[cc-community] US Federal sites claiming copyright restrictions
Rich Vázquez
rich.vazquez at gmail.com
Mon Feb 11 18:19:32 EST 2008
I believe the TVA statements protects the public from publishing or acting
under the guise of TVA.
Some government agencies produce web sites with works created by others,
especially images. Rights to photographs, etc. might be donated or
purchased from individuals or non-profits which retain rights to the works.
--
--
Rich Vázquez
On Feb 11, 2008 5:14 PM, Chris Watkins <chriswaterguy at appropedia.org> wrote:
> Can anyone lend some insight or legal perspectives into sites such as the
> following two, which claim copyright even though they're US federal sites -
> an agency in one case, a federally owned corporation in the other.
>
> The EPA.gov site, which is federal and should be public domain (assuming
> it's the work of federal employee), states that "Commercial use of the
> documents available from this server may be protected under the U.S. and
> Foreign Copyright Laws". This is worded very vaguely, but I assume the only
> way it could make sense is if a third party held the copyright - in which
> case the permission to distribute or copy doesn't make sense. The full
> statement is:
>
> "Information presented on this WWW site is considered public information
> and may be distributed or copied. The U.S. Government retains a
> nonexclusive, royalty-free license to publish or reproduce these documents,
> or allow others to do so, for U.S. Government purposes. These documents
> may be freely distributed and used for non-commercial, scientific and
> educational purposes. Commercial use of the documents available from this
> server may be protected under the U.S. and Foreign Copyright Laws.
> Individual documents on this server may have different copyright conditions,
> and that will be noted in those documents."
>
> (This is for a regional sub-website of the EPA, as I could find no
> statement for the site as a whole. But I think the same principle applies.)
>
> Another confusing site is tva.gov - although TVA is a federally owned
> corporation, the notice at http://www.tva.gov/disclaim.htm states: 'All
> trademarks, logos, service marks, and copyrighted material contained on this
> Web site ("marks") are the property of TVA'. (A bit unclear - they don't
> specify what material actually is copyright, and no copyright notices were
> found, in a brief browse. )
>
> Both TVA and EPA have content we'd love to use on Appropedia (about
> sustainability and renewable energy) but obviously we can't do so if there's
> any uncertainty about whether it's public domain.
>
> Chris
>
> --
> Chris Watkins (a.k.a. Chriswaterguy)
>
> Founding admin at Appropedia.org, the wiki of:
> - International development
> - Anti-poverty strategies
> - Sustainability
> - Appropriate technology
> - Collaboration for practical solutions
>
> Founding director, Appropedia Foundation, 501(c)(3)
>
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>
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