The fight to 'free' the Aboriginal flag

Its ironic that a flag designed to support a land rights movement ends up in a situation where the indigenous peoples are fighting for the rights to it. Is there some deeper reason behind why the designer of the flag would claim copyright and try and make money off the flag - maybe to prevent some other sort of exploitation? Otherwise that seems like a pretty greedy and directly hypocritical thing to do.

There is no good solution to this problem. Harold Thomas (an Indigenous Australian) designed this flag and asserts his moral rights over it. The Australian government designated it a national flag without consulting him. In the past there have been discussions about the government buying the rights to the flag, but have not proceeded. If Harold Thomas is the designer, he has the right to profit from his design as he sees fit - and the demands of extraordinarily rich companies like Google or the AFL demanding to use his design for free is disrespectful to all artists.

The Australian government thus has two choices:

A. Support Thomas's copyright claim, which allows him to lease those rights to private companies. If he wishes to sell to them for an agreed amount he can - but this hasn't happened in the past as the price is too high.

B. Reject his copyright claims, and take ownership of the flag on behalf of Indigenous Australian.

Under option A, Indigenous Australian's don't have the ability to use a flag they believe is "theirs". Under option B, the Government will be seen to be repeating history by ignoring indigenous rights to property (albeit intellectual property).

There is no easy solution, so people attack WAM clothing (who are just asserting their leased claims) because demanding that Harold Thomas give up his moral rights over the design is not an easy sell to people who are trying to respect Indigenous rights in general.

I'm surprised something that simple can be protected by copyright. But apparently it is: Wikipedia says so. (I wouldn't trust a BBC journalist to understand the difference between a copyright and a trade mark or even a patent.)

I wonder where the limit would be. If it had been just two coloured stripes, using standard flag colours, without the circle, would that be protected by copyright?