The Trump campaign may have violated United State copyright law by selling merchandise featuring the former president’s mugshot, legal experts have warned.

    • @dogslayeggs
      link
      11 year ago

      It is a federal law that only applies to federal works. This is a state case with a state mugshot that is a state work.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        11 year ago

        This isn’t accurate as there is no such thing as a federal work or state work nor is there any actual court case. The law covers the whole country and it’s explained in the first sentence of the article:

        Donald Trump’s campaign may have violated United States copyright law by selling merchandise featuring the former president’s mugshot, legal experts have warned.

        • @dogslayeggs
          link
          11 year ago

          US Copyright law is a federal law about how copyrights are protected, but the posted regulation is about what federal work is copyrighted and NOT applicable to how state work is copyrighted. It even says it right there in the title: “Copyright_status_of_works_by_the_federal_government_of_the_United_States.” The jail photographer is not an employee of the federal government, nor is the trial an activity of the federal government. This photo was not a work by the federal government.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            21 year ago

            Woops I didn’t realize you were referring to the upper level comment and not the main post. My apologies!

            • @dogslayeggs
              link
              11 year ago

              No worries. The big issue is how does Georgia law apply to photographs taken by a state employee as part of the stated job functions for their official job. It’s one thing for an employee to take a photo while on the job, but when their specific job is to take an official photo then I think it would be ridiculous for that person to own the copyright and it not be public property (like NASA images). Should DMV employees own the copyright to license photos?

              • @[email protected]
                link
                fedilink
                English
                21 year ago

                I’m not a lawyer but my layman’s opinion is that the state should retain ownership over the photo. To give an example, where I live a company began scraping mugshot photos and then compiling them into a newspaper that they distributed and sold for profit. It became really popular but it also drew a lot of negative attention since this company was earning money by spreading photos and arrest records of people that hadn’t even been convicted of a crime. The solution here was to just stop posting mugshots online, which was effective, but didn’t address ownership of the photos at all.

                This isn’t exactly a 1:1 comparison since Trump was the subject of the photo and also the one selling merch, but I think there’s a valid argument against allowing people to privately sell products based off work/production funded by the public.