Nice portrait :D

His face is everywhere now. :( nice work though

Portraits are tricky with licensing. People have some legal rights regarding the use of their image beyond normal copyright issues. Celebrity faces are generally fair-use, but no license on OGA is really adherent to fair-use rules.

See discussion on http://opengameart.org/content/someones-pixel-portrait

Would you be willing to retitle & relabel it? In the meantime, I'm marking it as having licensing issues.

try DOLAND PRUMT

I'm using this in a demo for my game! I will report back when it is playable.

People own their likeness, above and beyond copyright. You usually need to get a model release to use their likeness.

Might differ from country to country but thefe are exceptions for public figures.

Lol! "Doland Prunt"

Unflagged.

In the United States anyway, only for uses that would be considered endorsements of a product in a serious (non-parody) way.

The name change does nothing to the legal question, so I don't get why that looks like the reason it was released. Unless you argue that adds to the parody.

I'd say that Doland is a parody of Trump and therefore protected. If South Park is safe with what they are doing with Mr Garrison outfit and agenda this season, so is the artist here. =D

The importance of the name change is not really about parody in this case (although that's part of it). It's more about substantial similarity. Due to the style of the art, no reasonable person would mistake this for an actual photograph of trump, but a character's visual similarity is not the only thing covered by IP law. 

If someone submitted artwork called "Sonic the Hedgehog" describing a character that loves to go fast and collect golden rings, but the picture looked nothing like Sonic the Hedgehog, it would still be a licensing issue. Not because the artwork looks like a character protected by IP, but because the name and description describe a character that is protected. 

A name change is probably not absolutely necessary, but "Donald Trump" describes a trademarked brand name, even if the portrait does not. When victorkunai changed the name to something that "a reasonable person" won't mistake for a trademark, he granted potential users of the asset some measure of surity against IP issues.

Some new legal information has come to light concerning using someone's likeness. http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/using-name-or-likeness-another

Unfortunately, it looks like using the likeness of celebrities (or non-celebrities) is a murky area unless permission to use it is explicitly granted for the given use. I think this asset is hilarious and I'd rather it remained available, but OGA has to be the place where our assets are not legally murky.

I try to avoid this kind of "It's all good, no wait maybe not, ok yeah it's fine, or is it?" rollercoaster, so please accept my apologies, but I'm afraid assets portraying the likeness of real people can't be hosted here. :(

Let me know if you have any questions.

What if he/she is dead? or if his/her face is on a public domain photo?

dead? I don't know. I'll have to check into that. public domain photo? obviously that falls into the "permission to use it is explicitly granted" category.

It is rather strange. So if a photographer takes his photo and says it is public domain then we can use it to create a CC0 pixel portrait of him? But we are not allowed to create a CC0 portrait of him based on our observations?

OR Does the photographer also needs his approval to make it CC0 or any other license? That might be a little problematic as there are many CC-BY-SA photos of celebrities retrieved from flickr pages of photographers.

"murky"

I guess it wouldn't be as murky if it was based on an official PD image like this:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BarackObamaportrait.jpg

Yeah. In that photo's case, they make it a little more clear-cut:

"...As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain."

Ya know, that's kind of a weird situation.  The image itself might be public domain, but you may still need permission from the person in question to use the likeness.  It seems a bit weird that someone (even the fedral government) can just snap a picture, call it public domain, and revoke someone's rights to their own likeness in that case.

I might actually see if I can consult with a lawyer and get some real legal advice on this one.  The purpose here isn't to supress political art, but to make sure that the people who download it and use it aren't going to get burned in a legal sense (and likewise that OGA won't get burned for hosting it).

Huh?  I thought political art was expressly forbidden?    We went through a similar discussion with some HRC images that were posted recently.   Granted those were more overtly political as they contained text with a pretty clear message.   

Well, it's complicated.  The question, really, is whether the purpose of someone's post is to share art for use in video games, or to push a political view.  If the art description is full of politically charged terminology, then we're going to insist that people change that.  However, in the case of something like this, no opinion of Donald Trump is expressed either way (although it being a likeness is still an issue). 

Unfortunately, this generally means we need to make judgment calls about whether people are posting something in good or bad faith.  If we find that we're having to make too many of these, we might change the site rules and ban political art outright.

For the record, political discussions are banned.  There are plenty of other places on the internet that people can have those.

Reviewing the submissions guidelines and faq, I guess there is nothing in there about political stuff, must have been thinking of the forum rules.   Although, I do know the 'Shillary' images were here and they were removed as blatantly political even after the author had taken some steps to ensure that the images were legally clear.

Adding my two cents to the rest of the discussion, Doland is now president elect of the usa, if his likeness is not fair game for parody or use in art works I don't know what is.  Even granting Doland's sensitive nature, I can't imagine any case ever being brought let alone granted hearing for using this sprite, with the possible exception of the endorsement use described above.  And even then you'd have to work hard to make it anything a reasonable person would mistake for an actual endorsement and not an obvious paradoy.

Adding my two cents to the rest of the discussion, Doland is now president elect of the usa, if his likeness is not fair game for parody or use in art works I don't know what is.

I agree with this 100%.  However, it's also true for any copyrighted work or likeness that parodies are fair use, but that doesn't mean we host other things that we don't have the owner's permission for either.  We need to be as certain as possible that if someone follows the license on a piece of art, they'll be legally in the clear.  In cases of someone's likeness, it's not sufficient to just follow the license; in this case, for instance, you'd have to make sure you're using that likeness in a way that constitutes a parody. 

I can't imagine any case ever being brought let alone granted hearing for using this sprite, with the possible exception of the endorsement use described above.

Nevertheless, our standard shouldn't be "is this person likely to sue?", but rather "are there any copyright issues?"

@bart:  

> Nevertheless, our standard shouldn't be "is this person likely to sue?",

> but rather "are there any copyright issues?"

Sorry,  I guess I phrased that poorly.  I totally get your point here and agree the standard shouldn't 'would someone sue'.  I think I meant it as a suit would never happen because there is zero copyright issue, but I understand if not everyone would see it that way.  If you do seek legal consul be sure to let us know what you hear.

> The question, really, is whether the purpose of someone's post is to share art for use in video games,

> or to push a political view. 

...

> this generally means we need to make judgment calls about whether people are posting

> something in good or bad faith.

Gotcha and I see where the Shillary work clearly crossed a line where this work is maybe more on the line.  I am probably just a little extra sensitive on the topic because the site was accused of favoring some speech over others on another recent thread.  I don't think that's true, but could easily see where removing the Shillary work and keeping this one could be used to argue that it does.  

Well, I'll admit I'm just a worry wart about this type stuff, but I'm sure you're well aware of the slippery slope into toxic soup hosting political stuff could be, and I trust your (and the other admin's) judgement to keep that from happening.  I'll add that you've done an amazing job of it so far!

To be safe just don't do portraits of anyone famous, but what if, let's say, I did a portrait of just a random character from my head, post it, and then someone says that looks like "joe blogs". Although not intentional, where would leave the status of that piece?

remember when you used to see a statement come up on films,or to channels, it read something like "the persons in this picture do notrepresent anyone, any likeness to anyone is coincidental" or something like that, could we not put something like that and the attribution description?

I'm no lawyer, but after reviewing the link below, I have to agree with the site admins.  While commentary/parody/news are protected forms of speech and you could use this asset legally for that purpose, you could also use it illegally for an exploitive or commercial purpose.  IMHO, that contradicts the purpose of this site, which is to provide assets that can be used for just about an purpose without causing a licensing/copyright issue.

http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/using-name-or-likeness-another

Maybe put it on deviant art or some other site that's more politically inclined?