Some government employee made the “new logo” in the 90s for NCSA software (the Common Gateway Interface), and government work is public domain.
Just more evidence that big brother shall releaseth thee work and soul /s
I found the whole copyright thing at Wikipedia for this image pretty funny.
Even the simplest research shows that NCSA is a state-funded agency (through the University of Illinois system), not federal. If that image is in the public domain, it’s not for the reason Wikipedia lists.
It operates as part of the U of I system and receives most funding from the National Science Foundation, a federal agency.
It did get a lot of funding from the NSF in the early days, but the federal government didn’t start pushing for public access to research done through grants and contracts until 2013. Before then it was only work done by federal agencies that was non copyrighted.
The National Science Foundation also didn’t start funding Mosaic until 1994, which was after CGI had been released.
NCSA gets a lot of its funding from the private sector with partner programs, the University of Illinois, and the State of Illinois as well.
You don’t have to release something to have it be public domain. The NCSA is a state-federal partnership, to which the law about government non-copyright applies.
I’m not sure where you’re getting your information.
I work there, have worked there for nearly three decades, and I can tell you that it’s not the case.
(Also, it’s just NCSA for trademark reasons, without ‘the’ in front)
Is the government able to commit copywriter infringement? With this logic, I could take a picture of Mario with a bowtie drawn on his chest and upload it to the Library of Congress website, thus making my image public domain.
Actually I Think that would be trademark infringement. Why is copywright law so confusing.
ackhyually the rainbow isn’t a gradient and the cone of light is too bright so its totally different dude
Actually the rainbow means gay and gay is bad. I heard from fox news.
it’s a vector recreation of this low-quality gif, which you can’t really tell whether it was a gradient or not. but the colors are indeed kinda different and more accurate to an actual rainbow lol
It’s a prism. You can’t copyright just drawing a prism. (You could probably trademark it, but a trademark would only apply in a particular context.)
Yes you can. Though as other people pointed out the rainbow is different, so it might not be the same thing.
What do you mean you can’t copyright a drawing of a prism? Every drawing you make is automatically copyrighted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_States#Works_subject_to_copyright_law
I think you’re confused. Just because it is similar does not mean it is the same. This is not the album with the letters on top. They look different.
I’m saying that while any specific drawing of a prism is protected by copyright, the general concept isn’t. Drawing a prism, even one that looks almost identical to the one on the album cover, is not restricted. (I’m not sure we actually disagree.)
Yeah, OP just said some weird stuff.
That reasoning would apply to tons of other logos too. Like “you cannot copyright a drawn apple with a piece bitten off”.
you cannot copyright a drawn apple with a piece bitten off
That’s correct, you can not do such. Apple does not litigate its logo with copyright but in trademark disputes. Prepear and Georette are examples of this.
You too can create a logo of an apple with a piece bitten off. It’s up to a court to decide if it’s coming too close to the Apple trademark, most people want to just avoid that and settle amicably, but if you’ve got to the pocket change to fight it in court, you can argue that your bitten off apple isn’t a trademark infringement.
If you find a company that isn’t keen to defend their logo, you can totally get away with it. Apple is on the other end of the spectrum of being someone who will protect their trademarks to the bitter end. Jack Daniels and Disney are two more examples of companies that will legally punch a five dollar start up into a bloody mass over trademarks.
