Posted on 02/04/2009 3:40:26 PM PST by Netizen
AP suing Shepard Fairey over altered image. See article.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
No, because Mr. Fairy sold it.
Shepard Fairey will never work again.
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.
"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."
Translation: "We just want our cut of the $."
Ahh - I always took that poster as a mock communist poster. It certainly follows the style of the Soviet propaganda posters.
I had been wondering when a case like this would come up. It will be interesting to see what transpires.
My thoughts exactly.
This is why AP was so upset when Obama didn’t allow AP photogs into the Oval Office at one point, and instead released pics taken by a White House staff photographer (which, of course, would be in public domain).
Maybe the AP should talk to to Obama about restitution.
From the article:
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.
Yep, $$s talk.
Wow that didn't take long.
Present Obama did something right!
Ouch, it hurts to say that...
But giving the finger to the AP instead of prominate republicans is a move in the right direction.
Where to start with fair use when a parody is parodied and then is made a parody of etc?
Say what ...
Obama doesn't have a dog in the hunt. As President, he's public domain. However, AP routinely copyrights all their images. If Fairey had taken his own picture of Obama, or gotten rights to use Obama's image from AP, the issue is settled. However, a specific photographer took a specific picture of Obama and this work was used as a basis for Fairey's work. He also made a lot of money off of it. The fact is the AP photographer had as much to do with the success of the image as Fairey did, since Fairey's contribution could be recreated in Photoshop in twenty or thirty minutes.
Probably Fairey had never been big enough to attract anyone's attention before, but he is now. Fair use goes out the window when you begin selling the product for mass reproduction.
This thread is a good place to learn who Shepard Fairey is:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2121506/posts
Obama’s Venomous Artist-Fundraiser
Fairey has a company ("Obey") that produces his own artwork, such as these.
See Fairey's website: http://www.thegiant.org/wiki/index.php?title=Category:Prints
Obama has written Fairey that he admires "the political messages involved in your work."
The political messages in Fairey's art are:
1) Communist dictators are god-like supermen
2) The United States is a police state at home and an imperialist oppressor abroad
3) Capitalism is an evil system based on greed and exploitation
4) Ordinary Amerikkkan workers are guilty of blithely supporting an unjust system
5) The only good Americans are those who fight The System
6) The communist Peoples' Armies will soon triumph over Amerikkkan imperialism and bring peace to the world out of the barrel of a gun.
I wonder if any of the other images were taken from other people’s work.
I crosslinked to your article, to keep them together. After looking at more images from your article, I wouldn’t doubt that he has used other’s work before.
Personally, I doubt that Shepard Fairey has every done any kind of artwork which he hasn't stolen from somebody else.
I don't believe he has a creative bone in his body.
Since he did the Obama poster (which raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Obama -- expect him to get either some gummint appointment or contracts) I've been paying attention to his stuff, and nowhere have I ever seen anything remotely resembling an original hand-done sketch or painting. Everything is a machine-reproduction of somebody else's creativity, with the colors and context and message changed.
He does steal from gifted photographers, painters, etc. -- so that eye-catching quality passes onto his posters. But without a photocopier, the man would be lost.
> This should teach SF to stick to grave robbing ....
Since he did the Obama poster (which raised millions of dollars for Obama -- expect him to get either some gummint appointment or contracts)....
Let’s all sue Factcheck for their altered images.
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