Wiki crew launch attack on FBI official seal bluster

A silly row between US feds and Wikimedia has kicked off over the fiddlers' use of the Feds' official seal. The New York Times reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation penned a letter to the Wikimedia Foundation in July demanding that it remove an image of the FBI seal from a Wikipedia "article" about the feds. “ …

[Mark McNeill]

Nice bit of law from Mike Godwin

Nothing about Nazis in there though.

Mine's the one with the copy of "Downfall" in the pocket.

[Disco-Legend-Zeke]

What About The Seal...

...appearing at the start of my favorite Pr0n?

[Anonymous Coward]

oh no!

It's going viral!

http://www.darknerd.co.uk/just-a-nice-picture/

in it for the lulz

[JaitcH]

Wikileaks concerned? I don't think so ...

This shows just how warped the FBI thought process is.

Notwithstanding that Wikileaks has just set s record for unlawfully releasing more U.S. government 'secrets' in it's 200+ year history, some intelligence-challenged Special Agent expects them to give a hoot about copyright?

Little wonder they missed the Russian sleepers for so long!

[lglethal]

Wrong...

We're talking about Wikipedia and Wikimedia here... They are absolutely nothing to do with Wikileaks...

Do try and read the article next time...

[PDC]

You missed the OP's point

I think you somewhat missed the OP's point. They didn't confuse Wikimedia with Wikileaks. They were saying that the FBI should have more to worry about than the infringement of copyright.

[Anonymous Coward]

@PDC

I think you're missing something too

"Wikileaks has just set s record for unlawfully releasing ... Special Agent expects them to give a hoot about copyright?"

His wording suggests that he is indeed getting Wikipedia confused with Wikileaks.

[Angus 2]

umm

presuming you aren't joking, this piece was not about Wikileaks but Wikipedia.

[Anonymous Coward]

TV Shows & Movies

I'm sure a lot of documentaries will get permission to use the logo but I believe most TV shows & films use a similar but altered logo.

[Craig Poxon 1]

It's been scribbled out now

On the wiki page.

That is all

[JMB]

Feds

I thought that anything "published" by a US Federal agency was public domain.

[Anonymous Coward]

There really is nothing in the world so dull

that Wikipedia can't wring some drama from it

[Charles 9]

So the argument is probably this.

Wikimedia is probably stating that, as the FBI is an agency of the US government, it and all things coming from it are in the public domain.

On the other hand, significant identifying marks of the US government, such as official department seals (the FBI is part of the Department of Justice), are subject to use restrictions that are not related to copyright (http://www.justice.gov/legalpolicies.htm#seals).

[K. Adams]

Representation

Since a Federal seal is a work of the United States government, it is not protected by Copyright, and therefore exists in the realm of Public Domain.

That being said, there *are* are regulations forbidding any person/organisation from establishing itself as a branch, employee, or representative of a Federal agency/bureau/department/government corporation when they do not have formal permission to do so. As indicated in the NYT article, the FBI is undoubtedly using a "prohibition of unlawful representation" ordinance to lean on Wikipedia.

This can be a tricky issue:

Wikipedia is using the seal as an element of fact in an (ostensibly) encyclopedic article ("This is the FBI's logo."), which means that it should be protected (at minimum) through Fair Use. On the other hand, the FBI could argue that since the seal is not eligible for Copyright protection in the first place, the Fair Use doctrine does not apply (i.e., their argument would be that Fair Use can only be applied against works that are Copyright-eligible).

Big Brother, for obvious reasons.

[Whitter]

Seriously?

FBI officer wants into your house and shows you his badge.

But what does a real one look like?

Who knows: you aren't allowed to disseminate that information...

[Marcus Aurelius]

US Government

by law, everything the US Government produces which is not Sooper Sekret is public domain, and therefore so are all badges and logos .

[Ben Jury]

Apt picutre.

Anyone else find the picture quite apt for an image on the modern day USA?

Badge. Gun. Flag.

[Aremmes]

Re: Apt picture

It's still missing a few things: a bald eagle (red, white, and blue, of course), WTC towers, an F-14/F-15 dropping smart bombs, a NASCAR race car burning its tires, and Jesus on the cross. Maybe a Hummer or two for good measure. That would totally send the right message about the current state of affairs here.

[Jeremy 2]

If you *actually* read the Fed's complaint...

....you'll notice it's not the small, low-res PNG image they've got on the FBI article that the Feds are moaning about, it's the high-resolution, infinitely up-scalable, lossless SVG version that they don't like. The specific page referenced in the letter linked is not the FBI Wiki page, it's:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US-FBI-ShadedSeal.svg

Wikimedia have a point that the law doesn't seem to stop them publishing it but so do the Feds - you can kinda see why they aren't too chuffed that a high-res render of their seal is available on Wikipedia...

[Jerome 0]

Google

"A quick search through Google images with the “labelled for re-use” licence option switched on returns zero results of the FBI seal."

Though if you search for "FBI logo" instead, there's an image of the seal on Flickr marked as cleared for re-use (albeit nowhere near as high res as the Wiki version).

[Doshu]

Hey, what about...

... all those t-shirts you can purchase with the actual FBI seal on them?

No, not the Female Body Inspector ones.

Do all those stores have rights to use it?

[PT]

You didn't quote the best bit

"While we appreciate your desire to revise the statute to reflect your expansive vision of it, the fact is that we must work with the actual language of the statute, not the aspirational version".

A response worthy of Private Eye at its best.

[Mike Hanna]

Perhaps they only just found out...

...that they weren't allowed to use the image on EB. Cos it's been removed by their Corrections Manager!

[arwel]

Not on Britannica any more

I notice the seal's been removed from the Encyclopaedia Britannica's article today...

[Jeremy 2]

Yes it is...

It's not in the article text (was it earlier? I didn't look...) but it's still showing (including a fairly high-res version) in the 'Media' tab that opens from the sidebar on the left of the page.

http://i33.tinypic.com/2d2gc52.jpg

[fred_be9300]

EB removed the FBI seal from their page

I was curious... had a look at EB and noticed they already removed the FBI seal from their article about FBI. The website has a helpful "article history" feature that shows the change was made today

[James Woods]

nothing better to do with our tax dollars?

So the FBI has nothing better to do with our tax money then to go after Wikipedia for a logo?

Should I go down the list of terror attacks and attempted terror attacks on our country in the last 12 months alone or am I being silly; a logo on a website is more important.

If I said it once this year i'll say it again. What would happen if this was going on under GW Bush. The left would be going crazy since the left largely controls wikipedia.

Who wins when the left fights the left.

Just wait till the govt runs your healthcare suckers.

[Anonymous Coward]

@ arwel

It's in the media section of the entry ...

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/203351/Federal-Bureau-of-Investigation

[Anonymous Coward]

I was just wondering...

Did you at least ask the FBI if you could use thier pretty logo in this story, the one we yankee taxpayers bought for them?

What about getting special permission just to say thier name? ( I hope you didn't forget! )