So as about everyone has heard by now (I’ve been a wee remiss in getting my blog updated), the AP is going after Shepard Fairey for his omnipresent Obama poster image, which was based on an AP photo shot by Manny Garcia in 2006.
The AP says it owns the copyright, and wants credit and compensation. Fairey disagrees.
“The Associated Press has determined that the photograph used in the poster is an AP photo and that its use required permission,” the AP’s director of media relations, Paul Colford, said in a statement.
“AP safeguards its assets and looks at these events on a case-by-case basis. We have reached out to Mr. Fairey’s attorney and are in discussions. We hope for an amicable solution.”
The use of photo images — especially ones taken as part of factual news gathering, as opposed to posed photos — as the basis for art has long been covered by Fair Use. The artwork has not economically harmed AP, it hasn’t made anyone think that AP was being represented by Fairey (or Obama) — and, in fact, the artwork is a derivative work, no more a copyright infringement than, say, Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup can.
Or so I (who am not an intellectual property lawyer) think.
What’s particularly irksome is that AP has known about this for several months — Fairey’s never hidden that he found the AP picture via Google and used it as the basis for his work — and now, after the election, AP’s come gunning for some “compensation.”
Some people are not so sanguine about Fairey and his story, but this strikes me simply as opportunistic and yet another case of “big media” wanting to flex its muscles for a few smackers (in this case with some unpleasant political overtones).