Shepard Fairey, creator of this iconic Obama hope poster, could have been in a spot over a simple case of copyright infringment.
That’s because Fairey searched for Obama pictures on Google Images and used one of the images from the search results to create this "Hope" poster though he forgot to take permission from the person who actually owned the copyright for that photograph.
Luckily, Fairey has nothing to worry about as both Mannie Garcia (the freelancer who took this photo) and Associated Press (the agency who owns the copyright) are not taking any legal action against him.
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/obama-poster-and-google-images/6835/
Tags: copyright, feature, google images, obama, Internet
Reader Comments
Hi
I don’t think so. If a work is changed by more than 20% the original creator’s copyright is not infringed. And the change here is significantly more.
Written by Vinayak on 01.29.09
@Vinayak – lol, says who? you?
the major problem with your theory is this – ‘20%’ – assume for a second that we can overlook how erroneous and arbitrary that number sounds. Who decides whether the copy is more/less than 20% changed from the original? It may seem more to you but it may look less to someone else.
Not to mention the issues regarding the variance of copyright in different countries.
In short, you are mistaken. Shepard Fairey is EXTREMELY lucky that he didn’t get sued.
Written by eric on 01.29.09
So at what point does the alteration of an image make the new image a different piece of IP ? The legal terms are derivation and tranformation – as one of the comments in the original story suggested, go to link
Written by martin english on 01.29.09
It’s legal to use anyone face and turn it into art, or vector art. It’s not ripping someone else work. Just, take it as portrait painting.
Written by ncus on 01.31.09