Template talk:PD-USGov-NSF

Seems inconsistent with the reuse terms on NSFs home page

This may be a stupid question, but what is the reasoning for saying stating that any image taken by an NSF employee on duty is PD? I am asking becasue, if I look at the terms of reuse on NSFs page it quite explicitly says that permission to reuse the graphics on their pages is granted on a case by case basis. They do mention that some of their images are public domain, but for several other, there may be special circumstances. Could some-one explain how to understand that please? The issues really arises from a valued image candidate review of an svg which is derived from work by an NSF employee, which is marked with {{PD-USGov-NSF}}. I did not notice that in my review but noticed the reuse terms on their homepage, which gave me the impression that the dual license GFDL/CC-BY used for the derivative work might be incompatible with the licensing conditions of the NSF source material unless it could be "proven" that the source material is PD. --Slaunger (talk) 22:00, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Images created by NSF employees are public domain because they are work of the United States Federal Government under the terms of Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the US Code [1]. The NSF is a United States federal government agency. Of course it is in many cases not 100% clear, that the creator is an U.S. government employee, many uploader are not aware of the fact, that also government agencies are using content from third parties with permission or under fair use. --Martin H. (talk) 22:57, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for enlightening me about this. Time for me to go back to the review and clean up the mess caused by my confusion. --Slaunger (talk) 07:19, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

This template must be used with extreme caution. I now filed Commons:Deletion requests/Images of science illustrator Nicolle Rager - clearly a contractor, not a Federal employee. /Pieter Kuiper (talk) 13:38, 13 May 2010 (UTC)