Copyright or not?

Consider this photo:

It shows US President Barack Obama editing the address he gave on Sunday night. It’s part of The Whitehouse Flickr stream. If you view it on Flickr, one can plainly see in the right sidebar under “License,” that this is a United States Government Work, preceded by an open circle often used to indicate copyright-free status. Clicking the link, I learned this:

A United States government work is prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person’s official duties.

It is not subject to copyright in the United States and there are no copyright restrictions on reproduction, derivative works, distribution, performance, or display of the work. Anyone may, without restriction under U.S. copyright laws:

• reproduce the work in print or digital form;
• create derivative works;
• perform the work publicly;
• display the work;
• distribute copies or digitally transfer the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending.

Exceptions exist, of course, primarily for non-US folk like me, i.e., “Copyright laws differ internationally. While a U.S. government work is not protectable under U.S. copyright laws, the work may be protected under the copyright laws of other jurisdictions when used in these jurisdictions. The U.S. government may assert copyright outside of the United States for U.S. government works.”

That’s all fine… but then if, like me, you are the kind of dork who clicks to View exif info (more broadly, “metadata,” information created by the hardware used to capture the image and/or the software used to edit the image) you’ll see a different copyright notice:

This photograph is provided by THE WHITE HOUSE as a courtesy and may be printed by the subject(s) in the photograph for personal use only. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not otherwise be reproduced, disseminated or broadcast, without the written permission of the White House Photo Office. This photograph may not be used in any commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.

Reading that, I have to wonder, do I even have permission to embed the photo on this blog?

Is it any wonder that people are confused about copyright, copyright-free, Creative Commons, open copyright, royalty-free and the many other terms that are scattered about, often used interchangeably (frequently incorrectly) in relation to how an image may be used?