Trump may have violated copyright law by selling mugshot merchandise

stopthatgirl7@kbin.social to News@lemmy.world – 604 points –
nypost.com

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

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“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?

'Fair use' is a thing. It varies by country, and I'm not certain on where the US falls.

Selling copies on merchandise would definitely not be fair use.

Using it in news articles may be fair use under some circumstances, but probably only if you were commenting specifically on the mugshot.

News articles can use media for 'editorial' purposes which has a slightly different usage rights subset to 'commercial' purposes which tend to be much more tied down. Having said that, I would have thought that seeing it's his own mugshot and that it wasn't taken by professional creative photographer and that it was forced upon him and released to the public domain, that he would be entitled to use it as he sees fit. It's a picture of himself after all.

This almost feels like he's being picked on because he's so widely hated and that many people want to see him burn.

As far as I see, the mugshot is being used all over the place, not just for illustration as you describe. It's become too iconic/memetic...

First of all, there is the fair use thing, and second, they probably have, and most likely there is even a clause in the Sheriff's Office' standard disclaimer that press use is OK.