Trump may have violated copyright law by selling mugshot merchandise

Its always been his entire schtick. Look at reality, declare the opposite, trailer parks in kentucky erupt into cheers, repeat

I wonder if the writers for Galaxy Quest could sue him too! 😀

The former president of America is selling merch of his own mugshot for a RICO felony racketeering charge, for stuff he allegedly did while he was the sitting president. That is a thing that is actually happening right now.

By the time this is all resolved, we might even have and answer to the question: can a president lose an election, organize a coup to overturn that election, get legitimately re-elected in the next election, then pardon himself for sedition for the election he tried to overturn?

Like it's a long shot, but the fact that it's even remotely possible to watch that play out for real is fucking wild.

People buying it is even weirder

I thought that was the case

"Publicly funded" doesn't mean "publicly owned." Plenty of states give grants and tax incentives to film productions to entice them to work there. That's tax dollars going into a copyrighted work.

And being of a public figure has absolutely no bearing on copyright. If it did, paparazzi wouldn't exist, because they wouldn't be able to effectively sell their photos.

Wouldnt the government have the rights then?

Copyright of a photo doesn't belong with the subject. The photographer owns it.

People generally don't have rights to photos of them regardless of whether they consented to having them taken. That's, like, the whole thing with paparazzi.

US copyright law is unsalvageably fucked

“You’re prohibited from reproducing it, making a derivative work of it, distributing it without authorization, or that is to say distributing anything that isn’t the one copy you already lawfully have, and various other things. Making a public display of it, making a public performance of it, which opens up all kinds of fascinating possibilities here.”

Am I crazy or does this mean every single newspaper that has reproduced the photo (i.e. probably the majority of political newspapers in the entire world) should have asked Fulton county Sheriff's Office for permission to do it?

The copyright is not with the person on the photo, it is with the photographer. Which in this case is the police department.

The only rights that Trump had were the rights on his own picture. Which is hard to control as a celebrity (public interest and such), and which he basically waived as he had those merch sold himself.

I understand what you're saying, and normally I would agree with you.

However, when Trump was mad at Twitter, he pushed hard to revoke Section 230, which protects social media platforms from the content their users post.

Interestingly, he stopped caring about this as soon as he started his own social media platform, which he tried his best to steal without attribution from Mastodon.

Now he is selling an image he does not own the copyright on. He can get fucked.

Whomever takes a picture owns the copyright. If you hand your camera to a stranger to take a family photo, legally that stranger owns the copyright on your family photo. In this case the county or county employee owns the copyright. And they should be suing anyone profiting from its use.

Edit: consent is irrelevant. That is a totally separate privacy issue.

I heard he gives a 1 up mushroom. Not a flying one.

The government office could try to assert copyright, but it would be an uphill battle.

As a matter of public policy “the U.S. Copyright Office will not register a government edict that has been issued by any state, local, or territorial government, including legislative enactments, judicial decision, administrative rulings, public ordinances, or similar types of official legal materials.” U.S. Copyright Office Practices § 313.6(C)(2).

https://garson-law.com/can-state-governments-own-rights-in-copyright/

A mugshot isn't a law, so maybe this doesn't apply cleanly, but the copyright office clearly isn't rushing to hand out rulings in favor of publicly created works.

Federal government works generally aren't domestically copyrightable. They are considered to be in the public domain within the USA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_the_federal_government_of_the_United_States

ETA: I will add that that USA has some of the best protections for Fair Use. But Fair Use definitely doesn't extend to selling it at that scale.

These are the tests for Fair Use:

• the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; [very commercial]
• the nature of the copyrighted work; [photographic, publicly available]
• the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and [100% of it]
• the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. [Effectively eliminated the value to the copyright holder]

I think the reason for this copyright is so nobody can massively shame the convinced. But nobody thought anyone would be proud about it so much to share it themselves.

Copyright laws are usually just abused by corporations to endlessly milk profit and hinder small time artists and creators. I don't think it's comparable to gang rape.

I think anything that didn't start killing him (cancer for example) a decade ago is going to cause conspiracy theories all over the place.

It is insane how one clown could cause so much havoc, not even a bright one at that

They put "Nimrod" over his face to resemble their album, so that very likely falls under fair use as parody.

I believe copyright resides with the person who took the photo, not the subject.

If/when it topples over, does that mean he wins or finally has consequences?