Or at least just not in any more press releases or websites, because there are much much better ones? I'll list them with text to spare you the agony of seeing them again:

Full Earth, Apollo 17.
The Viking Mars mosaic with Valles Marineris in the center.
The Voyager Iapetus photo.
The Voyager "colorful Saturn rings" photo.
The Voyager Titan flyby with the orange haze on the right. This one is especially silly since there are fantastic but not-often-reproduced images from Cassini showing tons and tons of haze layers backlit by the Sun.
That Skylab photo with the huge prominence (although this one isn't as bad an offender).
Not that I have a problem with the photo itself, but that first color photo from Spirit is often used as the only photo out of the gazillion from MER. That panorama from Bonneville is also overused.
That ONE image of Ida and Dactyl that you always see- it's always THE SAME ONE. Galileo took lots and lots of photos of Ida and Dactyl and we always get that one with Dactyl in the right of the frame (you know the picture!) .
Similarly, there's always that SINGLE view of Gaspra.
The Halley image used as the only view of a comet nucleus, when we have one set of better images (Borrelly), one set of much better images (Wild 2), and one set of far better images (you know the one).
Pathfinder's "presidential panorama" is used way too much. There was all sorts of neat Pathfinder stuff- superresolution views of the Twin Peaks and such - and we always see the same one.
We never see Viking lander images other than the one panorama from each site.
The set of like 4 photos from Apollo 11's EVA that serve as the photos for any discussion of any Apollo mission, ever. When there are tens of thousands of much more interesting images.

It's a shame since there's tons and tons of cool stuff from these mission that most people never see. And how come we never see Soviet stuff, like Venera lander images? Whenever there's a Venus image it's usually that garish blue Galileo composite.

What are the legal limitations on using NASA images? Perhaps the press only uses these images because they are the only ones they are allowed to freely use. If that's not a problem, then a helpful exercise might be to put together a small album of the images that the press ought to use.

I'm yet to see a piece of NASA imagery that isnt allowed to be used freely for any purpose, save for the credit "Courtesy NASA/XXX" where XXX is JPL, JHU, Cornell etc etc etc

Doug

My understanding of the NASA copyright situation is that it is, in the US, legally unable to claim any form of copyright on it's imagery, but that it invites users of it's images to abide by a 'fair use' policy which does not imply that NASA endorses any particular product and does not identify 'civilians' who appear in photographs. So far as I know, that's it - it's a long-standing position, nothing new. And the web libraries which attempt to sell images are quite bogus.

Scans, now, that's another matter. If you re-use one of Kipp Teague's scans which were not done as an agent of NASA, then you're being naughty. If you reuse somebody's carefully constructed panorama, then you may get some hassle. Of course, you *could* ask the author!

Don Davis will have all the chapter and verse on this, too - note that some of his own paintings have no copyright (I presume that it's as he was paid to do them by the US government and gave up his rights in the process).

O.K. for the use of NASA credit ( putting a copyright after the text explaining the image is not hard to do ) ... But what about photos on the WWW which are not correctly credited ( public Domain ? )

Just because something isn't credited doesn't make it public domain. It may be that you can't identify the owner, in which case I imagine you'd be covered (on, say a website) if you put a statement beside it making it clear that you don't wish to breach copyright and that if anyone discovers an original image which is theirs then they should contact you to arrange for a credit or for it to be pulled, or whatever. If it's artwork of any sort, then it's pretty easy to identify! In the face of such out-and-out goodwill on your part I don't think you'd be liable for much grief, though, as I say, you can't simply assume that something is 'free'. There are also, at least in the UK, the concepts of 'fair use' and 'review' (or even 'satirical intent'), which could stand as a defence. The bottom line, though, is that if it ain't yours, or you can't lay claim to a reasonable belief that it's in the public domain, then don't use it. Oh, and 'it's on the WWW so it must be in the public domain' is NOT an argument I'd present in my defence, if I were you!

Bob Shaw

Pictures I DON'T want to see again:

Any which are flipped left-right, especially with writing visible

Ed White's Gemini IV EVA, used to demonstrate that something is 'modern' and 'high tech'

Apollo 4 liftoff from the launch tower, but described as Apollo 11

Apollo 4 interstage falling away, ditto

The Apollo 11 gibbous Earth

'Generic' rocket launches which change rocket halfway (the public won't notice)

Pictures of comets on the news when there's a meteor shower

You get the idea!

Bob Shaw

Images of Deep Impact at Tempel 1 with the caption "smashing success!"

I don't see it all that often, but it really is disturbing to see the scorched Apollo 1 capsule.

Nobody's mentioned the you know what?

Click to view attachmentOh No!

If you're feeling generous, those pictures of comets could be considered accurate for a meteor shower - i.e. the Leonid meteor shower in November is caused by the Earth's passage through the tail debris of comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle. But I'm sure that many of your average local "Action News" shows wouldn't make the connection intentionally.

Actually, you might not have to look at that one anymore, unfortunately. (Though the woodcut might still survive.)

As for Apollo 1, I still have no desire to listen to the audio tapes, either. Some moments are better left private...

Yeah, I heard a broadcast of the actual comm from Apollo 1 during the Fire (I believe it was during coverage of an ultimately scrubbed launch attempt for STS-2). I had been videotaping the launch attempt, and after listening through the audio a couple of times, I decided to tape over it with the successful launch attempt a few weeks later.

It was the only time I've ever heard the actual tape. I was very interested to see what my own take would be on the actual words spoken, since I've seen several variations in different transcriptions. I satisfied myself that I knew what was said, and then felt somehow dirty... which is when I decided NOT to keep that particular recording for posterity.

As you said, it just felt too private for me to want to revisit it.

-the other Doug

This one I would never want to see IN THE NEWS again...

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Same for this one...

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