Some people have asked if they can use on their personal Web sites or blogs any of the images used on Church Web sites or in Church magazines.
Church policy doesn’t allow for Church-owned materials to be reproduced on other Web sites or blogs. Not all the images used on Church Web sites and in Church magazines is owned by the Church, but is licensed for use in these ways. In those cases, you could contact the owner of those images for permission to use them.
The Church does allow links to Church Web sites from personal Web sites or blogs for reference purposes.
If you do a search for ‘LDS Clip Art’ there are a number of clip art directories that are comprised at least in part of images from Church magazines, primarily the friend.
Generally, these sites mention that those Church images belong to the Church and in one case that they are used with permission. Are there cases where an individual site can request permission to use those images? Or are there exceptions where images can be used in a non-profit setting?
Does the Church have a choice about allowing links to Church web sites? I’m not up on the legal issues, but I seem to recall something about not being able to prohibit links…
Christopher,
Some people are using Church images without permission. The current Church policy is as I stated above. You’re right that we don’t have a choice about people linking to us. The statement in the policy is there to let people know that we welcome such links.
Then (and I realize that you probably have little say in this) it should read “The Church welcomes links to Church web sites from personal sites and blogs” — and not the Dark Overload/Mormon, Inc phrase “The Church does allow links to Church Web sites from personal Web sites or blogs for reference purposes”. The latter just comes off as horribly pretentious.
Yup. That’s lawyer speak for you.
: )
* grumble grumble lawyers grumble grumble kingmen *