It seems blatantly, obviously wrong. . . and yet, a careful reading of the article reveals how this could be possible. (Fair warning: I am not a lawyer! I don't even play one on TV. But I am interested in stuff like this.)
From the article. . .
Quote: Steven Mitby, a Houston lawyer who specializes in intellectual property . . . added that government institutions should not be above the law. "Your ability to protect your property shouldn't depend on who is trying to steal it," he said.
But there's a problem with that. The university isn't trying to steal his property. They're infringing his copyright. That's two different things, no matter how much some people try to conflate them.
But wait, you say! Copyright infringement is still against the law, isn't it? It may not be theft as such, but it's a civil infraction, and it's something that you can sue over. Right?
Normally, yes. The article goes after this, but doesn't quite hit the mark. . .
Quote: Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with raisin farmers who argued they shouldn't be forced to give up part of their crop each year to the government under a program designed to maintain price stability for agricultural products. The court agreed with the farmers who claimed their raisins were personal property and protected by the same constitutional principle that protects real estate owners.
The US Constitution doesn't allow you to be deprived of your property without due process. However. . . The catch here is that copyright isn't real estate and it isn't raisins. Intellectual property is not property that you own; it's a set of economic privileges arbitrarily assigned to you by the state for the benefit of the public. (That you, as copyright holder, may also benefit is merely incidental. It's a means to an end, not something you're organically entitled to.) And since copyright is assigned by the state, and the state sets the rules and conditions of copyright, and the University of Houston is an arm of the state, then anything they do with the photos becomes legally valid. At worst their actions may violate the government's own internal policies, and it may (and IMHO should!) get them in trouble with with higher-ups, but it's not something you can sue them over.
The other thing he might look into is sending the university a DMCA notice. DMCA provides
criminal penalties for some forms of copyright violation (although I'm
not sure if it's applicable to this), and sovereign immunity won't shield them if they've committed crimes. The problem there is, who's going to prosecute that? It seems unlikely that the State of Texas would go after that, and the FBI is, realistically, only interested in your case if somebody is dead, missing, or has stolen $1,000,000+.