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

  • CmdrShepard@lemmy.one
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    1 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.