'Attractive Convict' Sues Over Her Mugshot

Website using it without permission, says Meagan Simmons
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Suggested by jgmann
Posted Feb 28, 2014 3:45 PM CST
'Attractive Convict' Sues Over Her Mugshot
The mugshot of Meagan Simmons.   (Hillsborough County)

Her name is Meagan Simmons, but she is better known far and wide across the Internet as "attractive inmate" or "hot convict" thanks to a relatively sultry police mugshot that followed her arrest on DUI charges in 2010. And while the Florida resident has embraced her newfound fame to some extent, the Tampa Bay Times reports that she's now drawing some boundaries: She has filed suit against InmateCheck.com, a website that offers background checks and has been using Simmons' mugshot without her permission. (It's accompanied by the words, "Sometimes the cute ones aren't innocent.")

Police mugshots are typically fair game for public use, but "at the end of the day, this is actually about intellectual property," her attorney tells the newspaper. "If someone is going to use your image, they need to pay you for it." The mother of four seemed to get a kick out of the attention when the photo first went viral on various memes, even telling the Huffington Post that she'd be willing to pose for Playboy. "It was nice and funny at first, and then it started getting scary," she told CBS affiliate WTSP last year. "I have four little people to worry about, not just myself." (Elsewhere in the intersection of the courts and social media, click to read about how a teen's Facebook post has cost her dad $80,000.)

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