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Comment by genwin | Hacker News Reader

On #1, see Wikipedia: A work of the United States government, as defined by United States copyright law, is "a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. federal government as part of that person's official duties."[1] In general, under section 105 of the Copyright Act,[2] such works are not entitled to domestic copyright protection under U.S. law.

It seems the PRISM logo isn't copyrighted unless the US gov't pirated it.

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How do you know the logo was prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. federal government? They could’ve hired a design company to make it (albeit not a very good one, by the looks of it).

Anyways, it seems like the NSA feel it is copyrighted: http://gawker.com/the-nsa-sent-a-takedown-notice-over-my-cus...

> How do you know the logo was prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. federal government? They could’ve hired a design company to make it (albeit not a very good one, by the looks of it).

Had they done so, it'd presumably be a work for hire and still not be copyrightable, since the government would own it.

That is false.

“Unlike works of the U.S. Government, works produced by contractors under government contracts (or submitted in anticipation of such contracts) are protected and restricted under U.S. copyright law.”

Also important: even if a federal employee made it, it may not be protected by copyright in the US but it can still be copyrighted in all other countries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_work_by_the...

Wonderful. So the US gov't can issue a take-down request for any of its works on the interwebs.

There is an alternate clause that can be placed in a FAR that when used may give copyright to the contractor.

Interesting. I suspect what really happened is that the Zazzle owners feared being put on the no-fly list, or worse.

The NSA stole the prism image for the logo from a professional photographer without permission. In theory, that photographer could have had the products pulled due to the photo copyright.

No, he couldn’t have, he offers the image for free: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5934943

Perhaps you can help me figure out this government copyright: http://www.reddit.com/r/COPYRIGHT/comments/1gsxxu/why_can_na...

Maybe that's for international protection as someone else reported in this thread. It seems that it's only in the US that NASA's works can't be copyrighted.

“Contract terms and conditions vary between agencies; contracts to NASA and the military may differ significantly from civilian agency contracts. Civilian agencies and NASA are guided by the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR).”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_work_by_the...

Which it very much did: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/12/nsa_logo_scandal/

From the author’s website: “FREE to download and use”. There was no pirating, let alone ‘very much’ of it. http://gallery.hd.org/_c/natural-science/prism-and-refractio...

Also, here’s the HN discussion about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5868220

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