ATTENTION OSR MEMBERS

ATTENTION OSR MEMBERS

On April 21, 2011 I published the now ubiquitous OSR logo and released it under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) license. This meant anyone was free to use the logo on their work as long as they mentioned me in the credits (or got my permission to publish without my name). The logo has appeared on hundreds of products and blogs over the years.

Lately I have become increasingly concerned with content published alongside the OSR logo that is harassing towards members of our community including women, LGBT+ and ethnic/religious minorities. I strongly object to this and do not wish my artwork, and by extension myself, to be associated with hateful content of this nature.

Creative Commons licenses include this provision:

other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material

The Canadian Copyright Act, Section 28.1 and Section 28.2 lay out the definition of moral rights infringement. Infringement includes any act or omission that is contrary to the moral rights of the author in general. The integrity of the work is infringed if it is to the prejudice of the honour or reputation of the author; distorted, mutilated or otherwise modified; or used in association with a product, service, cause or institution (known as the right of association).

This means (among other things) that you are not permitted to use the OSR logo on your website, books or other publications if you are publishing material that would be considered Hate Speech under the Criminal Code of Canada. For those in other countries, Canada (where I live and my work was published) prohibits hate speech directed towards people based on colour, race, religion, ethnic origin or sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or mental or physical disability.

You are not permitted to use the OSR logo and publish hate speech or harass other members of our community.

Thanks to everyone who is using the OSR logo and publishing fun things for everyone. For the small number of people publishing abusive or offensive content these restrictions on the use of the OSR logo means you are infringing on my copyright, and I am requesting that you stop immediately.

If someone is concerned about a particular publication that includes my logo, please let me know about it.

Thanks everyone. Please feel free to share this message with others.