Apparently the image of Obama used in the hope poster created by Shepard Fairey, a Los Angeles based Street artist, is copyrighted by the AP, the world's oldest and largest newsgathering organization. This image was very popular throughout the campaign and remains to be so. The image was taken by Manny Garcia on assignment for the AP at the National Press Club in Washington. The AP wants credit and compensation for the image, something that Fairey disagrees with. Anthony Falzone, Fairey’s lawyer, argued that they “believe fair use protects Shepard's right to do what he did here.” Fair use is a legal concept that allows exceptions to copyright law, based on, among other factors, how much of the original is used, what the new work is used for and how the original is affected by the new work. However, Fairey has a longtime history of breaking rules and said he found the photograph using Google Images. He released the image on his Web site shortly after he created it, in early 2008, and made thousands of posters for the street. I think the AP deserves credit for the original image and Fairey deserves credit for the poster. However, I do not think that the regular image would have sold as much as Fairey’s poster.Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Obama Hope Poster Causes Controversy
Apparently the image of Obama used in the hope poster created by Shepard Fairey, a Los Angeles based Street artist, is copyrighted by the AP, the world's oldest and largest newsgathering organization. This image was very popular throughout the campaign and remains to be so. The image was taken by Manny Garcia on assignment for the AP at the National Press Club in Washington. The AP wants credit and compensation for the image, something that Fairey disagrees with. Anthony Falzone, Fairey’s lawyer, argued that they “believe fair use protects Shepard's right to do what he did here.” Fair use is a legal concept that allows exceptions to copyright law, based on, among other factors, how much of the original is used, what the new work is used for and how the original is affected by the new work. However, Fairey has a longtime history of breaking rules and said he found the photograph using Google Images. He released the image on his Web site shortly after he created it, in early 2008, and made thousands of posters for the street. I think the AP deserves credit for the original image and Fairey deserves credit for the poster. However, I do not think that the regular image would have sold as much as Fairey’s poster.
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2 comments:
Interesting post. I would think that the poster falls under the "fair use" guidelines for using copyrighted material. Any artist making any drawing or painting of any person is pretty much going to use a photograph to do. The idea that they have to share credit with the photographer strikes me as an opportunistic overreach on the part of the AP. The picture of Obama fist-bumping the little kid? That's original (and actually from the Obama campaign, the kid being the son of a senior staffer). The AP photo is just Obama with his head tilted, a totally unremarkable photograph which has been changed in a number of ways.
I suspect this will be the subject of discussion on some journalism sites and I will check in and see what professionals think and report back.
I guess I'm the only one here annoyed by the AP on this one. Unsurprisingly, most journalism sources as well as the law professor blog post cited below either consider this to be fair use or simply not covered by copyright law.
http://www.volokh.com/posts/1234399793.shtml
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