F.B.I., Challenging Use of Seal, Gets Back a Primer on the Law
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
«In your letter, you assert that an image of an FBI seal included in a Wikipedia article is “problematic” because “it facilitates both deliberate and unwitting violations” of 18 U.S.C. 701. I hope you will agree that the adjective “problematic,” even if it were truly applicable here, is not semantically identical to “unlawful.”»
Exactly. Just because the FBI doesn't like it doesn't make it illegal.
A typical letter from a lawyer will mix in numerous requests (which have no legal basis and are merely things which would be nice for the client) amongst legitimate legal complaints. It is not any lawyer's job (except one you have hired) to precisely define which behaviors of yours they think violate the law. Thus, lawyers use the law as a lever to facilitate much greater benefit to their clients (to the detriment of whomever their client has targetted). This is a major factor why lawyers get paid so much.
http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/arkell.htm
(and I say this, as a trainee lawyer)
• The FBI needs to unambiguously identify itself to citizens.
• It will do this by having a special image that only it is allowed to possess, to be shown to said citizens.
• Citizens will recognize this as the "image that can only be possessed by the FBI" and authenticate the bearer as FBI.
• Citizens may not possess or view any version of said image sufficiently detailed to be identified as the actual image.
And how exactly am I supposed to memorize this image so that I may rapidly authenticate the bearer against all possible simulations if I can't see it?
The $100 bill image on Wikipedia is 659px X 289px and is marked "specimen." The FBI logo is 2000x2000
Resolution isn't much of an issue either. Absent watermarks, there are lots of nice upsampling algorithms.
As for the Treasury having a problem with it, if you make your file/printed copy one-sided and either <.75x or >1.5x in scale (and delete the files you used to create it when done), they don't care.
There's no need for that. The fact that it's illegal for anyone but the FBI to use it as an identifier is the authentication. You need not look too closely at the image. :/
Edit: I assume from the downvotes that there are people who actually believe this is a good idea. Could someone who believes that please defend the idea so we can have a discussion about it? :)
I was being sarcastic, and didn't realize I hadn't indicated it well enough until your comment. Thanks for pointing it out; I'll try to be more explicit in the future. :)
But would it be so awful for Wikimedia not to post a 2000px X 2000px high quality rendering of the FBI seal?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/US-...
There are limits to free speech -- no yelling fire in a crowded theater and all that. I am just asking, is a huge, beautiful rendering really necessary and responsible? Maybe if the FBI had asked that question instead of threatening they would have gotten a different answer.
I'm rooting for the underdog (especially when it's a public service like Wikipedia vs the big bad US Government agency), but he's asking for Wikipedia's criteria for selecting the image size for display.
Apparently there are valid reasons, which the FBI will not like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_picture_crit...
"(...) of sufficiently high resolution to allow quality print reproduction. Still images should be a minimum of 1000 pixels in width or height; larger sizes are generally preferred. The size of animated images is judged less strictly, though larger is still preferred."
N.B.: I did not downvote.
and 500px http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/US-...
Still, it's one of the criteria for uploading images that Wikipedia uses (if it ever decided to feature the seal, it would use this criterion for doing so).
Edit: mattlanger here ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1571316 ) has a counterpoint for what I posted
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Logos
Relevant sections
"Logos uploaded to Wikipedia must be low resolution and no larger than necessary."
and
"U.S. law prohibits the reproduction of designated logos of U.S. government agencies without permission. Use restrictions of such logos must be followed and permission obtained before use, if required. However, this does not affect the copyright status, because as works of the federal government, they are automatically in the public domain. These should be tagged with {{insignia}}."
I certainly wouldn't be fooled if I saw someone showing off Wikipedia's rendition of the badge.
It's good enough to explain the article, but in terms of creating fakes? It sucks.
Considering how impressively thorough their policies and guidelines are the FBI's action comes as something of a surprise.