Mugshot mugs for sale
So if you’re indicted as the boss of a crime gang the thing to do is milk it for publicity and $$$.
Mr Trump posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, for the first time since January 2021 to share the address of his website and the mugshot with an all-capital letters caption: “Election interference. Never surrender!”
Within hours, his campaign website was selling mugshot-branded mugs, t-shirts and drink coolers.
John Bolton, who served as national security advisor under Mr Trump, said the image was likely carefully staged. “I think it’s intended to be a sign of intimidation against the prosecutors and the judges,” he told CNN. “He could’ve smiled. He could’ve looked benign,” Mr Bolton added. “Instead he looks like a thug.”
A sign of intimidation??? Oh surely not.
Some right-wing commentators have been drawing analogies with Nelson Mandela and Dr Martin Luther King Jr, who had mugshots taken, including in an iconic 1963 shot from Birmingham Jail.
“They did the same thing to Martin Luther King Jr,” tweeted comedian and Trump supporter Terrence K Williams. “They go after the good guys and especially the ones who fight for freedom and expose evilness and corruption. I stand with President Trump and this mugshot makes me want to vote for him even more.”
Sigh.
It takes some … something … to put Donald Trump in the same category as MLK or Mandela. I’m not sure exactly what that something is, but there’s a lot of it involved.
When a professional photographer takes your picture, he owns the copyright to that work.
Who owns the copyright to a mug shot? Is it legal for home to use that image to raise money?
In my uninformed opinion, a mug shot is public domain as it was produced by a government body for wide and free distribution to the public.
Not that it would stop Trump from trying to sue anyone but himself for using it.
Four out of the five papers available in this area today had the mugshot front page (the other one had the details of the coming state fair, trying to urge people to their city, which is a lousy place for a state fair). It’s 2016 all over again. Trump will get publicity, most of it bad, and he won’t need to buy ads or other things to promote himself; the media will fall all over themselves to put his paper on the front page.
Hillary couldn’t buy that kind of press.
As Samuel Goldwyn said, ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’. For the Donald, that is more than true; it’s golden truth.
@Bruce Coppola
I’ve spent enough time on Wikipedia to know that that’s the case for work by US government employees. That’s a weird bit of American socialism other countries could do well to copy.
Francis Boyle, it seems to be assumed that way for academics, too. Our contract, however, says that our creative work belongs to us not the school, and that the school must obey copyright law. The very first day back at work after signing that contract, the boss made it very plain he had no intention of following that restriction. He didn’t give a shit about copyright; he wanted our work.
When I retired, I left a lot of things I created for my successor; I arrived to absolutely nothing, and know how hard it is creating a class in a week when all anyone left you is a single piece of paper with a line on it…probably a river, but who knows when it isn’t labeled? I did that by my choice. But…when I turned in all my keys, computer, and stuff, I was also expected to give them a disk with my classes on it. In short, contract be damned, the boss intends to violate copyright, he told us so up front, and no one said “STOP!”
So it’s not as clear cut about copyright and who gets what. But I have mixed feelings about my “stuff” belonging to others. If that happens, I can’t use it again if I leave. At least with our contract, I own my “stuff” and can use it as I please, even if I did leave it behind.
Our copyright laws are a mess here; I don’t think it’s a good idea for any country to copy that. And I believe in copyright…it’s the onlly way creators can get paid for their work, and why shouldn’t they? Everyone else does.
Here’s some more buffoonery for your viewing pleasure.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/marjorie-taylor-greene-trump-fulton-county-mugshot-photoshop-1234812139/
MTG — “commie DA” ffs. Unbelievable.
I blinked hard when I saw right-wing types holding Nelson Mandela and Dr Martin Luther King Jr up as iconic exemplars with whom they think Trump should be included. It does occur to me to wonder if they are also among those who would caution that it is important to consider the benefits that resulted from slavery in the US, and all the good things that Hitler did for Germany. That surely would be a impressive amount of cognitive dissonance, even for a Trump supporter.