The Meshugana Mug Shot Megillah Pt.2: Trump’s grift off mug shot may violate U.S. copyright laws

 

Above and below are renditions of the Trump mug shot which I created using BeFunky.

Click above to enlarge

Read on single page here.

Here's a continuation of my previous Trump mug shot story. For a story about a picture of a head it sure has legs. 

I address what Dean Obeidallah wrote in the opinion piece below about the chance that the Fulton County Sheriff's Dept. could sue Trump for copyright infringement because of his making money off the use of his mug shot.

Click above to read article which is
 is by Dean Obeidallah who is a lawyer, radio host,
and comedian.

Read my first blog about the mug shot here.

Note: I am not a lawyer, I'm a retired psychotherapist, so any legal opinions here are based on my impression of the law. 

There are three short videos in this blog which I suggest you play.

Trump is notorious for playing music from artists who haven't given him permission to do so. In fact in 2020 22 musicians expressed their desire to have him stop using their musics at events.

Now he is making money off of a law enforcement agency booking photo, aka a mug shot, taken by a sheriff's department. For someone who claims he never heard the term "mug shot" because they never taught about it at Wharton he seems to have learned quickly the economics related to having had one taken of him.

Trump does have a feral instinctual intelligence for figuring out the best way to appeal to his cult. Showman that he is he made the best of the moment as the photographer snapped the shutter when he was being booked. You can't ask for a second chance the way you can when you get your drivers license photo taken. He gave good glower. You can almost hear him growling. Or maybe it's supposed to be a snarl. 

It's  not the MGM lion's roar.

Click above to play

I am sure if he could he would have had a video version of a mug shot where he could roar like the MGM lion or the Tarzan King of the Jungle he fancies himself to be. 

Click above to play

I assume he wants you to hear him vocalizing something as menacing a a wolf warning you of imminent attack:

Click above to play

I rather doubt Dean Obeidallah's pointing out that the Fulton County Sheriff's Department has a reasonable case for initiating a civil suit for monetary compensation for Trump's use of thier mug shot will amount to anything. 

The question of the legality of using the mug shot to make money was address on August 25th in a Spectrum News 1 article by Taylor Bruck here. Like me, she's not a lawyer, but she has done considerable research on this subject. (About her)

Here's an excerpt citing what Betsy Rosenblatt, a professor at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Law, said:

“You're prohibited from using it for a number of things without authorization,” Rosenblatt said. “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.” 

So will the potentially thousands of people who are already using the mugshot to make a profit get in trouble? 

Rosenblatt said in order to pursue a claim for copyright infringement, the owner of the copyright, who she said is likely the Fulton County Sheriff's Department, would have to be the one to sue. 

“Whether the Fulton County Sheriff's Department would decide to enforce its copyright is entirely up to them,” Rosenblatt said. “But it's also reasonable to think that the Fulton County Sheriff's Office might think, you know, this is a public document, it belongs to the world in a way, [the] copyright belongs to us. But the news about it belongs to the world. And we're not going to undertake the expense and trouble of hiring copyright counsel and sending out takedowns and cease and desist and letters, or in lawsuits.”

Can you legally use Trump’s mugshot on merchandise? Can you legally use Trump’s mugshot on merchandise? 2

Can you legally use Trump’s mugshot on merchandisWWWhile winning presumably would provide the county with much needed funds for jail renovation taking the case to court would require money, obviously with no guarantee they'd prevail in court. 

It would also take a long time to resolve. The best they could hope for might be a cease and desist order to force Trump to stop the mug shot grift. It might even be possible for a judge to order all American companies involved in selling mug shot merch to stop doing so. 

There would be a drawback to a judge ordering a cease and desist in that the more Trump makes from sales of mug shot merch the more money there would be if the sheriff's department ultimately wins.

While I'm not a lawyer my impression is that all things considered in Georgia the powers that be won't bother with a civil suit about Trump grifting off of the mug shot. 

Update: Jonathan Capehart interviewed his Aunt Gloria this morning about how Trump is supposedly gaining street creds with Black voters here.

Of course Jessie Watters above, is an expert on what Black convicted of felonies think about white colar criminals.

Addendum: Here's another mug shot version I made simply by darkening the original:

Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall, Who Has The Most Menacing Mugshot Of Them All?

By Hal Brown

Featuring the grift from the goon with the gargantuan girth and the grim gaze (bottom of page)

Who knew that you could get a mirror from Wayfair with Trump's image on the top?

I agree with Robert Reich when he writes in his Raw Story article: Donald Trump: The fascist who doesn’t want America to think:

Here is Trump’s mug shot from his arraignment yesterday in Georgia. It’s a look of defiance — which I’m sure he practiced repeatedly beforehand — intended to make his supporters and his Republican base feel defiant, too.

