Talk:Wikilegal/Copyright Status Of Images Hosted On US Government Websites

Other US governments

Does each state, county, city, etc. Have its own laws on works by its employees? This has come up in commons about the mug shot of a suspect taken by the county sherriff's dept. Is there an easy way to find these laws in the state/county/city websites?--Canoe1967 (talk) 23:37, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Whether copyright protection extends to the works of state employees does depend on the laws of the particular state, and those particular laws might also determine the copyright status of lower level governments. Unfortunately, public online access to state laws is not always amazingly user friendly. The Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School has a page compiling all of the online legal databases for the 50 states, which at least simplifies the first step.

Even if state law does give copyright to works of state governments, a particular state or local agency might freely license their own work. An agency might put this information on their website, and you can always call and ask them. Pholm (WMF) (talk) 23:55, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

For the answer, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_work_by_U.S._subnational_governments!--Elvey (talk) 17:14, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Discussion page from NASA Images Wikilegal Post

These comments were posted on the former NASA Images post, which has been merged with this post, as the analysis of the copyright status of images published by NASA is useful for assessing the copyright protection of images published by organs of the federal United States Government generally. DRenaud (WMF) (talk) 00:18, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Oversimplification

Things are a bit more complicated than this page currently sets out, I'm afraid, when it comes to images that NASA is jointly releasing with other organisations or individuals. E.g. ESA/Hubble images are CC-BY according to [1] and others may be fully copyrighted depending on the partners organisations or individuals. It's not just international partnerships - the JPL image policy at [2] also has a note about images that are displayed on the JPL websites but whose copyright is owned by others are restricted to non-commercial use only. Mike Peel (talk) 23:41, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Michael. I put your text in the note itself. Feel free to edit as you see fit. Geoffbrigham (talk) 04:32, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

You should take into account this discussion—that a credit line on a NASA image is usually just a credit, not a copyright statement. Ruslik (talk) 07:38, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Ruslik0, many thanks. Please feel free to update the text of the note itself as you see appropriate (probably in the community comments section). Cheers. Geoffbrigham (talk) 13:37, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Concern

Lately NASA has been working with universities and companies. This creates an interesting situation where these sources have rather restrictive copyright notice. For instance both New Horizons and Curiosity probes have this problem. -- とある白い猫 ^chi? 01:14, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Have you read this page? Ruslik (talk) 04:06, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes. I was the person making the initial inquiry. The post does not cover situations such as http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/ aka w:New Horizons which is a NASA mission but has contractors w:Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and w:Southwest Research Institute (SwRI). How does this influence copyright if at all is a question we need to resolve. jhuapl.edu is "The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory" which restricts usage. -- とある白い猫 ^chi? 15:14, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

You linked to a wrong image use policy. Ruslik (talk) 19:41, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Which one is the correct one then? -- とある白い猫 ^chi? 15:18, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

See ref 2 on this page. Ruslik (talk) 17:58, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

The webpage at [3]? That page states "generally available for non-commercial educational and public information purposes" - That's essentially a -NC license, which is a restrictive copyright notice... Mike Peel (talk) 18:30, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Which also is quite non-descriptive and also quite bogus. Vast majority of their photos are created in deep space. What is the copyright of a file created by a robot outside of any countries national borders (or the planet)? Owner of the hardware? If so does the contractor or NASA hold the copyright?

Then there are material (like trajectories) contractors generated using NASA tools. It would be PD work if a NASA employer had screen captured the same software. I do not believe such images hold intellectual property to be honest.

While the legal considerations appears straight out of a sci-fi episode of Star Trek, I just don't want to spend time uploading files only to get them deleted over the linked page.

-- とある白い猫 ^chi? 07:39, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

I must repeat my question. Have you read this page? Ruslik (talk) 08:48, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Yup. It doesn't answer my concerns about contractors at all. -- とある白い猫 ^chi? 00:24, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

In this case I advise you to read it again. Ruslik (talk) 06:37, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

"Contractors" aren't mentioned once. My concerns aren't answered. Pointless advice is pointless. -- とある白い猫 ^chi? 14:14, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Note from Geoff

