Posted on 08/19/2009 9:42:10 AM PDT by pissant
It's rarely a good PR move when a social Web site decides to remove a politically-charged image--the InterWebs get angry. One such case came to light today: A Photoshop mockup of President Obama as the Joker from The Dark Knight, superimposed on the cover of Time magazine, has been removed from Flickr. The 20-year-old Chicagoan who made the photo got an email from Flickr, which is owned by Yahoo!, saying the it had been removed due to copyright concerns. Plenty of tech pundits are saying Flickr was strong-armed by Time, Inc., which didn't like its brand associated with something so subversive. Others are saying that Flickr removed the image voluntarily because it was the subject of too much public controversy: the image has been mocked up into a poster by an anonymous third-party and plastered around Los Angeles. Pretty much everyone agrees, however, that the issue isn't copyright. (Below, the derivative poster.)
(Excerpt) Read more at fastcompany.com ...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/3834570613/
‘Fair use’?
No flames needed. See post 19. There’s many, many more on flickr as well. Such as
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24325344@N08/2308226969/
The YouTuber that made the mouth and eyes of that image move to a real Obama soundtrack was contacted for copyright too.
I sent him the Obama as Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter image and he was afraid to use it.
If it pisses them off, we’re on the right track.
The point is were the same caracitures of Gw Bush held to the same standards.
Akkk you beat me!
Yeah....if TIME pulls the string.
See post 19 and 23. You are correct
Pissant, you’re proving our point.
The fact that Flickr hasn’t removed anti-Bush TIME covers is consistent with the fact that TIME’s legal board is acting (as a bluff, really) to threaten only the anti-Obama uses of their copyright.
If anyone had the time (and money) to fight TIME in court, they could win on this basis of uneven enforcement.
But since the offenders don’t want to risk calling the bluff, TIME rolls.
See Post 30, you are wrong! =)
Well yes, I understand Time’s leftwing agenda and biases. But Flickr is a big boy, with gazzilions more users than that fading rag.
“The base image is photoshopped from a TIME magazine copyrighted image. They have no choice. “
I’m not so sure about that. Isn’t parody exempted?
That’s nothing. I had my account deleted and my IP banned from Photo Bucket for having anti-Obama photos in it.
There was nothing profane..just the same gifs and photos we see on FR every day.
Lib sobs.
(456 items) on Flicker
Agreed. But the zero-effort way out is to simply respond to Time, delete a page, move along.
It's like "zero tolerance" policies are just an excuse for principals to not have to make difficult common sense choices.
Isn’t parody exempted?
Yes. For original works of Authorship.
If the photoshopper had started from his own Obama image, or even a public Whitehouse image, and even if they'd made it look like a Time cover as a parody, then he'd own the copyright[note].
As a derivative work, though, he has to have approval from the original content.
[note] Keep in mind though, TIME is in the mood to bluff, so they could still threaten them on that, and probably successfully again, even though the parody should win in court.
I had better back mine up.
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