Last year’s presidential election was been one of the craziest and most publicized elections of the United States of America’s history. All of the candidates that ran had one simple message. They wanted to be president because they will be the most beneficial for the American people as a collective, and uphold their values. However, this election cycle went about almost exactly the opposite. Almost all of the candidate’s that ran for president received mostly negative reviews, and now both Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee and now President, Donald Trump both had the single most negative presidential nominees in out Nation’s history[1]. However, this was not the only negative aspect that the presidential candidate’s received. This election also produced the most amount of copyright infringement’s done by the men and women looking to run out country[2].
The biggest offender of copyright laws during the election was the one and only Donald Trump. Trump has been sued multiple times by artist during his campaign for president for copyright infringement under the Copyright Act of 1976[3]. Trump is currently being sued for using a copyrighted image of Skittles in his ad about Syrian Refugees, and a metaphor to their danger using a bowl of skittles to illustrate[4]. The photographer was actually a refugee from Cyprus, and was offended by the use of his work, and filed a complaint for an unspecified amount and injunction to seize use of the image[5]. Trump was also sued during the election by another photographer for the use of an award winning eagle photo he used in his signs he sold at his rallies[6]. The photographer relied on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to force the Trump campaign to remove the ads. Trump actually had many more copyright infringement cases throughout his campaign and they were all based on unauthorized images and songs that his campaign used without the permission or either the band or licensing agents of the products.
Hillary Clinton also experienced a copyright infringement claim. However, her issues arose during her primary race against Bernie Sanders[7]. Clinton used a portion of the song “Rebel Girl” by the Bikini Kills in a video for her campaign[8]. One of the founding members was an adamant supporter of Sander’s and threatened to sue if the video was not taken down, and a week later the video was removed[9]. However, this was the only significant copyright claim that arose against Clinton so far during the course for the presidency.
The last presidential nominee that actually used Copyright law in his favor was Bernie Sanders. The Sanders campaigned during his run for the Democratic nominee spot issued two complaints against Wikipedia and Daniel McCall. The complaint against Wikipedia was over the reproduction of the Sanders’ logo on the website[10]. The Sanders campaign relied on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to pressure Wikipedia to comply, even though they were confused because they were doing free advertising for the Sanders campaign[11]. The last person that Sanders tried to go after was Daniel McCall, who tried to reproduce shirts and mugs with Sander’s face and typeface on it[12]. The Sanders’ campaigned tried to sue under the Copyright Act of 1976 saying that the confusion of the similar shirt will confuse people[13]. However, McCall’s lawyer were quick to point out that his products were distinct enough to not breach the Copyright act of 1976, and that the Sander’s campaigned was upset that he was linking Sanders with past Communist leaders[14].
In the end, this election has seen a significant increase in the use of copyright infringement cases against the candidates and by the candidates. This shows that Copyright law is getting more widely accepted and used in the United States, especially in politics because of the sensitivities of politics is more likely to cause a push back to the unlawful use of a person’s music or photographs. This trend also shows that in the next election there will most likely be a bigger use of Copyright Infringement cases and this is another hurdle that campaigns need to look out for while trying to win an election.