BREAKING: Obamagraphics Lawsuit Frenzy
The saga continues. Shepard Fairey may not have liked Bush’s politics but he’s taking a page from the Bush Doctrine. Fairey is making a pre-emptive strike against the AP. From the NY Times…
Shepard Fairey filed a lawsuit on Monday against The Associated Press, asking a federal judge to declare that he is protected from copyright infringement claims in his use of a news photograph as the basis for a now ubiquitous campaign poster image of President Obama.
And more…
The suit asks the judge to declare that Mr. Fairey’s work is protected under fair-use exceptions to copyright law, which allow limited use of copyrighted materials for purposes like criticism or comment.
“Fairey did not do anything wrong,” said Julie A. Ahrens, associate director of the Fair Use Project and another of Mr. Fairey’s lawyers, in a statement on Monday. “He should not have to put up with misguided threats from The A.P.”
In another potential twist, the photographer Mannie Garcia says that he, not the AP, is the actual owner of the image’s copyright. There is no telling where this will go. It is wierd that as Obama himself has been bogged down with partisan politics, his iconic poster is bogged down with legal disputes.
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[…] with a frenzy of Obamagraphics. Of course, the new President’s sparkly shine slowly wore off, things got ugly, and the Obamagraphics phenomenon lost its luster. But as the year wore on, we found graphic […]