Interesting Copyright Lawsuit

Richard

You have all seen the image of Obama created by LA artist Shepard Fairey, and you probably also know that it was based on a pic taken by AP photographer, Mannie Garcia. In response to threats from AP, the Stanford Law School's Fair Use Project has filed a lawsuit against AP to establish that Fairey's radical transformation of the image is protected under the fair use doctrine and does not constitute copyright infringement. AP begs to differ, not surprisingly. You can read about the case here and here.

Cygnus Studios

I find this very disturbing. I understand that this "artist" overlaid color and added some text, but without the image it would mean nothing.
Would it have really cost that much to buy limited rights to an image of Obama?
I am sure that many photoshop users will love this fight. Why bother to waste your time trying to capture a great image. Just steal what you like, lay some color over it, put your watermark on it, and call it an original.

Dogdots

I too find this disturbing. While my photos aren't great they are mine or at least I thought they were mine

I hope others jump in as I'm interested in what other photographers think.

aj986s

Isn't this sort of like a song parody or re-worked cover?

Dogdots

I use to make cards and I know from making unique and different cards that my design could be altered just a slight bit and I couldn't stop anyone from doing so nor sellling them. Looks like its the same with copyrighted photos.

Could this be prevented with a posted statement such as: Photos cannot be downloaded or altered without permission from the photographer. There has to be a lawyer who is a photograhper on dgrin who would know this

I have heard about adding a watermark that you can only see when the photo is printed. If this is true would it of stopped this guy from doing what he did? Granted watermarks can be removed, but if your able to show proof it was watermaked in such a way wouldn't that help?

Richard

To me, there is an enormous difference between the original photograph and the graphic art work in question. The pic is OK, but it really isn't very different from literally thousands of other photojournalism shots. What made it an iconic image was the graphic interpretation, reminiscent (intentionally, I assume) of old Soviet heroic posters. If you think this is just some easy Photoshop manipulation, try it yourself and see whether you can come up with anything as striking. There is no way that the original photograph would have worked on the posters, buttons, banners and bumper stickers. In my mind, they are completely different things, and that's what the fair use doctrine is meant to protect and promote. Interestingly, according to the second article I linked, the copies of the original photo are now in high demand, so the photographer is also profiting from the derivative work.

Dogdots

I found this http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

Angelo

this subject has been in discussion here:

http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=118099&highlight=fairey