I wrote yesterday in The Meshugana Mug Shot Megillah:

 In her wanting to treat Donald Trump just like another other arrestee at the Fulton County Jail Fani Willis managed to help him snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by requiring that his mug shot be taken. She also gave him a parade led by what at my attempt to count them was about 20 blue lights flashing motorcycle officers. 

The sun hasn't even come up this morning here in Oregon and this is what I see on TV:

MSNBC is calling the booking photo the MAGA mugshot.

While Trump is grifting off the mugshot it is also fodder for cartoonists turning it against him, for example these published in The Columbus Dispatch.

According to reports (reference), at first Trump didn't want a mugshot taken but once he realized he couldn't avoid this he decided to make the most of it. 

Despite all of his bravado and using his Georgia mugshot to rope in more supporters to send him donations, Donald Trump tried in vain to get his lawyers to block having the humiliating picture taken and disseminated to the public.

He certainly did. For example as decribed in this article in The Guardian:

Excerpt:

Following Donald Trump’s surrender at the Fulton county jail on Thursday evening, the highly anticipated mugshot of the former president spread swiftly across the internet as both ends of the political spectrum raced to commodify and meme-ify the picture.

The Trump 2024 campaign was quick to print the president’s hostile glare on to merchandise including mugs, coolers and premium cotton shirts ranging from small to 2XL. Accompanying all the new mugshot merchandise, which also included a 4in x 4in vinyl bumper sticker, were the words: “NEVER SURRENDER!”

The face of the first former American president to sit for a mugshot also found itself on shot glasses being sold by the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump Republican group.

For $15, customers can purchase a glass with Trump’s mugshot. On the back is “FAFO”, the acronym for “Fuck Around and Find Out”. The Lincoln Project also offered a combo deal, for those looking to purchase glasses featuring co-conspirators John Eastman, Jenna Ellis, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Mark Meadows, all of whom had their photos taken at the Atlanta jail this week.

To save you from clicking on a Trump website:

This is from Donald Trump, Jr. on X formerly known as Twitter:

The Lincoln Project is making the most of the mugshots:

Click to enlarge above images

The only loss for Trump about his booking is that he didn't get away with lieing about his height and weight. As I wrote yesterday even the Murdoch NY Post noted that there was no way he really was as tall and weighed as little as he said he did. 

The eyes don't lie about the BMI. His is at least a level 3 which comes under morbid obesity.

I wonder if Trump wears a girdle to hide his frontal heft. If he does I don't think there's a similar device to hide his ample posteria. If there are photos I bet Trump would like to have forever erased they are these:

I share them now because they never get old.

Addendum 1: Maureen Down's NY Times (subscription) has a clever title and telling photoshop illustration:

Excerpt:

WASHINGTON — If there were any justice in the world, Donald Trump would have taken the Mug Shot of Dorian Gray.

As with Oscar Wilde’s charismatic and amoral narcissist, the Picture of Donald Trump should have been a “foul parody,” a reflection of what the chancer has done with his life. It should have shown Trump’s corroding soul rather than his truculent face.

It should have revealed a man so cynical and depraved that he is willing to smash our nation’s soul — our democracy — and destroy faith in our institutions. All this simply to avoid being called a loser.

“Through some strange quickening of inner life the leprosies of sin were slowly eating the thing away,” Wilde wrote of Dorian’s portrait. “The rotting of a corpse in a watery grave was not so fearful.”

Now that would have been some primo merch: Trump slapping a rotting mug shot on a mug and selling it on his campaign website for the low, low price of $25.

Trump has long felt that squinting or scowling is a good look for him. Timothy O’Brien, a Trump biographer, recalled that Trump once told him that Clint Eastwood was the greatest movie star ever, and O’Brien believed that Donald and Melania modeled their squints on Eastwood’s. 

Dowd also had the same idea about the mirror s I did:

He no doubt workshopped his stroppy mug-shot look in front of the mirror, trying to convey “Never surrender!” as he was literally surrendering. 

Her last sentence:

As Audrey Hepburn said in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” after she tangled with the law, “There are certain shades of limelight that can wreck a girl’s complexion.”

Addendum 2:

More of the grift from the goon with the gargantuan girth and the grim gaze:

Click images to enlarge - will not go to Trump website

You know he posed for this one:

Addendum 3: President Biden got the last word... of lierally the last and best four words.

Joe Biden's 4-Word Reaction To Donald Trump's Mug Shot Is Dripping With Shade

Or maybe it was a sincere compliment. (Probably not.)

Addendum 4:

Jen Psaki: Trump's mugshot will come back to bite him in 2024

Some of the images posted in comments to this article. Mine is of his face on a urinal drain splash cover:

Click images to enlarge.