[Viennacon]

Warning: you now can be sued for drawing something

[GeronL]

this is getting more and more ridiculous

[fieldmarshaldj]

I'm sure they're filing lawsuits against all the Zero sycophants for copying their "Zero with a Halo" photos they always seem to be taking.

[MeshugeMikey]

imagine the NUMBER of lawsuits against andy warhol if this attitude had existed some decades ago.

he have died in debtors prison.

im no big warhol fan by the way

[ottbmare]

Warning: you now can be sued for drawing something

A lot of artists, professional and amateur, have gotten into legal and financial trouble by using reference photos without permission of the photographer. Copyright law states that a photographer has the rights to his own photographic images. They can and do sue if you use the image without getting permission and/or paying for the use. This is not specific to Zimmerman, though his own fame no doubt drew the attention of the AP photographer in a way a person who wasn't a public figure might not have done.

No joke, I know a woman who painted a picture of a horse and submitted it to a contest. Someone else suggested that she had used his photo as her reference. The contest organizers correctly made her prove that she had used a different reference photo as the basis of her painting and had gotten the legal right to it.