News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
view the rest of the comments
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.
Why is a photo taken of someone by state employees copyrightable?
Simple: The Copyright lays with the Sheriff's Office.
Government entities should not hold the copyright to anything. The point of copyright was to incentivize artistic creation and protect creators from being taken advantage of by others. A mug shot doesn't fall in the category of an artistic work and government employees that took that mug shot in the course of their duties dont need to be protected from others "taking advantage." Tax payers paid them to do what they did and something tax payers paid for shouldn't be treated as anything other than public domain. And the public domain is just that: public. Everyone can make use of it, even vermin like Trump. I fucking hate Trump. HOWEVER letting this nonsense slide because of that is not good. I would rather him be sent to prison for his crimes not punished for violating a copyright that I do not believe should exist.
I think in this case, a copyright is well-justified. They have to publish the mugshot for some reasons, but without the copyright, such a mugshot could be abused. Having the copyright at least enables the government to have some control over this.
Just imagine having your mugshot taken, and it later turns out you are completely innocent. Still, if the mugshot was in the public domain, your neighbor with whom you have a dispute over the height of cut lawn could just print your face on every billboard in the country.
Except it is the accused spreading the photo of their own accord. The argument that theyre being protected by prosecuting them for copyright infringement doesn't make sense.
No, and it doesn't need to, as they are unrelated.
They do own the copyright. The basic intention is to protect the innocent, but it does not rule out any other uses.
The issue isn't that the photo is copyrightable, it's that a photo taken by a government employee, paid with tax dollars, taken with a camera purchased by tax payers is not copyrightable nor owned by Trump, and he can't sell something he doesn't have the right to sell.
The photo is in the public domain, which is covered by copyright laws.
That is not how public domain works, and the article contends that the copyright is owned by the law enforcement agency that took the mugshot. If the photo was public domain it would be free for anyone to use as they see fit.