What is Going on With Usage Restrictions on Media from Congress and the White House?

[Commentary] Believe it or not, copyright law actually has a specific section addressing the Federal Government’s ability to get a copyright. The section is pretty straightforward: the Federal Government does not get copyright on the works that it produces. “Copyright protection under this title [which pertains to copyright] is not available for any work of the United States Government.”

These works do not pass go nor do they collect $200 – they automatically enter the public domain the moment they are created, freely available for anyone to do whatever they want with them. And yet strangely there are parts of the US government that do not seem to understand that. United States Government Work "licenses" still appear on White House Flickr photos. With no underlying copyright to license, that license is meaningless – although it may stop someone who has not read section 105 from making use of video in the public domain. But the licenses are not alone. They are joined by a prominent alert: “The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.” The White House is not explicitly claiming copyright on these photos (the license makes that clear), but this type of scary quasi-legal language gets awful close to flirting with a bit of light copyfraud. All of them leave the public under the false impression that they need some sort of permission in order to make use of these videos.