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.