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Yurt
02-04-2009, 11:04 PM
AP alleges copyright infringement of Obama image

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.

..

Fairey also used the AP photograph for an image designed specially for the Obama inaugural committee, which charged anywhere from $100 for a poster to $500 for a poster signed by the artist.

...

At first, Obama's team just encouraged him to make an image, Fairey has said. But soon after he created it, a worker involved in the campaign asked if Fairey could make an image from a photo to which the campaign had rights.

"I donated an image to them, which they used. It was the one that said "Change" underneath it. And then later on I did another one that said "Vote" underneath it, that had Obama smiling," he said in a December 2008 interview with an underground photography Web site.



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

is the "AP" an actual entity? and what power do they think they wield?

LiberalNation
02-04-2009, 11:06 PM
screw them, the whole idea of owning an image once it's on the web is crazy.

Yurt
02-04-2009, 11:14 PM
screw them, the whole idea of owning an image once it's on the web is crazy.

actually, a very, very important area of the law right now.

for instance....

there was the case about a guy who in the early 80's or late 70's...did a model shoot for folgers coffee, they took photos, and never said boo about the rights to those photos. well, they used this guys "mug" (pun intended) to sell their coffee for over two decades without telling the guy they used his photo for such. short story, he won as they had no right to use his likeness or photo for profit as he did not agree to those rights.

i don't think the internet is much different than the local telephone pole where everyone sticks their signs...maybe more people see that pole, but the rights remain. question is, before the internet, those were usually state issues, now.....an entire world wide web of poles

Sitarro
02-05-2009, 02:49 AM
screw them, the whole idea of owning an image once it's on the web is crazy.

Create something with your skill and ability that you have practiced your whole life to perfect and have someone steal it and make thousands off of it and see how you feel.

This speech says it all.......... Howard Roark's speech from Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc7oZ9yWqO4

LiberalNation
02-05-2009, 02:55 AM
I don't like the idea of patents either must say.

As for this, the only person who should get to sue is obama, it's his picture. Draw a sketch up loosly based on a picture ap took shouldn't equal get sued.

LiberalNation
02-05-2009, 03:03 AM
Oh and I hope you guys don't share/download music or movies or watch copied youtube vids.