[I'll not Cc: you Aurelian, as I assume you'll get this from the BTS anyway. Others: If you stop Cc:'ing the bug, you'll probably need to Cc: the maintainer.] On Tue, 11 Jan 2005, Aurelien Jarno wrote: > I recently package and uploaded openclipart [1], an open clipart > library. The package has just been accepted by the ftpmasters and is > now in Debian. > > I just received a bug report (#289764) from William Ballard about > problematic copyrighted pictures, that looks like similar to some > well known company products. First and foremost, there's a serious conflation of copyrights and trademarks here. Almost none of these images appear to actually be affected by whomever William claims to own the copyright, unless they are actually derivative works of something that is copyrighted.[1] However, it's quite possible that they are representations of trademarks, and as such protected wherever such a company has trademarks. [I don't deign to know who actually controlls these trademarks, or even if they are really trademarked.] Yet, even if that's the case, I don't see that there's a point to removing these works until we get cease and desist letters from the people who own the trademark. If that happens, the maintainer(s) of this package will have to act quickly to remove the works in question, even if they are in stable... but I'll be really surprised if they ever actually care. Just for the record, I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. Don Armstrong 1: I think the phone image is about the closest one to being a derivative work of a copyrighted work... but if I'll believe it if the artist says that it just drawn based on an idea of what a cell phone looks like. -- Three little words. (In decending order of importance.) I love you -- hugh macleod http://www.gapingvoid.com/graphics/batch35.php http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
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