The government owns the copyright to it.
I don't know if that's true or not, but that's not the issue though. Who owns the rights to the American flag's image? :dunno:
EVERYBODY is allowed to display the American flag without having to worry about being asked to take it down. So, how is that any different than The Bill of Rights?
It's stupid.
It's called local governments being a bunch of pricks. I love how they abuse their little authorities. And then they wonder why the "big, bad state/federal government" has to come stomping on their parade.
Ummm, maybe it's because you little magots of a government forgot that little thing called "common sense"? If you use it, the "big, bad state/federal government" doesn't have a problem.
I grew up in a suburb of Cleveland which has the 2nd highest gay population per capita in the United States (behind San Francisco). The neighbors that lived right across the street from us hung a rainbow colored flag that resembled the American flag, except there was a rainbow where the stars would normally be.
Our city's government officials made them remove the flag, as they deemed it to be offensive to the United States, claiming that it was mocking the American flag. So, my neighbors took it down, as they didn't want to cause a problem.
A few days later, they put up another rainbow colored flag. It was a plain rectangle flag that had rainbow colored stripes on it. Our city's government officials asked them to remove the flag, as they deemed it to be offensive to the United States, claiming that it was mocking the American flag. They claimed that the "stripes" were too similar to that of the American flag's and asked that they remove the flag from their porch. My neighbors said "NO", it caused a temporary uproar in our neighborhood and the city's government officials tried to force them, by law, to take down the flag. My neighbors kept saying "NO" and eventually the city gave up and allowed them to hang the flag.
The reason that the city gave up so easily? They had no legal right to tell them that their flag had to be taken down. They just didn't want a gay flag hanging off of a house, so they tried to bully them into removing it. It's funny too, because we have the SECOND HIGHEST NUMBER OF GAY PEOPLE PER CAPITA IN THE UNITED STATES!!!
Local governments just want to act as if they have some extreme amount of power and love to test their grounds by bullying people in completely unnecessary situations.