The Trump campaign may have violated United State copyright law by selling merchandise featuring the former president’s mugshot, legal experts have warned.
The Trump campaign may have violated United State copyright law by selling merchandise featuring the former president’s mugshot, legal experts have warned.
It seems especially strange since many products of the US government are automatically released into the public domain.
Yeah I think most (all?) NASA stuff is IIRC. If Trump was a planet there’d be no worries.
It may not be allowed to use NASA images for commercial purposes though.
Edit: looked into it. Not only is it allowed, permission is not even required to use it commercially.
Employees of the federal government generate IP that generally goes into the public domain. States can decide whether their employees, or municipalities ’ employees’ IP goes into the public domain or not. By default, it does not, and from briefly looking into it, it seems most states accept the default, and very few put it into the public domain, or allow for broad use of state-generated IP.
It makes sense, and it isn’t a rule narrowly targeted at mugshots, but I’m not sure how to interpret it as a good thing. More government workers’ IP going into the public domain seems like it would better serve the public interest. Even if it allows Trump to do nonsense like this.
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