IPac
[ UPDATE: IPac responded to my e-mail and said these photos changed their copyright status after being chosen. Unfortunate, but plausible. The internet is forever changing, after all. ]
Whether or not they’ll actually succeed in getting an iPod in the hands of every Senator (see comment #5 by wandergeist), IPac has gone ahead and bought the first 12 of them. They’re sending them out chock full of Free Culture goodness. Good for them, I say!
IPac’s page on the subject shows 102 photos that they are including, saying that they all came from the CC pool on Flickr. Well, in fact, a bunch of those photos are not CC licensed. Here are a couple examples:
Some of the best ones, IMHO.
To be sure, the majority of the photos are CCed. It’s just tacky that they didn’t make sure everything they were including was really and truly CCed. And as they point out, they had 11 million images to choose from, too.
Maybe there’s some explanation. Perhaps the people who took these photos specifically allowed IPac to include them. Maybe they were friends with some of the IPac people. But then they should really have CCed the photos to fit in with the whole “this is Free Culture!” thing we’re trying to get across.