Are the police and their affiliates violating copyright law by taking pictures of tattoos, holding them in digital form and displaying them to the public when they’re for personal use?
Posted on February 11, 2011.
Are the police and their affiliates violating copyright law by taking pictures of tattoos, holding them in digital form and displaying them to the public when they’re for personal use?
The police would only be violating tattoo copyrights if they reproduced them by tattooing others. The doctrine of fair use allows anyone to make a duplicate of copyrighted material for legitimate non-commercial uses – students for term papers, journalists for citations and references, teachers for class handouts, etc. Police records of tattoos for purposes of identification later is within the bounds of fair use, as long as they do not sell the pictures.
They’re allowed to photograph arrestees for identification purposes. If the original artist doesn’t want their art recorded and displayed by the police, they shouldn’t put it on body parts where it’s subject to being used as such.
And under fair use, the whole works can in fact be used. If the entire work is needed to convey the purpose, the entire work can be used.
The Police has a license to run free and violate any laws. It is privileged, armed, protected by lawmakers gang. Weather they violate any laws or not, nobody can or will do anything about it.
its not intelectual property, and even if it were, you have to have it pattented /copyrighted.
Do you have your tattoos copyrighted?
I didn’t think so.
No