Creator of Obama Image in Legal Battle

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090204/ap_en_ot/obama_poster

NEW YORK – On buttons, posters and Web sites, the image was everywhere during last year's presidential campaign: A pensive Barack Obama looking upward, as if to the future, splashed in a Warholesque red, white and blue and underlined with the caption HOPE.

Designed by Shepard Fairey, a Los-Angeles based street artist, the image has led to sales of hundreds of thousands of posters and stickers, has become so much in demand that copies signed by Fairey have been purchased for thousands of dollars on eBay.

The image, Fairey has acknowledged, is based on an Associated Press photograph, taken in April 2006 by Manny Garcia on assignment for the AP at the National Press Club in Washington.

The AP says it owns the copyright, and wants credit and compensation. Fairey disagrees.

Thoughts? Seems a little petty to me for the AP to think they should be compensated.

Markwes wrote:Thoughts? Seems a little petty to me for the AP to think they should be compensated.

Everybody else and their brother is making cash off this guy, why not the AP?

wonder if it was copywrighted by fairey, i doubt it but maybe he did get his verson set in stone..the original pic is by ap. but are all those vendors who are selling stuff paying royalties to fairey? if not its a moot point. and wtf--its art. he made the picture enough different from the original i think he is covered legally. artsy stuff has different rules than other products.

I often wondered if there is like a "percentage" or something along those lines in which you alter a picture and then it's no longer copyrighted. Much like the dude did to the Obama picture.

My question is, did the original dude that took the picture sell it to the AP, and then did Fairey buy it from a stock picture site or did he just snatch it off the net?

If he bought it from a stock picture site, doesn't that money go to the person that took it originally and pass ownership to Fairey?

here is what he was actually arrested for..it has nothing to do with the obama hope pic. and.."The image is the subject of a copyright dispute with The Associated Press. Fairey argues his use of the AP photo is protected by "fair use," which allows exceptions to copyright laws 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." i know about this because copyright and patent rights issues were part of a test i had to tak at work recently.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/07/shepard-fairey-arrested-i_n_164872.html

Two warrants were issued for Fairey on Jan. 24 after police determined he'd tagged property in two locations with graffiti based on the Andre the Giant street art campaign from his early career, Officer James Kenneally said. One of the locations was the railroad trestle by the landmark Boston University bridge over the Charles River, police said.

Fairey has been arrested numerous times for drawing on buildings and other private property without permission.