blue 
> marble" Apollo photos in their propaganda, or what?

No. Where did you fish this neo-Nazi idea? Reality is far more prosaic.

We're talking of Mr Jean Dupont, member of Parliament from a pro-Europe 
party, waging a reelection campaign on a theme of "with Europe, we go 
beyond" using photos of ESA rockets, and ESA getting an angry complaint 
from Dupont's euroskeptic opponent and his party.
(Apparently, this has happened, and of course they were at least able to 
say that this happened in violation of their policies. It would be more 
difficult for them to deal with people acting within their policies.)

Similarly, if a supermarket chain uses photographs of a spacecraft, be 
sure that there will be complaints that the agency favors such or such 
company.

The big problem is that, as things are now, if A uses photos from B in 
an advertisement, it is generally interpreted as B endorsing A.

(Again, I think that in the US, law outside of copyright law prohibits 
using certain government symbols from being used in advertisements. As 
far as I understand, it is illegal, for instance, to take a photo of an 
astronaut with a NASA logo and stick it in an advertisement.)