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Not all DOE operating units have the same copyright policy; some claim no copyrights while others reserve the right to as part of their contracts with DOE. Please check the site and the unit before assuming PD-USGov.
Unless otherwise indicated, this information has been authored by an employee or employees of the Los Alamos National Security, LLC (LANS), operator of the Los Alamos National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC52-06NA25396 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The U.S. Government has rights to use, reproduce, and distribute this information. The public may copy and use this information without charge, provided that this Notice and any statement of authorship are reproduced on all copies. Neither the Government nor LANS makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any liability or responsibility for the use of this information.
Copyright status Documents provided from the web server were sponsored by the U.S. Government under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with UT-Battelle, LLC, which manages the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Accordingly, the U.S. Government retains a nonexclusive, royalty-free license to publish or reproduce these documents, or to allow others to do so, for U.S. Government purposes. Unless otherwise noted, they have been placed in the public domain, although we request the following credit line be used when documents or figures are used elsewhere: “Courtesy of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy.
For images which cannot use a PD tag or are otherwise questionable, consider whether or not they would fall under the " Wikipedia:Fair use" provision of U.S. copyright law.
On the whole issue of DOE sponsored labs who operate as contractors to the U.S. government, I refer you to the CENDI's copyright FAQ, section 4.0. Lupo 08:01, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for a full list of tags available. The following are applicable within the United States. The following copyright tags are among those applicable to photographs and graphic images originating from the United States of America and created by people other than the uploader. Please see the text of each tag for specific disclaimers.
In my opinion, we cannot assume public domain just on the grounds of a government contract. Therefore, with respect to works of those institutions which do not specify how their works can be used, I think it is better to be conservative about the terms under which we can use them. I have modified the notes above accordingly. However, IANAL, so I’d appreciate comments from those who know about this stuff. Alternatively, would somebody like to e-mail the institutions and ask? — xyzzy n 19:57, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
There is a lot of good material that is nominally PD-USGov but comes under the contractor or non-free (e.g., "for non-commerical" use) restrictions. So is there any way of getting use of this stuff? I looked for instances of PD-USGov-DOE licenses for PNNL or Oakridge stuff, but the few instances I found seemed quite doubtful. Is there any history here that might be relevant? J. Johnson ( talk) 23:54, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy publishes some material from NREL and says "Materials on the EERE Web site are in the public domain." For example, see the EERE renewable energy resource maps such as this solar energy map which says "NREL" on it. It seems that the EERE treats some NREL publications as if they are works of the US Federal Government. -- Teratornis ( talk) 21:46, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
A number of media files from US National laboratories are labeled as {{ PD-USGov-DOE}}, though they are not free media and would instead have under the criteria of WP:NON-FREE. To further complicate the situation, a number of images cite both the DOE and the laboratory as the source. The question remains as to how to deal with the thousand or so files which may be incorrectly labeled with {{ PD-USGov-DOE}}. Smallman12q ( talk) 23:30, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
A discussion has shown that Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory images aren't PD. There are roughly 90 images incorrectly licensed under {{ PD-USGov-DOE}} or similar licenses. In addition, other images from non-free labratories listed at Template_talk:PD-USGov-DOE also have quite a few images uploaded under the wrong license. Sandia for example has at least 100. There are about a dozen laboratories listed...their licensing would need to be checked. In all, there may more than a thousand images(though I haven't checked them all). These images should either be deleted, a large OTRS ticket file, the template modified, or quite a few non-free image use rationales created. Any thoughts as to how this should be handled? Smallman12q ( talk) 23:02, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
-I've left a note at
User talk:WMF Legal.
Smallman12q (
talk) 13:29, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
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The line 'IMAGES IN THE ABOVE CATEGORY CANNOT USE A PD TAG; THEY MUST BE JUSTIFIED AS "FAIR USE"' is not only overly bold-faced, but categorically overly bold. Specifically, the absolute "MUST BE..." is not true. In fact, permission can be obtained on a case-by-case basis, and I think this option should be pointed out. - J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 21:56, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
Reading over the preceding comments, I cannot help conclude this is a case of the blind leading the blind. I don't see any comments from anyone that might be expected to have authoritative knowledge of the topic, although there were attempts. But I do see a race to the bottom that assumes the worse case scenario that all of this should be assumed copyrighted.
Looking about it seems clear that any works completed by employees of the labs while under federal contract, even if those employees are part of a 3rd party organization, are and always have been PD-Gov.
Sure, LLNL has explicitly stated this on their site, but just because Argonne doesn't cannot possibly imply they aren't covered by the same laws. Pages like Sandia's, which clearly state the work is federal and covered by federal copyright and then immediately claim copyright just make me "laugh", the same sort of laugh I emit when I see the Imperial War Museum claiming copyright on images from WWI.
So I'm going to mark all such images PD-Gov unless someone comes up with caselaw.
Maury Markowitz ( talk) 13:53, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
Here's a list of updated notices:
LANL clearly states the public may use their works, and in fact states that's because its federal, stating that:
The U.S. Government has rights to use, reproduce, and distribute this information. The public may copy and use this information without charge, provided that this Notice and any statement of authorship are reproduced on all copies.
LLNL makes similar statements:
LLNL-authored documents including, but not limited to, articles, photographs, drawings, and other information subsisting in text, images, and/or other media, are sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. Accordingly, the U.S. government retains a nonexclusive, royalty-free license to publish or reproduce these documents, or allow others to do so, for U.S. government purposes. All documents available from this server may be protected under the U.S. and Foreign Copyright Laws. Permission to reproduce may be required.
One might wish to read that last statement to say otherwise, but read it carefully, there is a clear statement that the feds "allow others to do so" and the later statement is referring to the federal laws which they are disclaiming.
EIA is as explicit as LANL:
U.S. Government publications are in the public domain and are not subject to copyright protection.
Fermi:
Documents authored by Fermilab employees are the result of work under U.S. Government contract DE-AC02-76CH03000 and are therefore subject to the following license: The Government is granted for itself and others acting on its behalf a paid-up, nonexclusive, irrevocable worldwide license in these documents to reproduce, prepare derivative works, and perform publicly and display publicly by or on behalf of the Government.
That's enough for now, this language seems rather common. So if the language "prepare derivative works, and perform publicly and display publicly by or on behalf of the Government" means PD-Gov, which is is assumed to in the tag, then these labs are all PD-Gov. Maury Markowitz ( talk) 14:15, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
Are images from the NNSA copyrighted? I noticed that they claim CC-BY-ND on the images from their Flickr photostream, but I would think they would be in the public domain as a U.S. government agency. MB298 ( talk) 04:53, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
What we have here are "best attempts" at trying to understand US copyright law. Editor's comments here and on project pages and deletion discussions are only opinions from non-professionals. What would be helpful is the advice of attoney who solely represets our interest. Sadly, the Wikimedia Foundation has not seen fit to retain a lawyer for such a purpose. If it isn't a priority for them, then why are we stumbling in the dark making policy decisions? Senator2029 ❮talk❯ 13:11, 15 January 2021 (UTC)