<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "> On Mar 25, 2009, at 2:18 AM, <a href="mailto:clipart-request@lists.freedesktop.org">clipart-request@lists.freedesktop.org</a> wrote: From: chovynz <<a href="mailto:chovynz@gmail.com">chovynz@gmail.com</a>> <blockquote type="cite">I can't comment on Obama as I dont know US Govt rules on PD and presidential </blockquote><blockquote type="cite">figures. </blockquote> First, people's own images are not copyright issue ,but privacy issue. Public figures do not have the same rights and thus images of them are generally protected <blockquote type="cite"> </blockquote><blockquote type="cite"> </blockquote><blockquote type="cite">I'm not an expert on copyright, and I am not a lawyer, however I did study </blockquote><blockquote type="cite">copyright in University on my Advanced Diploma in Design and Multimedia. </blockquote><blockquote type="cite">About the other Darth Vader pictures, after reading Lucasfilms copyright </blockquote><blockquote type="cite">statement I can tell you that unless they got permission to use him, then </blockquote><blockquote type="cite">they probably are breaking copyright......I feel that maybe some of my comments are or might be taken the wrong way, </blockquote><blockquote type="cite">so I'll clarify that now. What I'm doing is being a "devil's advocate." I'm </blockquote><blockquote type="cite">being hard-nosed about it because, especially in America, I've seen people </blockquote><blockquote type="cite">get sued over the stupidest little thing. </blockquote> I have never heard of a case of someone being sued straight out and I work in a field that blatantly steals images and logos for their own purposes ( action sports like surf and skate). The standard procedure is to send a cease and desist letter requesting the immediate removal of an image. Even the most rabid copyright protectors like Disney do this. Nicu's image is a Nicu drawing inspired by the Star Wars world. No one would confuse it with the actual Lucasfilm art. BTW, we have actual Lucas film images here in the library - those images were specifically placed in the PD in the USA as drawings for Star Wars patented toys. All images used to support a patent claim in the US must be placed in the PD. That brings me to the point about "especially in America" and US Govt rules. In the US ANYTHING produced by the government that isn't a security issue is the property of the citizens of the US and is thus placed in the public domain. So many of the images here were produced with our tax dollars and we Americans can use them as we want. This is very different from countries like Australia where the govt. specifically retains copyright on all of its work. John Olsen <div apple-content-edited="true"> <div> </div> </div> </body></html>