The Copyrighted Logo
I am told that Laura was told to remove the fort street logo from fshs_bisexuals, because of "copyright infringement."

This is not right.

Copyright, as defined by Wikipedia as "a set of exclusive rights granted by government for a limited time to protect the particular form, way or manner in which an idea or information is expressed." One by one: Copyright is for a limited time. That time, under current Australian law, is until 70 years after the creator's death. However, the law was changed in 2004 with the signing of the Free Trade Agreement between Australia and the United States of America. Prior to the signing of the FTA, the length was "plus 50". Thus, any work whose creator deceased prior to 1954 is in the public domain. Here're some bits I don't know about, though. Fort Street High School was established circa 1850. If the icon they have now was created at about that time, I would estimate the creator to be no younger than 25 years of age. Unless the creator of the Fort Street device lived to the age of 129, he died prior to 1954. Thus, the device is in the public domain.

Secondly, it is debatable whether or not the device is copyrightable in the first place. The device depicts a generic fort, similar to icons used in several chess books, websites, articles and other publications. It is therefore untrue and illegal to say that the Fort Street device is an original work.

To request of a student the removal of an uncopyrighted, unoffensive and entirely legal image is legal - however, the request is simply that: a request. Laura is completely defended in her position to keep it there.


P.S, although the fshs_honeypot userpic has a © symbol in the corner, it is, in fact, uncopyrighted henceforth, and is licensed under the Creative Commons Public Domain license.