Astronaut Sues Dido For Album Cover

An anonymous reader writes "Astronaut Bruce McCandless is suing Dido for her album cover that uses a famous NASA photograph of a tiny, tiny, tiny McCandless floating in space. McCandless doesn't own the copyright on the photo, so he's claiming it's a violation of his publicity rights ... except that he's so tiny in the photo, it's not like anyone's going to recognize him."

Call me cynical,

[PiAndWhippedCream]

I suspect that Dido has cut a check to McCandless. This is great, and probably cheap publicity.

that sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice try, but I bet if he looks real hard NASA is going to produce something that says they own all images and likeness and all sorts of other mumbo jumbo that he signed on the dotted line when he was an astronaut. This would probably include publicity, etc. so as long as whoever legally paid for that image, this is going to be fruitless attempt in the courts.

Re:Broken News...

[quickOnTheUptake]

even how to pronounce her name

Just like the first queen of Carthage.

Re:Broken News...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone is into bullshit pop culture garbage.

Re:Broken News...

[danny_lehman]

thats the hipster / avant garde / indie in you speaking. now be a bit less objectively ignorant.

decent music can be decent music. plain. simple.

not everything pop-culture-radio-jocks squeeze out is shit.

Re:Probably won't get the first claim at least

[JasterBobaMereel]

It's a picture of a spacesuit .... McCandless happened to be the occupant but it is impossible to tell that from the photo ....

If I take a picture of a 747 can all the occupants sue me?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I'm sueing as well...

[agw]

It's a bit hard to see and I'm hardly recognizable, but I'm somewhere down in the ocean on the deck of a ship.

Pay back?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

Maybe he should pay back all the US tax dollars it cost to get him there in the first place? Then we can talk about publicity rights ...

Rich.

Re:Broken News...

[EdZ]

Could be a regional thing? Here in the UK, the Generic Tape Brand is Sellotape, not Scotch tape. If you asked someone here for some Scotch tape, they'd probably just wonder why you'd want to import your Sellotape from up north.

Re:Broken News...

[gstoddart]

You've seriously never heard of Dido? That's like never hearing of Scotch tape or underpants. You'd have to be feral to pull that off.

Wow. I may actually be feral and didn't realize it. :-P

Of course, I've studiously avoided any form of music radio for over a decade now. Some of us simply don't care about your pop icons.

(Now, I might have actually inadvertently heard her stuff and might even recognize it, but I got nothing on the name.)

Houston, The Legal has Landed

[Tablizer]

That's(TM) One(TM) Small(TM) Step(TM) For(TM) Man(TM)....