Since this is intended as a normal wiki, people should feel free to edit, update, and correct the note. That said, if people find it useful, I can ask a summer intern to dive deeper on the joint release issue. Our summer interns are coming at the end of May, so a more detailed note will not be available until June, but, as I understand, we have no deadlines on this. If that doesn't make sense, feel free to let me know. These notes are a bit of an experiment, and, from the feedback that I have heard from the community, we should strive to get them out more quickly and address the issues more directly. I hope to make this a priority, though, as most of you know, our resources are limited and these notes require quite a bit of time to draft and review. Geoffbrigham (talk) 21:54, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps a good approach would be (for a summer intern) to call someone at NASA and discuss the questions that arise around the copyright status of their images? It would be good to find out if they are happy that commons:Template:PD-USGov-NASA is accurate, and to figure out the issues with contractors/universities potentially jointly owning copyright with them - I'm not sure those can be done solely on-wiki and in the absence of their input... Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 15:19, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

At Geoff's direction, I've updated the page to try to clarify some of the additional questions and concerns that were raised. Pholm (WMF) (talk) 20:58, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Credit lines

FYI, there is a certain pattern to most of the credit lines that NASA uses. The following explains the pattern used by the Chandra telescope team, but it is often similar with other NASA image sources

The key to the Chandra credits is:

Organization funding or owning the telescope/PI's institution/PI's name.

So NASA/CXC/UC Berkeley/N. Smith et al. indicates NASA ownership of the telescope, we add CXC to indicate Chandra, then the PI's institution and the PI and/team for intellectual credit. If there is only one iteration of these three categories, and NASA is the name indicating ownership of the telescope, then the image or material is public domain. The other places simply give credit for the science discovery. If the first set of three is followed by a comma, and another credit in which the owner of the telescope is not named as NASA, then you have to get permission from the other organization to use that other layer or layers of the image.

I have not been able to verify to what degree all the teams adhere to this policy, but it is an interesting piece of information. TheDJ (talk) 14:41, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

This is how I've always interpreted NASA credit lines, and so far it seems to have held quite well across the agency in the past years. For a work from a joint ESA/NASA project, if the work has a NASA lead (say, from a NASA instrument or the research project is from a NASA contract), the credit will be "NASA/ESA/whatever"; if the work is from an ESA instrument, etc, NASA (and ESA, to a lesser extent) has been quite good in recent years in showing the credit as "ESA/NASA/whatever". You may see "JAXA/NASA" or any other entity, even including universities or private companies (such as the occasional "Malin Space Science Systems" credit for Curiosity Rover camera related images). While not a be-all end-all copyright answer, it is a great way to very quickly weed out images that are surely not copyright free. — Huntster (t • @ • c) 07:27, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Redacted Portion

A portion of the NASA Images page that was not carried over to the new United States Government Works Wikilegal post is included below. This text was excised for the reason that this post is meant to address works created by or published by the federal government specifically, whereas the case discussed concerns a question of state law. DRenaud (WMF) (talk) 00:25, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

"As evidence that no policy statement can override the law that places virtually all works of the federal government in the public domain, one can look to decisions of the courts. The Supreme Court of the United States has considered the issue, as did the Florida Supreme Court, in considering appeals of the Microdecisions, Inc. v. Skinner case. It was a case where the courts determined that the State of Florida cannot simply grant itself a copyright in its own works, because its constitution does not allow it. Even where the state (that is, the executive branch of government, such as a state agency) asserted copyright claims over its work, the courts ruling that the state's work is not subject to copyright, and that such claims are invalid, withstood all appeals. If the State of Florida cannot simply grant itself a copyright in its own works, because its constitution does not allow it, it stands to reason that the United States cannot simply grant itself a copyright in its own works, if its constitution does not allow it. The Copyright Clause does not appear to allow it." Contributed by Elvey on December 15, 2012.

Thanks for the ping. Let me explain why I added it. With some regularity, the federal government is found to be claiming copyright on particular works when it has no right to make such claims. Just as states are found to be doing. Since the mess is similar, it's relevant that there's case law in states where the right of the government to make such claims faces similar restrictions. So I'd like to see it put back.--Elvey (talk) 06:42, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

However, given https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Copyright_Status_Of_Images_Hosted_On_US_Government_Websites#Agency_Policy_Statements_and_Conflict_With_Federal_Law, I'm less concerned, as that section already provides pretty good coverage of the issue of overreaching claims. :-) --Elvey (talk) 06:45, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Good Morning, Elvey! Thanks for staying engaged. We greatly appreciate your involvement and input! I think you're right that a page specifically addressing the copyright status of State Works is warranted, and the Microdecisions case would be critical to that discussion. DRenaud (WMF) (talk) 18:28, 6 January 2014 (UTC)