[Breeze] [Bug 487595] Breeze icon theme uses copyrighted icons without acknowledgement or compliance with the owners' guidelines

[Adam Williamson]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=487595

--- Comment #2 from Adam Williamson <adamw at happyassassin.net> ---
The icon you are using for Facebook *is* the 'f' from the Facebook logo,
isolated from the rest of the Facebook logo and with its color changed, both
against Facebook's guidelines for using the logo -
https://about.meta.com/brand/resources/facebook/logo/ . It is copyrighted,
obviously, by Meta, and is definitely not under the LGPL.

"However, a few companies provide their own icon graphic for various sizes, in
which case, we should simply copy/paste into the icon collection for our
system."

I really think you need to refer this to an actual lawyer. I can refer you to
Red Hat's legal team if it would help. You cannot assume you are legally
permitted to just "copy/paste" an icon whose copyright is owned by someone else
into your project, because that isn't the case. It is legally equivalent to
copying the entire text of a popular novel, or the entirety of Taylor Swift's
latest song, into your project. If you don't have their permission to do it,
you can get in trouble.

Brands typically focus on typical promotional activities when publishing
guidelines that provide implicit permission to reuse their branding in certain
cases - for e.g. the Facebook guidelines I posted are highly focused on
marketing things like including the logo in a business website. When the
guidelines don't cover your case, the safest course is to assume you have *no*
permission to use or redistribute the copyrighted material, because that's
typically how the law works. It's never safe to assume you can just
redistribute somebody else's copyright material, and it's certainly never safe
to imply that *you* created it, and it's under the LGPL, if it isn't.

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