More Wiki– news for your afternoon. It seems the FBI now has a problem with Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, specifically the site’s “unauthorised reproduction of the FBI Seal [that is] prohibited by US law.” That is, the FBI does not like the fact that its logo is available on Wikipedia. The world has run out of things to complain about, I’m thinking.
The FBI says that the presence of its seal on the site is “particularly problematic, because it facilitates both deliberate and unwitting violations of restrictions by Wikipedia users.”
Restrictions? Wikipedia’s counsel recognizes that there are restrictions in place regarding the display of the seal, but that “the enactment of [these laws] was intended to protect the public against the use of a recognisable assertion of authority with intent to deceive.”
And if you think Wikipedia is trying to deceive to deceive the public with the presence of a seal in an encyclopedic article, I don’t know what to tell you.
The one thing that I may see some wiggle room: the high resolution of the seal. You can get the seal in sizes of up to 2000px, so maybe Wikipedia can tell the Feds, “Look, we’re keep the seal, but we’ll kick the resolution down to, say, 500px. Deal?”
Hopefully cooler heads prevail here.