Over the course of last year I and other contributors furnished Wikimedia Commons with a large number of photographs taken from the Number 10 Flickr account.

These uploads were legally justified under the declaration on the account’s About page which said all photographs were released under the Open Government Licence. After enough photographs had been uploaded this way, a dedicated licence tag was created for it.

Late last year a deletion request was raised over a shot I had uploaded of Prince Louis of Wales at Trooping the Colour. This let to a rather long and complicated discussion over the validity of our interpretation of the government’s many varied and often contradictory statements regarding its intellectual property.

Eventually someone raised a Freedom of Information request over the matter. The Cabinet Office replied, confirming that the OGL was the licence applicable.

I am glad that this dispute has been resolved with reasonable speed and look forward to harvesting a great many more such photographs in the future. I only wish C. Smith had worded the question a little more broadly so it covered all departments of His Majesty’s Government instead of just one.