Ask HN: Finding the Australian Aboriginal flag in all artworks

For those who don't know, the Australian Aboriginal flag (https://i.imgur.com/sGsnLkv.png) is actually copy-righted by an individual although it is recognized as a national flag.

It was created in 1971 by an artist named Harold Thomas and went onto to become culturally accepted as the flag of the Aboriginal people. And then as above, went onto being proclaimed a national flag by the government.

Unfortunately, since then, Harold Thomas has licensed the flag to various private agencies. One of the licenses was exclusive to a clothing label, which now means that no other Aboriginal business can print clothes with the flag on it without paying royalties. (Sitting around 20%) A lot of Aboriginals feel dismay at the current situation of the licensing.

I am rather free market orientated and do respect the artists desires.

But, the situation is rather unique, I can't seem to find any other examples in the world of a nations/cultures flag being owned by an individual.

The creator has no intention to relinquish the copyright, so movements have already sprung up.

A good timeline of events can be found here -> https://clothingthegap.com.au/pages/aboriginal-flag-timeline

The page above found an artwork released 4 years prior that contains the visual elements of the flag -> https://i.imgur.com/rKbS2m4.jpg

The flag artist studied European art just before he created the aboriginal flag so he may have already copied it himself.

For a bit of fun and to build a case, I thought it would be a cool experiment to try find the Aboriginal flag in as many pre-existing artworks as possible.

I am looking for API's and libs that would help me achieve this as I think it is a fun problem.

Regardless, I've used HN for over a decade and have no doubt some of the smartest people on the planet live here.

So if you find this tale intriguing and perhaps unjust, any advice on how to tackle this problem from a public policy perspective would also be great.

Just to add more juice to the story.

The company he gave the exclusive rights to was co-founded by his friend. Who got fined 2.4 million dollars the year prior for selling "authentic" Aboriginal art that was actually made in Indonesia.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/11/compa...

The recognition is the easier part (I'd be more than happy to help, email in my profile), the far harder part is identifying what historic photos to identify them in. News archives would be a good source but copyright laws (rearing their ugly neck again) prevent us from easily obtaining a large stack of them.

I know the Australian Broadcasting Company has a lot of their archival video under Creative Commons, so that might be a good bet. If anyone has a better idea, please let us all know :)

> For a bit of fun and to build a case, I thought it would be a cool experiment to try find the Aboriginal flag in as many pre-existing artworks as possible.

Wouldn't this be the exact thing that the copyright holder would want too, only not "for fun" but for litigation?

I'd be interested if it ever existed before the original artist made it but have my sincere doubts is even a remote possibility, historians seem to be of the opinion he just made it up in the 70's and it stuck.

Flags have never held meaning to real indigenous culture.

pre-existing is the keyword there, I believe. You can't claim copyright on something you copied, you have to be the original creator.