We’re all used to seeing NASA’s magnificent photos of our universe. Because NASA is an agency of the US Government, those photos are not copyrightable. They’re part of what’s referred to as the Public Domain. That means anyone can do anything with NASA’s space photos; we all own them.
But what about photos taken by a private space company like SpaceX, which was founded by Tesla’s Elon Musk?
The Cool Stuff
Interested in the image above? My friend Melissa Walter works for NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, which is a telescope specially designed to detect X-ray emission from very hot regions of the Universe such as exploded stars, clusters of galaxies, and matter around black holes. Melissa is their graphic designer, Social Media Administrator, and Science Illustrator. She creates images based on complicated science concepts and theories that are not clear when viewing the images that have been taken by the telescope.
This image shows the CoRoT-2 system, which is found about 880 light years from Earth. The system, which is estimated to be between 100 and 300 million years old, contains a star and a planet in close orbit around it. The separation between the star and the planet is only three percent of the distance between the Earth and the Sun, causing some exotic effects not seen in our solar system. The illustration shows the material, in blue, being stripped off the planet as X-rays from the star pummel the planet.
Want to learn more about the Chandra Observatory? Go to http://chandra.si.edu/.
The image credit is NASA/CXC/M.Weiss. Thanks, Melissa! It’s great having friends who do awesome work.
The Legal Stuff
Let’s start with why NASA’s photos aren’t subject to copyright protection. If you read my 2013 blog post “NSA Listening to T-Shirts?” (Reader, I work hard on these titles), you’ll recall that…
…works created by the Federal government are not subject to copyright protection. This is pursuant to The United States Copyright Act of 1976, 17 USC § 105, which states (don’t everybody recite it at once), “Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise.”
Since NASA is a United States Government agency, any photos, videos, documents, or other creative works they generate are therefore not copyrightable. Anyone can use them any way they wish. You want to use those photos to try to prove that Stanley Kubrick faked the moon landing? Hey, go ahead.
OK, So What About SpaceX?
SpaceX is among the most well-known private space technology companies. It was founded by Elon Musk, who also founded Tesla and was a member of the storied “PayPal Mafia.”
Recently, there was a bit of an online movement to have SpaceX dedicate some or all of its space images into the public domain (see this TechDirt story, for example.) There seems to be a strong sentiment that, while private space exploration is a positive thing, we want to be careful about privatizing too much of the Final Frontier.
[Side note – this reminds me of the debate about whether or not genes and other discoveries in the natural world can be patentable. I’m going to steer clear of this digression in order to hopefully avoid confusing readers about copyrights and patents, but it’s something to think about.]
How Do You Dedicate Something to the Public Domain?
Even if SpaceX wanted to comply with these requests, they would have run into a problem: in most jurisdictions, there’s no mechanism in place to dedicate a work to the public domain if that work would otherwise be subject to copyright protection.
The solution that SpaceX landed on (get it?) was to publish a batch of images under a Creative Commons license.
A Brief Creative Commons Refresher
From the “About” page on their website, creativecommons.org:
Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools.
Our free, easy-to-use copyright licenses provide a simple, standardized way to give the public permission to share and use your creative work — on conditions of your choice. CC licenses let you easily change your copyright terms from the default of “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved.”
Remember: there are different types of Creative Commons licenses, so if you plan to use a work that’s been licensed under CC, be sure to check the fine print.
SpaceX gave these works the broadest type of CC license: CC0 1.0 Universal, which is about a close as you can get to actually, legally dedicating something to the public domain:
The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of his or her rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.
You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.
Well, that’s nice of them. Of course, they’re not under any obligation to do the same in the future, but it sets a good precedent. Unless you believe this creates an economic disincentive for entrepreneurs to take pictures in space. In which case, it sets a bad precedent. I’ll leave that judgement up to you, Dear Reader.
Let’s Get Back to the Whole “Copyright on Space Pictures” Thing
Yes, let’s. Copyright is territorial. If I take a picture in the US, US copyright law applies. If I take a picture in Mexico, Mexican copyright law applies. So what type of copyright law, if any, applies in space?
Well…it’s not exactly clear. This might be a good subject for a future post. In the meantime, if you want to dig into the legal theories around this subject, here’s an interesting 2008 paper: Space Copyright Law: the new dimension.
