White House Photos On Flickr Now Licensed As “United States Government Work”

Late last month, the White House set up a Flickr account [Flickr link] for The White House.   Pete Souza is the official photographer for these photos and they were licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license.  This means that anyone could reuse, modify, and redistribute the photos as long as the original photographer is given credit.

However commenters at the Electronic Frontier Foundation stated that government works cannot be copyrighted which is why the license has changed from Creative Commons.  Now the photos are licensed as “United States Government Work.”  The license links to the explanation on copyright.gov.

This is the first time that Flickr has had to create an official government license.  When photos appeared from the Library of Congress, museums, and libraries, the license generally was “No Known Copyright Restriction.”

[via Wired]

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